CT and Blood Test Results, Chemo Round 3

I completed my third round of chemo about two hours ago, and all went well.  I feel good.  I just wish I'd feel as good on Monday through Wednesday.

We saw my oncologist before chemo, and he reported that my blood counts, liver tests, and kidney function were all good.  He also had results from a comparison of my recent CT results with the scans from September and from before my surgery.  There was no noticeable change in the right thorax and no evidence of metastasis outside of it.  Given that they could not see any clear tumor mass the last time, I take the findings as an indication that my disease is at least stable. The results strengthened the cancer patient's chief bulwark against despair--the hope that treatment will at least provide a meaningful extension of life.

Another few thoughts on the topics raised in yesterday's post on the "Why Us" question.  I did not mean to imply in that post that the decisions we make do not have an impact on our lives, only that some events like an automobile accident, winning the lottery, or getting cancer are essentially independent of our actions.  They are not part of some grand narrative.  My understanding of how our actions affect the world and ourselves is consistent with the Asian concept of karma.  My interpretation of karma is as follows:

1.  The world in an extremely complex and interconnected entity.

2.  Our interactions with the world, our decisions and the actions that we take, affect the decisions and actions of others, and those actions and decisions affect even others, etc.

3.  We are impacted by the decisions and actions of others and those influences are at least partly shaped by our previous decisions and actions.  Our decisions find their way back to us through the actions of others.

4.  On the average, good or right decisions return good or right results.  Bad or wrong decisions tend to bring bad or wrong results.

Think of a pond filled with many vibrating posts where each post represents an individual.  The wave-like rings that flow out from my post strike and are reflected from other posts near me and interact with the waves produced by the vibrations of other posts.  The resulting waves return to me.  While the interaction of the waves and the posts is extremely complex, perhaps complex enough to preclude prediction, causality is still involved, and on the average, right action produces positive results and wrong action produces negative results.  One person making right decisions in a field (families, communities, and nations) where most are making wrong decisions will not benefit the one making right decisions much, but as fields are transformed from being composed predominantly of persons making wrong decisions to fields filled predominantly with persons making good decisions, the quality of life improves.  The difficult questions are how to identify good or right actions and how to promote right action.

David