On cancer mortality: A personal view.
Serious warning: This
blog will be depressing well beyond anything I have ever written. I won’t post it anywhere other than
here. If you are having a happy day and
don’t want to spoil it, stop reading r now.
What, still there?
Well, you have been warned.
I have been wallowing in gloomy thoughts today. Why, I don’t know; my aches and pains are no
worse than usual, my bird feeders are aswarm with little creatures of a dozen
descriptions, and the weather is warm, clear – and, of course, windy. I get to go home to PNW weather in less than
a month. Joanne is feeding me
tomorrow. I’m having dinner at the
Moaning Mongoose next Thursday with Paul and Mary. So what’s the problem?
Hell, I don’t know.
Whatever it is, I have devoted most of the day to thinking about my good
friends who have died of cancer.
First there was Dr. Norman Watkins, way back in the 1970s. He died of colorectal cancer in his 40s. Norm was a pioneer paleomagnetist, making big
waves. He was fearless, and he made some
enemies. We will never know what he
might have done, given the time. Lots, I think.
And then there was Dr. Robert Speed, a geologist mostly
associated with Northwestern University.
Bob was one of a very few go-to guys where Cordilleran geology was
concerned. I met him at Stanford, and
worked with him in Nevada and the Caribbean.
Bob was the only guy I have ever met who could really enjoy a very hot
beer at the end of the day – hot because we had forgotten to stick the beer in
the ice chest that morning. Bob died of
melanoma at about age 70. He had just
retired.
My golfing mentor, Dr. Richard Levin, died at about that
same age (70), of a kind of cancer I cannot characterize other than to say that
it was recurrent and affected the mouth.
Rich was a math professor at my university, and perhaps the nicest, most
patient, gentlest man I have ever met.
Next came my lifelong friend, Dr. Samuel J. Sims. I first encountered Sam on a high school
football field. I went to Caltech and
Stanford with him, down mines with him, into drinking establishments, low and
high, safe and unsafe, with him. He may
qualify as my best – long-term – friend.
Sam died a few years ago, of what I believe may be called soft-tissue
sarcoma. He was a great guy.
And finally comes the death of Dr. Robert Keller a few days
ago, of something called “Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation”, a very rare,
and invariably fatal, condition most often caused by cancer. Bob was a history professor at Fairhaven
College, a part of WWU. He also was the
person who introduced me to mountaineering
in the Cascades, and with whom I first explored the Wind River Range of
Wyoming. He was a unique and enigmatic
(to me) character about whom much more should be written.
So, five good friends dead of cancer – and all younger than
me! I am approaching 84. Somewhere I think I read that a person’s
probability of dying of cancer roughly doubles with every decade of life. If so there may be dozens of cancerous mutations
lurking in my DNA, waiting to pounce. I
have written nearly 500 blogs about ovarian cancer, but OVCA can’t get me. If some other cancer does, I hope I have the
courage to spit in its eye.
But I would rather be hit by a bus.
You will have noticed that I made no mention of another cancer
death above, that of my beloved wife, Linda, at only 65 years of age. The guys enumerated above were important
friends; Linda was an essential part of my core existence. I have been stumbling on without her for
almost six years now, often wondering why it was that Fate took her and not
me. Hell, I was 78 and good for very
little; she was just beginning a productive, creative, joyful retirement. If fate had spared both of us, what fun we
would have had! And now, as I stumble
toward helplessness, she would have been here to help.
You have much to explain, Fate. Get started.
