"To sleep perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub"

William Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, is one of the world's most famous and enduring tragedies of all time. Even school kids know the opening line from Hamlet's soliloquy where he contemplates suicide by uttering to himself "To be or not to be, that is the question." After the opening line, Prince Hamlet goes on to introspectively assess whether ending his life to avoid all the trials and tribulations he is experiencing due to his father's untimely, questionable death is better than continuing to live as a man deeply troubled by systemic distrust about his mother and uncle who married each other within days of the King's demise.

"Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer 
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."

Impatient readers might immediately assume from my introductory paragraph that I've gone off the deep end because of the seemingly macabre turn this post has taken. Ah, but don't be fooled by appearances or beginnings. For me, the applicable stanza is "To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub..." In his soliloquy Hamlet uses 'sleep' as a metaphor for death, but, in the context of my post, I use it in its literal sense, to describe restful, re-energizing repose. So cheer up readers, I'm not contemplating suicide or even the more euphemistic 'euthanasia' at this time, but what I wouldn't give for a good night's sleep! "Aye, but there's the rub..."

Waking up in the middle of the night to pee is not newsworthy in itself for men my age but getting back to sleep has lately presented a real challenge for me personally. Once you have been diagnosed with a malignant cancer, you're immediately given carte blanche to lie awake at nights to worry about every benign symptom that you experience.

"Geez, why am I itching? Do I have skin cancer? Is all the snot in my head due to brain cancer? I must have lung cancer, I'm coughing! My leg hurts, is that from bone cancer?"

And so it goes, on and on, ad nauseum. To call it an obsession is too clinically optimistic. It's madness of the worst kind! Meditating or counting sheep doesn't work. My mind seizes on the most bizarre and unlikely scenarios and magnifies them to extreme proportions. Maybe my ten year window of life expectancy is really only 6 months because every cell in my body has some weird, mutant DNA replicating itself to self-imposed oblivion.

From an evolutionary perspective what the hell is cancer's purpose anyway? Aren't there enough ways for us to be selected for elimination without it? Seriously, stupid people unfit for survival do stupid shit all the time that kills them, thus selecting them and their progeny for eventual elimination, just as Darwin predicted. But wait, there's more! Enter cancer, the big C. It's a disease that ups the ante by screwing directly with the genetic material where evolutionary memory is stored. Cancer doesn't give a shit how fit, smart or adaptable you are, it just whacks you to prove that death is more evolved than life. In the realm of science I'm sure those are pretty lame deductions but I'm still adding Charles Darwin to the list of people I want to meet in the afterlife.

In an attempt to curb my madness I penned (penned? WTF? typed? Whatever!) an email to Dr. E. asking her if LGLL could have been triggered from some other cancer. Here's the content of my inquiry.

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Dr. Ellis,

I had a great conversation with your scheduler, Renee, and I am scheduled for my next OV with you on January 20 - labs at 8:45 and consult with you at 9:30. I have blood work scheduled to be done at the WFBH Lewisville clinic on October 19.

I've delivered a package of previous lab results (CBCs mostly) and the flow cytometery and PCR gene rearrangement assay to the WFBH clinic in Lewisville. I trust that these records will be scanned into the WFBH medical records system and be available to you. I know the PCR assay was a piece missing when I met with you previously so that should complete the puzzle re: the LGLL diagnosis.

Is there a way I could email the LGLL Registry forms to complete? If not, to whom should I deliver them in the H & O clinic?

One clinical question, if I may. We asked you if LGLL can metastasize and you answered with an unequivocal "No" because it's not a solid tumor. Is the converse possible? Could I have some other malignancy that infected my blood cells or bone marrow? I'm sure you know the fears of people with this disorder -" Jeez, what's this weird pain in my leg all about? What's this itching all about?" Repeat for any slight and possibly unrelated disorder, ad infinitum. I don't like surprises, especially life-threatening ones, if I can avoid them. My bucket list is pretty long and I expect to check off most if not all of the items before this LGLL gets crazy.

Thanks again for everything.

Wayne

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Time to wait some more. Wait for an appointment. Wait for the blood test results. Wait for the doctor. Wait for the diagnosis. Wait for more appointments. Wait for a response to my email. Wait for the next exciting chapter in my LGLL Odyssey!