A welcome phone call

"My heart was flying up, like a rocket ship,
Down, like a roller coaster,
Back, like a loop-de-loop
and around, like a merry-go-round..."
-- Freddie Cannon, "Palisades Park,'' 1961

This wild ride of being a cancer patient got an "up'' last night when our oncologist called from Boston to say that the results of the biopsy on my liver appear to be negative. If confirmed, that means that the cancer has not spread from my pancreas, despite a CT-Scan taken a few weeks ago that seemed to indicate it had.

"Go have a glass of wine,'' the oncologist advised me.

I of course would never do anything that radical but did allow myself a few whoops and tears after getting off the phone. However, I'm wary of getting too excited since getting too high would give me farther to fall the next time I get some bad news.

But right now it seems that within the next few weeks I will have a radiation procedure done on my pancreas that the docs are optimistic could shrink the tumor.

"You'll never know how great a kiss can feel when you're stopped at the top of a ferris wheel,'' Freddie Cannon sang all those years ago. Maybe I never will. But there are other things to feel good about, especially today.