not the day of no hope.

for an hour, I thought it was.

I began agitating at 11am today to see if the hospital could drain any of the loculated pockets of pleural effusion. many calls, many amazing results...Dr. Gore answered an email in ten minutes.

what is she made of??

got us entry not to ER, but straight to IR, interventional radiology, where the draining could happen. we sped in.

they said, we couldn't possibly do this without a C-T scan. it was made to happen...better than our original day of tuesday.

the doc who was to perform the operation was great.

she took us back to a room we didn't have access to, to look at the scan.

it wasn't fluid we had seen on the x rays. it was tumor. really taking my right lung out of the picture.

I thought...well, that's it.

Dr. Gore, who was working from a different hospital today, said she would meet us at the cancer center when we got there. unbelievable.

she said we may still have a move left.

she had mentioned before a risky operation, with few guarantees, to go into the lungs and remove whatever amount of the tumor seemed prudent, starting with what was pressing into my heart. I had assumed there was no way I was strong enough for that.

but she said today, though I feel weak, I have good vitals, and a strong constitution.

she checked me into the hospital, and talked to the two leading Thoracic surgeons. one of them will come by tomorrow morning, have some ideas and ask some questions. also the anaesthesiologist, maybe some other folks.

if they decide I am strong enough, I'll go for the operation, as soon as they'll have me.

I told Dr.Gore, I want to say something inappropriate here.

I don't think often about how I'd prefer to die.

but preferable to me to long severe pain spells, struggling every day until some huge trauma ends my life,

it would be ok to be put to sleep for an operation from which I would just never wake up.

preferable still to go to sleep for an operation which would hopefully ease every secondary problem massively, recover, and see what I could muster to fight a cancer of much diminished size.

but I thought the Brave Reader deserved to know that about me.

every day...big day. tomorrow...big day.

gentlemen, welcome to Thoracic Park.