An amazing dialog.... if you didn't see it, check your PBS listing for when it will be on again. It is not a blue sky, everything is going to be wonderful story line. It is hopeful, but does not depict the current situation in any false optimism, other than a much less than sunny gray color -that we are not currently winning the battle against the many forms of this disease, but making small bits of progress and understanding. It has moments of brutal, raw candidness. Painting the battles in brush storkes of raw emotion. I found myself with a lump in my throat through parts of it. But in the end, I am glad that I watched.

As with all those who pass through the world of these OCF forums, I was struck by the emotional courage of those in this battle. I am constantly inspired by the ennobling inner strengths exhibited, by not just those in the story, but equally by the people who have crossed my life via OCF. It is a privilege to be part of their journey regardless of its destination. The show was sobering in many respects, but worthy of your time.

If you are emotionally fragile right now, tape it for later. I am 10 years from my diagnosis, and I still carry the emotions of the early years, and I am still impacted by specters in the shadows of my routine aches and pains, which never let my mind go to anything other than think of the big C again, no matter the real cause. It is perhaps how I will always be. But the fears and the uncertainty have become so much a part of my emotional make up, that I wear them like an old familiar sweatshirt. One that perhaps I should have discarded long ago, unattractive to look at, but strangely comfortable in my acceptance of what it is, and how used I have become to its fit and feel. Perhaps this is survivorship....