Last Thursday, we met with my surgeon, Dr. Jeffry Tomaszewski, assistant director of genitourinary oncology for MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper.

Once again, my Closest Companion and I liked him immediately. He’s young, studied, funny, and we seemed to get each other right away.

If my chemotherapy is finished on schedule, which would make it end just before Thanksgiving, I can have surgery the week after Christmas.

Imagine that! I could be cancer-free by New Year’s Eve!

Tomaszewski said he’ll perform about eight hours of surgery, some robotic and some done by hand, that will relieve me of my non-working kidney, my ureter and bladder, my prostate and and lymph nodes. He will also take and re-purpose a section of my colon, fashioning it into a small, fake bladder and install a conduit that will allow me to dispose of urine into an external bag. And leave me cancer-free!

From the time I first faced the possibility that I had cancer, had the cancer confirmed, had the treatment and surgery to remove the cancer will be just under seven months.

I have trouble conceiving of that.

This life-threatening, life-changing disease will have occupied and consumed ONLY seven months. Twenty-eight weeks. A mere 210 days of my life.

In 69 years, I have lived roughly 25,185 days. That means this cancer will have occupied only 0.83382966051221% of my life.

Certainly puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

Sure, I suppose this could all go wrong, but there’s nothing to indicate that’s going to happen. As far as I’m concerned, this plan will work the way it was meant to work.

So, we’ll welcome a new great niece just before Christmas, spend the holiday with family and lots of friends and go get this done right afterwards.

So, the new goal is: Cancer-free by New Year’s Eve.

Ain't life grand?

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