Expiration dates

Leroy Sievers of NPR's My Cancer blog is usually worth reading (and listening to, when he's feeling up to going on air). He has a horrific colon cancer that has metastasized in all sorts of vicious ways requiring all sorts of hellish interventions -- and yet, there he is working professionally and savoring life when possible personally.

I found some "difficult hope" in this recent entry he wrote after Ted Kennedy's sad diagnosis:

When a limit has been put on your life, when all of a sudden life seems more urgent, you want to know.

"How long?"

When I asked that the first time, the answer was about three months. Here I am, almost 30 months later. What's the lesson here?

I guess it's, what's most important is the living, not the preparing to die.

This can't be said enough, I guess. Sievers' prognosis (30 months and counting from three) also reminds me that prognosis is not destiny -- it's often not even tied to reality.