Still Very Much Alive and Kicking and Glad to be so!

I realize that I haven't posted much lately!  I've been luxuriating in my continued NEDness (No Evidence of Disease)!  I take the lack of evidence of disease to be indicative of being "cancer-free," fully aware that this could all change with the next CT scan, which is scheduled for Wednesday, January 11, 2012.  All CT scans, even the high-resolution ones at MDACC (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center) here in Houston, Texas, necessarily are limited at some level in the resolution they can achieve, whether it's 1 mm or 0.5 mm or whatever--current CT scan imaging technology isn't able to resolve individual cancer cells at the 10 micron level or so, and since the energy of the photons used goes up as the corresponding wavelength goes down (cells and other structures much smaller than the photon's wavelength can't scatter the corresponding photons all that well!), you probably don't want to be exposed to a lot of very short wavelength x-rays (or gamma rays) in order to achieve that kind of resolution!  Perhaps thermal neutrons could be used, however!  They might not damage your tissues nearly as much as the high-energy x-rays (or gamma rays) do!  Nevertheless, psychologically, it's much easier to deal with the idea that I'm completely "cancer-free," even though my oncologist would never tell me such a thing!  To paraphrase that great patriot, Patrick Henry, "Give me cancer liberty or give me death!"

Cancer death is, of course, weighing on everybody's minds, mainly as a result of the passing of Steve Jobs!  The parts of his 2005 graduation address at Stanford that I've seen are very prescient and wise!  Life is, indeed, far too short for any of us to waste much of it living someone else's life, trying in vain to meet someone else's expectations for our lives.  Death can be a gift that makes each and every moment of each and every one of our lives all the more precious and unique!  There are, after all, only 86,400 seconds in each 24 hour day of our lives, so be careful not to squander too many of them in worthless pursuits that don't engage all of your passions!  Do what you love (whatever that is) and love what you do (whatever that may be)!  Love wastefully and recklessly because there's no way in heaven or on Earth that we can ever exhaust the true fount of love!  Not only can love be unconditional, love can be inexhaustible and infinite beyond all imagination and reason!  Thanks, Steve!  I love my iPad, my iPods, and I'm sure I'd love an iPhone, too, if I had one!  Thanks also to Dave and Jo and Brian and Celeste, of course, without whom we'd never have had the pleasure of getting to know and use Paddy the iPad!