This is long, so it's two messages, this being the first.

Howdy. I'm Bart, a married male. I'm 75 today, May 10th. I'm here to offer support from a "BTDT, got the shirt" fellow (and incurable) patient.

On Monday, I go in for a CT with contrast to see how the effective the radiation to the metastatic tumors in my liver (my 4th distant Metastases) and a lymph node between the liver and my stomach (5th distant metastasis) has been. You probably know what the significance of those distant metastases is, but just so you know, that puts one in Stage IVc with a 5-year survival (from the diagnosis of any distant metastases) rate of Zero.

For what it's worth, this was not fun, but compared to getting gut-shot (I took two .32 rounds to the gut in 11/67 up in Pleiku, RVN) it was a walk in the park. One of those rounds cut my Iliac artery and I bled-out at the scene. They gave me 18 pints of whole blood and the doctor who admitted me from Triage said that there was no way to have survived that as rigor-mortis should have been LEAVING my body before he got to me!

The other round entered about 1.5" above my naval and hit my spine dead on before it ricocheted around and embedded itself in the back of L3. That bullet took out the nerve-ends of the nerves that control the muscles in the right hip, which now provides no help in balancing and I cannot rotate the hip to the outside.

A third round went directly through my right sciatic nerve and my right leg, and I have no control over any of the muscles below my right knee. My right foot simply terminates my leg, I have no control of it.