(Originally posted in June 2007)

Back in Austin, along with my favorite wife.

We were just here two weeks ago, when she ran (and swam, and rode) in the Danskin Triathlon… and did pretty damn good for an old broad - out of 3200 contestants, she finished ahead of about 700 of them. I told her on the way home to Alpine the next day (420 miles… just a quick trip in here in the Great State) that I’m probably one of the few males who’s not afraid (or at least, ashamed) to admit that my wife is my hero… I’ll tell you straight up, she is everything anyone could want - smart, beautiful, strong, honest, caring, compassionate, and not a phony bone in her body: definitely, beyond the remotest shadow of a doubt, my hero.

I must have been a hell of a good guy in a past life to deserve her in this one.

So… having gotten most of the way through the annual Brewster County audit this past week, we drove in last night. Today is the every-four-weeks checkup with her cancer doc. I think he’s still puzzled - it’s been just about a year since this all started at the lung specialist in Odessa with “Hmmmm… well, the lung biopsy didn’t show anything really bad, just the scarring we were talking about, which could be from any of 108 different things… but I don’t like this little lump on your chest… hmmmm… that’s cancer”.

Then after a lumpectomy in Austin, with a clean lymph node, with a diagnosis of Stage I (just beginning) or maybe Stage II (because the lump was 2 centimeters (about 3/4 inch), a PET scan (no, they didn’t take pictures of the cat) showed spots all over and the diagnosis changed to Stage IV (terminal). The cancer docs were talking about “keeping you comfortable” and “maintaining your quality of life”… which is to say, they basically held out no hope whatsoever.

In a way, that was probably good, because at Stage II or Stage III they were talking about radiation and chemotherapy, but at Stage IV they went straight to hormone therapy. It turns out that a pretty significant portion of breast cancer seems to be related to estrogen (there’s a surprise, huh?) and that those cancer cells can be short-circuited by depriving them of estrogen, which is accomplished by depriving the whole body of estrogen… this might not be really desirable for a young woman, but for an old broad, past menopause, it’s really not a big deal… so they put her on a drug called Arimidex, whose job is to block estrogen uptake (I think - maybe it’s blocking estrogen production, but in post-menpause there shouldn’t be a heck of lot of estrogen production, should there???).

Long story short, my favorite wife is still with us, and is definitely healthier now than when she went to the lung doc with breathing problems (that illness, whatever it was, seems to have more or less healed itself). The cancer doc has quit asking her if she wants “something for the pain” since she has convinced them that she doesn’t have any unusual pains… he insisted for the first few months, and even went so far as to pull his glasses down on his nose, and give her his most sincere look, and tell her gently “there’s no shame in admitting that you’re in pain, and we have some excellent drugs to help you manage your pain, so please let me help you.” She just laughed, and told him he’d be among the first to know if she started having strange pains… so I guess he finally believed.

And, in fact, as far as I can tell, that’s exactly how the Universe works. Casey Stengel was right when he said (about those Amazin’ Mets) “YA GOTTA BELIEVE!”

I believe, and my favorite wife believes. I don’t know if we can credit our health and happiness strictly to belief, or if the wheatgrass (which I was growing myself, but I’ve fallen down on, with the oddball weather and all) or the vegan diet or the massive exercise program (hers, not mine)… but something’s working.

So here we are, for the every-four-weeks checkup, consisting of a blood test to look for a specific “cancer marker” substance (which has been steadily, if not spectacularly, going in the right direction since the Arimidex took hold - I think it went up the first month, then zig-zagged down the next four, and been steady down since), a bit of poking and prodding and questions, and an infusion (about three hours of IV drip) of something called Aredia (aridia?) which keeps calcium from being leached out of the bones by the cancer cells.

So far, so good.

She is, truly, my hero.