I got a call a while back asking if I could be on a radio show to talk about living with a terminal disease. Fortunately for the radio listening public, I had another obligation and couldn’t make it.

But it’s made me think, again, about leukemia. Not that I don’t think about it every day in one way or another. But now, finally, I’ve decided I spend too much of my living moments thinking about dying. Mortality does take on a different dimension when you really realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. But it’s not worth fretting over.

Everyone knows, I think, that we are not getting out alive, but any time the subject comes up someone is bound to say “well who knows, I could get hit by a bus walking across the street to lunch.” Like one day their bus is going to come in.

Ever notice that it’s always a bus? No one ever speculates about getting hit by a car, perhaps because that’s more probable. And no one really expects to get hit by a bus on their way to lunch, no matter what they say. Odds are, they’re right, they’ll live to order lunch. Odds are better that a car might take them out, so let’s not talk about that.

Me, though. I look both ways and cross the street anyway, quickly. I think when you’re really resigned to it, you don’t look first. You just go to lunch. And I’ve been doing that for awhile. Figuring that it was just a matter of time before I didn’t make it to lunch. I might have been right, but now, I’ve quit planning for an early retirement.

I’ve told my doctor and his study director that I want to sign up for a clinical trial. This has been looming now for some long time. Probably not as long as it seems. But the last several appointments have all ended with the admonition to come back in three months and talk about a treatment plan. So this time, when we went for my appointment we really thought he would want to talk about a treatment plan. Instead, he hedged and said there was no rush but that things were certainly moving in that direction and we would have to think about treatment sooner rather than later.

We had talked about it and had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do. Is there any reason not to wait? Will it be any easier or more effective if I’m older and sick? If anything, it seems like the right time for it now. My symptoms are negligible and I’m feeling good so it seems reasonable to think I can withstand whatever they throw at me.

It’s odd isn’t it, with cancer. For so many people, the cure is worse than the disease. Until it isn’t, of course. And for me, it’s not a cure. At least not as far as they know. No one has been cured yet, but that carrot keeps dangling out on the end of the needle that maybe this treatment, maybe this pill, maybe this combination of god-awful shit will be the one that actually is the silver bullet. So let’s give it a whirl.

It’s an experimental drug, of course, or it wouldn’t be a clinical trial. (We never called them clinical trials when we experimented with drugs in college, but those were simpler times). And just for good measure they’ve decided to combine it with an approved drug to see what the two of them will do together. Each of them seems to work pretty well by itself so far, so maybe if we mix them up with just a pinch of eye of newt we’ll come up with something really wickedly good.

Now, here’s the thing. If you look it up on Google, you’ll find that three people died in the early trials of this experimental drug. Seems it worked so well, so many leukemia cells were killed, lymph nodes tumors shrunk so much that it overwhelmed their systems. But they figured out how to deal with that and have solved it. So let’s not talk about that either.

For most people, and everyone since they adjusted the dosage, it’s worked and many of them have no evidence of disease at all. It’s the very definition of the adage that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And since I’m pretty healthy for a sick guy, I ought to come out on top, right? Right?

It’s going to be a month or so before I start. And it’s not a sure thing that I’ll be accepted. There will be another bone marrow biopsy and a CT scan and a medical history and some other tests. I’m hoping the entrance exam has an essay question. I hate multiple choice. If I score in the upper percentiles in all those, I get to take a pill. Every day for two years or so. And once a month, for six months, I go in for an infusion for a day. Easy. Except for the side effects, most of which have been observed in dogs and mice so far. So if I start scratching behind my ear you’ll know I’m in treatment and you may not want to suggest that we go to lunch.