Beloveds,
Two months ago I wrote to you after receiving what felt like the most dire of diagnoses. You responded with such love and care that I was encouraged to be brave and face what seemed to be incontrovertibly inevitable. Since then, the doctors decided to delay my chemotherapy until they could biopsy the spots in my lungs and even try to analyze the DNA makeup of these nodules. What a dark cloud hung over our summer days, mitigated so thankfully by the wave of love and support I received and am receiving. Now, after a summer of tests and scans and an inconclusive biopsy, they are still not able to convincingly identify whatever has invaded my lungs.
To be clear, my primary diagnosis of pancreatic metastases to my lungs has not changed. But here's the thing: my body is not acting like I'm ill with an aggressively spreading cancer. The nodules have barely changed between my July scans and the scans from this week. I'm not being offered any false hope, but by confounding the doctors' expectations, I'm certainly throwing some fairy dust into my expert physicians' eyes. My new oncologist from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (where my Mom, my Dad and Alva all received treatment) is a doctor I just love, Dr Priya Chakravarthi. Alva and I met with her yesterday after she'd reviewed all of my material from Stanford. As I am feeling swell and because they still have no confirmation that I am indeed dying of cancer, we have determined that, instead of starting me on chemotherapy that will make me feel lousy, we will wait and have me in for another CT-scan in two months. Two months!
I admit, I do enjoy confounding the medical profession. What only a very few fine physicians can reckon with is that a patient who was born an optimist, living a healthy life so utterly full of and surrounded with love, is a patient who may, at least for a time, confound their expectations. Call me an old hippie, but I know that when you write to me or pray for me or even just think a fond thought of me, you are profoundly helping me stand up to whatever this may be. I feel you constantly, with every breath I take. I spend my days visualizing each of you, feeling your embrace, hearing your encouragement. If I am being granted a grace period before a terrific medical ordeal, let there be grace. And yes, we all deserve to carry some hope forward now that was not to be seen since early July.
So to each of you who reads this letter, please know how much you and your loving support, your belief in me, and your expressions of affection mean to me, in a very real sense. My darling Alva and my siblings and extended family have been nothing but wonderful every step of the way. And how could I not feel like the most fortunate man in the world to have you as my abiding friends?
We have important work to do in this, our troubled world. First and foremost, for our children and their children and theirs again, we must rally worldwide for our dear Mother Earth. Right up there is also our burning need to work for social and criminal justice. We are not only despoiling our planet as we're going, we are fouling our nest of what this country is supposed to be about. We must stand up. We must speak out. We must seek solidarity over fighting. I say, these immense challenges do not call us to a fight or a "war on," but hunger for our collaboration in working together toward a world where peace and cooperation, family and community, earth and sky, are for all of us to tirelessly do our best for. Can we ever shed the mindset and terminology of battle and fighting for every challenge we face? I need to help educate my neighbors, to convince them, not to fight them.
You are true blue (and I ain't talking politics here). I trust you. I respect you. And I love you.
I am holding you not only in my heart, but apparently, in my lungs as well!
Please stay in touch and I will, too. Goodness prevails, even in eventual sorrow and loss.
May your autumn bring you harmony and resolution even as you get surprises and maybe even an adventure or two before winter comes.
all my love,
Bear