Cancer - Chemo? NOW? For me!?!? Out of the question - 12.19.12
The choice:
1. This cell in my 204 billion cell body of humanity known as Loving, steps out of the battle to avert perpetual Ecocide in the final weeks in which it can be won ($250 / ton CO2e = $2 wreckage fee per $ of gas, 2X wreckage fee per $ of coal or natural gas electricity).
2. Accept a certain, roughly 10 year (3 to 20) shortening of my life by the cancer, and a less than pleasant end. (6 adults in Newtown, with unbounded Love, and Joy, just raced toward a much less generous deal, for not 204 billion kids, but just 600 kids. Bless their Hearts, eternally.)
Duh! WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING!?!?!? ROFL! We have hours, days, weeks, maybe months, to avert perpetual, unstoppable Ecocide by Green House Gasses, and I'm thinking about aborting the Canadian Embassy Vigil?!!?!?! Stepping off the battlefield for 6 months!?!?!?!? INSANITY! Not gunna happen. I expect to resume the vigil in DC, 24/7, this Friday, until the $250 / ton CO2e legislation is passed. Then I'll be open to accepting chemo. :-) Yes, it will be too late then. Couldn't matter less.
Here's the authoritative, definitive scientific, technological and economic Bottom Line, for those that care, in a 20 min nutshell; and I know of nowhere else you can find it nearly so succinctly (find the button, lower right, for full screen):
More, from a note to two fellow Unviolent Warriors (Diane Wilson, and another), yesterday morning:
I've within the last hour, prior to reading your email, had a fully unexpected, days earlier than I'd expected, Clarity. I share it with you, and only you at this point, because it pertains to what you've written below, but I expect to take some number of hours to ponder it deeply, and take one or several avenues I can see to 'Test' it, and see if it is correct, if indeed it is the Creator's, if it is Creation's, our Family's will for me. But I'm Deeply Pleased, Deeply Pleased at what I now see so far, this Clarity of how I am to proceed, this understanding; while respecting that you, others, most, all... may disagree with me.
I've spent the morning beginning to process what I learned yesterday of my cancer, and the debilitating 6 month treatment that would be required. Just the 5 or so waking hours since my return at midnight last night from DC to a kind household in Phila, has given me the time, space and place to make great strides toward clarity - including imagining the "ideal" arrangements for 6 months of Chemo that conceivably could be arranged:
1. Christ House - This could be the 6 months sabbatical I've needed to take myself to the next level of Understanding, that I could then share.
2. The Unity Health Care "infirmary" I've vaguely heard of down near the Embassy. If I imagine that it is available, it would give me the off-the-street lodging required by the Hospital, and it would give me a responsible way to accept the chemo - no sense accepting the care and expense, and dying from exposure or germs living on the street. And, those days I was functional, I could do the vigil, and access to online.
3. Three households in suburban Philly area that would Love to have me thru the chemo, and I'd have at least full access to fight via the internet. The Medicaid maybe/probably from DC wouldn't be transferable, but I can imagine for now that it could; update - I have just gotten off the phone with one of the Philly prospective hospitals and they suspect it could be arranged.
So I can now today "see" the ideal circumstances for chemo treatment.
The Blessed Clarity that has come to me, after seeing these options to which I was blind yesterday, the clarity is - it is impossible to abandon the vigil at this time. If our next 204 billion are to be saved it will be in Loving, all out, nothing held back, Unviolent Battle by every one of us possible, NOW, not 7 months from now.
Due to the unimaginable kindness and goodness of my medical care up until now (Doc Cardile at Unity, Christ House, Howard U) I've been given months more ability to contribute, NOW. THANK YOU! I'm currently still healing, yet I'm in practically no pain, for the first time in a year. I have little reason to believe that in the next 3-9 months I'll have symptoms cropping up that will impair my ability to contribute just as I have from the vigil, online, etc; and maybe my ability to contribute will be 2 or three times that long. I've healed rapidly from the Nov 30th surgery. I was physically prepared, if barely, to resume the vigil last night, but the treatment facts given me yesterday - 2 tumors, not one, pretty aggressive cancer, of needing 6 MONTHS debilitating chemo, for starters, life expectancy by 5 years of 50-60%... just was so massively new for me I needed space to ponder, and hence the retreat to Philly.
With immense Joy, my guess
is that as soon as Friday, now that my feet are back on the ground, I'll
give notice that I will forgo the chemo, and resume the DC vigil immediately. LOL -
For a day, or several weeks, the arrangements for my Beloved Pr.
Obama's inauguration may force me away from Penn Ave, his route, back to Phila, for a few days or weeks, but that is no
matter.
This
is no time for chemo. This is the time when we win, or lose, for our 204 billion kids. There is no July 2012. There's only... NOW.
I'm quite sure of all this for me now, but I'll continue for some hours to deeply ponder and Test this.
I'm quite sure of all this for me now, but I'll continue for some hours to deeply ponder and Test this.
I'll continue to keep you both posted.
Loving