Friends of life

A little while ago, about a year ago, a friend came to me and said hi.  This is not unusual.  But he had been ducking me and more or less ignoring me for over a year.  I knew he had been doing that and I just let him be.  Him an his family.  I had stayed with him for a year, and was a flatmate with him for about seven before.  I gave him space and let him break the silence.  He broke the silence.  He never said why and I never asked.  Why he stopped talking.  He told me why he started talking.  He said:

"I have Cancer"

He said it with the big Capitol 'C', so I did too.  Cancer is one of the ways that people die.  It affects people of all ages.  Babes can have cancer and old people can have cancer.  When someone tells you that they have cancer, they always capitalize the 'c'.  My parent's did it too.  Last year I also found out that my father had cancer.  My father did not capitalize the 'c' he half capitalized it.  I had a long conversation with Natural20, the name she chose for herself on my blog, and she told me that I was not to say that I was destined for cancer too, as a red head.  She said don't talk that way, I only just found you and I don't want to think about giving you up.  You see I am her Natural20 too, her WMD, White Male Doppelgänger.  

My friend had stage four kidney cancer.  When he talked to me he did not know that.  It might have been a result of his diabetes.  It might not have been.  That does not matter, he has it.  It has him.

Let me tell you this: you definitely want to be in a country that has universal free healthcare if you get cancer.  It was weeks between diagnosis and surgery.  His family is fairly affluent, hi he had been in America, the surgery would have bankrupted him.  And the chemo and the radiation and the drugs, and the chemo.  It goes like this: Diagnosis, identify and look at options. 

Surgery, remove the affected organ if it won't kill the patient.

Administer drugs until they don't work.

Administer chemo until it does not work.

Administer radiation until that site cannot take any more radiation.

Administer last chemo last ditch effort

Death.

My friend is still alive, but radiation did not work.  

What I can do for him is treat him like he was before, be compassionate and try to make him happy.  I can't do the later but I can set him up.  I am have been trying to run a D&D campaign for him, one last kick at the can, home grown, because he has read all the modules and he is a DM like me, so it needs to be engaging and new a d that is what I can do.

The players are Natural20, her husband, her friend, my friend, and Jaguar.  I will run with three and create an NPC, maybe a cleric, yes a cleric of light.  He has 4-5 months left.

We all die.

Some of us from brain ailments.  Some by heart problems.  Some by accidents. Some by cancer.  We all hope when the time comes the people we care about will be there with us in the end, but what we hope that they will be with us for the journey.

I met him in September 1992 in university.  It is now May of 2018.  You meet people all through your life.  Some last longer than others.