This blog may turn out to be a little more intense than the few posts I have done, but sometimes you’ve just have to talk.

A good friend of mine (a “walk in front of the bus” type) was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer over the last couple of weekends and it turns out that it has spread to his throat too. This is one of the toughest cats I’ve ever known, and if this disease were based on attitude and looking at the bright side of everything, then I think (and hope) he is going to be fine. But he’s got a long road ahead of him based on what I have seen in UofM’s cancer ward.

Sometimes I think a wake up call is needed to realize how good things really are. My truck is dead (likely for good), my master’s project is bogged down, my wife and I are trying to hold our marriage together over eight-hundred miles apart, I don’t know if I’m going to have a job next year, and the bills are starting to pile up, but, you know what, I don’t have a disease that is slowly and mercilessly killing me. All the bullshit mentioned previously can be dealt with eventually fixed, but being sick isn’t so simple.

I saw things in the cancer ward that I don’t care to ever see again, but I think how selfish and full-of myself I feel after I think that. These people have to live with it, and I feel bad about seeing it? Shame is something I don’t feel often, but there it is. It’s events like this that remind me why I’m in graduate school, and how much I really need to be a better human being. At least the best I know how.