Even the Darkside has some light shine in!

Merry Christmas from the Darkside! Xavier

Still hangin in there!!!!!!!!!!

I'm still hangin in there. Take treatments first of each month. Some good days, some not so good. Just tickled to still be kickin. Cancer diffenatley belongs on the 'Darkside'. Xavier

Mother Natures Darkside

As I walked out my front door yesterday I noticed something fall out of a tree in the front yard. Right behind it was a Blue Jay. The first thing I saw fall was a young bird. The Blue Jay landed beside it and began pecking at it. By the time I got to the young bird and scared off the Blue Jay the young bird was dying. It was a Morning Dove. This made me furious. I have heard of the Blue Jay doing a lot of things but this act was just pure evil. Just goes to show that man isn't the only evil being on this planet. X.

Update on Me and the big C

If it's possible for a little light to shine on the Darkside, I think it did. At the beginning of my operation to have part of my left lung removed, the Dr. went in with a scope after deflating the lung. He noticed more cancer in my ribcage and did a biopsy. It was sent to be analized while I was still out. It appeared to be the same as the sample they took from the lung a month earlier, so a decision was made not to remove the lung. After a ten day wait while they tried to decide for sure if it was lung cancer,they came to the conclusion that it was not lung cancer but stage four breast cancer. I guess the bottom line here is that the breast cancer will be more responsive to treatment than lung cancer which has spread to other parts of the body. More time, perhaps. I've been receiving treatments every two weeks. And also started bone treatments to strengthen my bones. The bone treatments are painful for a couple of days then I'm back to normal. I feel good most of the time but I do tire easily. Thanks for the prayers sent and words of encouragement. Xavier

Signs

A couple of signs that have hung on my wall for the past 30 some odd years. SXW

Cancer Sucks!!!

The word itself strikes fear in many. It seems to be the modern day plague. And the treatments for it are like something out of the dark ages. Chemo really falls into this category. Nothing more than glorified rat poison. But it has helped to save many lives. Someday they will be doing things to boost our immune systems to rid our bodies of this disease. Hopefully that day will be sooner than later.
I mentioned on my other blog recently that I had hit a speed bump. That bump led the doctors to finding another bump. A spot in my upper left lung. About 3 weeks ago they told me that it was lung cancer.
I'm no stranger to the big C, having had male breast cancer in 2002 which was at stage 3B. Surgery, chemo and a lot of radiation removed that from my body. This is a totally different bug. Non small cell lung cancer. I will go in this wendesday March 7th to have about 2/3 rds of my left lung removed. They will also be able to 'stage' the cancer by removing the lymph nodes in my chest cavity. I am hopeful that they are negative for cancer. Thus it is yet to be seen what my treatment plan will be. Xavier

A Higher Power

I have always been a 'doubting thomas' about everything. So it is no wonder I would have problems with God. I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light.
For me it was a round about way. My drinking led me to the AA groups. There i was able to believe in people who were turning thier lives around. So for a number of years the groups became my Higher Power. I was able to see others making drastic changes in thier lives by following that simple 12 step program.
And then there was that time I read a statement that said, "who are you, to say there is no God". Another thing that helped was that AA allowed me to have a God of my understanding, not a God that someone else was trying to impose on me.
I had always had problems with organised religions with all thier flaws. And with all the different religions how could there be so many Gods.
Today I have gotten comfortable with the concept of a Higher Power which is more in line with some of the nature based beliefs from the past. I think 'Love' is a basic part of this power that I have come to believe in. And that we are here to learn and grow into being better people. And what we don't learn the first time we keep going thru one life to anther until we do. SXW

God??? Part 2

When I returned home from Nam I was still in my protective bubble. So many things were blocked from my memory. I had that infamous 'thousand yard stare' that so many combat vets develope. Your physically present, but your mind is so far away. You're in another deminsion.
At that time the only law I knew was the law of the jungle. I had changed from the naive young lad from the heartland to someone who was stone cold. I'm not saying that I didn't have feelings for those who were close to me. It's just that my overall demeanor almost unapproachable.
While working as a conservation agent in southern Missouri I attended college courses at night in Springfield. I would share rides with two other agents. We had many conversations to and from classes in the automobile. They were both very religious and I was very much an athiest. Needless to say some of our discusions got very heated. But in the end, neither converted the other. However, one thing I noticed about both of these guys, was that they had a peace about them that I envied. I never shared this thought with them as I felt that would be giving them something to glote about.
I had become the ruler of my universe. Not knowing that it was about to start coming apart, one piece at a time. I took some psych classes to try and fix myself so to speak. I started having flashbacks about Nam. Some of my past was starting to come to light. Eventually i found that alcohol would help to block out much of what was going on in my head, but it would get to a point where not even that helped and I had to surrender to the fact that I didn't rule my universe. For me to surrender to anything was a mighty big pill to swallow. But it was necessary for the healing, that needed to be done. X.

To Believe or Not Believe

In one of the first posts on 'Darkside of the Moon' I mentioned my struggle with a belief in God. I'm diffenatley from Missouri, you have to 'Show Me'.
It is said, "there are no atheist in foxholes". I will argue that statement because I have been there. A very strong atheist in a very scary foxhole. I'm sure that statement was made by a true believer.
Although I started out believing, along my path things just didn't add up in my head. If there was a God, how could he allow such horrible things to happen to good people. I still struggle with that at times when I see things I percieve to be very wrong. A child dieing with cancer, a young person with so much to offer killed in a wreck, this list just goes on.
And since they lied to me about the Easter Bunny and they lied to me about Santa Claus, I decided that they had lied to me about God and now I had the proof.
After I had gotten to this point in my life, I still envied those who were believers to some extent. Mainly because they seemed to have a peace about them that I lacked.
I will talk later about the events that caused me to open my mind to the possibilty that there was something greater than 'I'. X.