Sent: Friday, October 22, 1999 2:02 AM
Subject: T=0. special spewing from my mind.

This started out as a concise message to a particular question from one of 
you.  The second paragraph, copied below, just started coming and kept on 
going.  You may find it interesting.  No jokes, trivia, or obscure 
references.  Read at your own risk.

I am doing amazingly well.  I don't know if you read everything I have put 
out.  No ill efffects at all after both massive chemo and radiation.  I am 
really have a spiritual and intellectual rebirth.  I view this as having 
successfully conquered one potentially fatal peak, with several independent 
and also potentially peaks still to go.  You should certainly relate to that 
analogy.  I may not make it across the whole range, but I take as a real gift 
right now that I have achieved the first peak, and its wonderful view.  Maybe 
the low level dna, the stuff they don't or can't check out, will maim or kill 
me, maybe some infection will get me, maybe the pneumonia, maybe my kidneys 
or liver will drop dead, maybe things will get me that I don't even know 
about yet.  But this experience has opened my mind up to the joys and wonders 
of every second of life, a gift that should not be denied.  I bet that I had 
more fun, and real joy, this week than you have had.  This is not bullshit.  
I am completely focussed on the here and now.  My future is obviously 
potentially limited, and I have accepted that.  What I didn't know before 
this leukemia is that so is everyone else's, but I, like almost everyone 
else, doesn't consider this and pretends it isn't so.  Too much day to day 
priorities, etc.  I could outlive a lot of people that are getting this email 
from me every day or so, and, even if I don't, I may enjoy whatever unknown 
amount of time that I have left more than they will with their freedom, 
worries, and everything else that modern life has imposed on them.  Actually 
this leukemia has finally gotten it into my head that all that bullshit is 
not imposed from the outside.  I was into that as much as most people.  But 
when I got sick, those priorities and issues simply disssolved, poof, no 
more.  They were of no importance to me.  My view is that no matter how long 
I have, be it days or 30 years, I am still way ahead of where I was before I 
got sick.