Stage Four Colon Cancer: All the poop

I had it again last night. I was texting with a friend who said "My wife and I are praying for you." It was all I could do to ask "Are these the same prayers you said for our mutual friend who DIED a few months ago from the same cancer?" Because if that's the case, save your prayers; they didn't do her any good. God is the ultimate teflon entity. Heads he wins; tails you lose. If you pray and someone recovers "It's a miracle and my prayers helped!" If said someone dies "Well, only God knows his plan and we have to trust that." Bullshit. I always wonder why in the past century and half has God decided to spare so many more people who once died by the millions of now curable diseases? Did people not pray hard enough before, were they not pious enough? Or, I wonder, has modern medicine done the job that God has abdicated for so long? Please. Don't pray for me. Bring me dinner, give me a ride to chemo, send me a funny joke or ca...

Cancer seems to be attracted to me. Breast cancer first bit me, well in the breast, in late 2012. It was HER2, which 20 years ago was a killer cancer, but now with Herceptin, is one of the most curable breast cancers there is. Nonetheless, I underwent a partial mastectomy, chemotherapy with the aptly named Red Devil (Adriamycin), Taxol, and a year of Herceptin. Oh, did I forget the 33 doses of radiation? I was nearing the magical 5 year mark when in mid-April of 2017 my intestines said "Nope, we've got some business here." I had been constipated for a couple of weeks but was trying to get to the end of the semester. Did I mention I teach at a community college? No? Well I do. I rarely miss classes and a little stuck poop wasn't going to wreck that record. So I ended up in the emergency room of the local hospital and that night was told "Bad news, it's cancer." Great, just great. But that wasn't the end of the fun, oh no, folks things just kept gett...