The road taken/not taken

This will be a very interesting day for me, like few I have experienced in my life. A crux, a coin flip. The last personal equivalent may have happened forty six years ago. I was sixteen, I had dropped out of high school and gone hitchhiking for six months, ending up on a school bus of crazy musicians traipsing and tripping across the northwest from Oregon to Wyoming. Sex, drugs and rock and roll.

I was having maximum fun but knew that I had to make a decision; I would/could go back home and finish school and rejoin my mother and kid brother or I would/could be permanently lost to the wild in my late term, extended summer of love. Things weren't so good at home at the time. The pluses and minuses were about even on either side of the equation and I had no idea what to do. I was clearly torn and the weight and the gravity of the decision was frankly crushing. I remember it vividly to this day.

I was somewhere on the highway near Ashland, Oregon when I pulled out my trusted yellow copy of Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching, grabbed three pennies and threw them six times on the pavement on the edge of the road. I don't remember the hexagram now or even the changing line for that matter but I do remember that the direction was quite clear. I was to go home. It was time to say goodbye to my extended summer of frivolity. Fun time was over.

I stuck my thumb out and the first truck that passed actually stopped for me. Lo and behold, he was traveling to my hometown at the time, Oxnard, heading a mere few blocks away from my final destination. Funny how things work sometimes. How the universe gives you that little extra push and direction when you make the right decision. I knew that I was supposed to return. I took it as a sign from the heavens. Although with all respect to Robert Frost, I have no idea how the other road would have worked out in the long run.

Today I find out if the immunotherapy did the trick and if I am cancer free. Or not. I have a blue light cystoscopy in a few hours down at Scripps Mercy. It is a gamble, I have no ideas which way things will go. If I get snake eyes I lose my bladder, will deal with the remaining kidney issues later. It's a crapshoot. Hoping but I have no idea. Just know that two other doctors and the folks at UCSD said that it was fait accompli that I would be pissing through a port in my belly button about now with my nasty tumors in the lamina wall. I took the last remaining shot I had.

So I have given it my best and we will see what the future holds. I will deal with whatever hand I am ultimately dealt as best as I can. I have absolutely no clue either way. I am at a major crossroads.

Wish me luck. 

Peeps. Don't call me, email me and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Not today.