A reader’s email:

Five hours!  Few of us healthy folks do that … at least not often enough! As we learned in desert survival school, if something CAN grow, something WILL. And that is the history of our planet.  More things grow than die.  In the midst of cancer treatment, it’s a tonic to know that.

So glad you got out amongst the living!   When you’re living “in the valley of the shadow of death”, you need to bask in the light whenever possible.

I might quibble with the assertion that “more things live than die.”  After all, every living thing dies, and 99% of all species that have ever arisen have gone extinct.  And even if the reader’s assertion were true, while such a rule would apply to “me” (the original “me,” that is) and my new stem cells, it would also apply to my cancer with equal force.  Cancer is life too, and it is struggling to live, just the same as the “me” that does not include the cancer—a majority of “me,” the original “me,” the un-mutated “me,” but not quite all of me.

But the central message of the email is clear:  I have reason for hope.  And despite my usually squinty-eyed, suspicious, sardonic predilection, I agree.  And I am glad to be among the living.