Yeah......I know. I really came close. I was messed up pretty bad. It's a miracle that I came out of it with as few side effects as I did. Those doctors at Mass General and Mass Eye & Ear Infirmiry- Barker and Mckenna - are top notch. I'm quite sure I wouldn't have done as well without them.
  You know, when people say, " you're lucky" or, "It could have been worse", they're so right. I know it seems very glib and trite, but it's also very true at the same time. If ANs were cancerous, most of us wouldn't even be here right now. Those of us who were left would be on their way out. It would only be a matter of time - and not long at that.
  I was watching the movie "Gettysburg" recently, after having recently visited the battlefield last month in Pennsylvania. One of the leading actors in the film, Richard Jordan, put in a great performance as a Confederate officer that is mortally wounded at the end of the battle. As I watched the credits roll by, I was amazed to see that the film had been dedicated to him, indicating that he had died before the film was completely finished. I did a little searching on the net and found that he indeed had died during the production - considered by many to have been his greatest performance on film - at 55 of a brain tumor. I was stunned. That meant his performance, as great as it turned out to be , was given under the duress of being mortally ill. I sometimes wonder if the great emotion he summoned up during his scenes was born out of the consciousness of what he was enduring in real life.
  George Harrison of "Beatle" fame died from it as well. In fact, I learned recently of a gifted, young neurosurgeon in his forties that practiced at Lowell General Hospital in Massachusetts who died from brain cancer. I heard that he was married and the father of 4 young boys. I was told this by an off-duty O.R. nurse that I met who works at Lowell General. After I told her about what I had gone through she told me about him. When this stuff is cancerous it very rarely, if ever, takes prisoners. Evidently, NOTHING is sacred.
In this sense, we truly are fortunate.
   Paul
