Happy New Year

My wife and I were supposed to spend New Year's weekend on Tybee Island, just south of Savannah, Ga. It is our heaven on Earth. It would be our fourth trip there in 2005. Instead, we spent Dec. 31 in front of the TV watching Dick Clark. I'm really glad America's "oldest teenager" is back on the air, but this is not how I wanted to ring in 2006. The first week of January will see me have a brain scan, a PET scan and three radiation treatments. The radiation begins Wednesday. I'm scheduled to have treatment at 3:30 p.m. everyday this month and beyond. The plan is to shrink the monster to improve my breathing so we can attack the monster with chemotherapy without as much fear of me catching pneumonia. Funny, I thought pneumonia is what landed me in the hospital. It will be next Monday before I know what the PET scan reveals. It will show whether or not the cancer has spread outside my lungs. If it is isolated in the lung, I will undergo aggressive chemo. If it has spread ... well, I'm not ready to go down that road just yet.