Bad and good

But fortunately the good here outweighs the bad.

First, the bad: driving home after office hours (this is my one short day and also I have piano lesson and I need to clean my house up a little too) I saw this blinding pickup truck. At first I thought it had giant, reflective chrome bars mounted on the grille and the top of the cab. It was painful to look at and blinding. As I got closer, I realized that it WASN'T chrome; it was panels of extremely bright lights (halogen, I'm guessing) mounted on the darn thing.

WHY? It made it hard to see. It was painful and eye watering. Surely it doesn't make it safer for the driver to blind everyone else? I get the "look at me" instinct but this just made the thing a hazard. I'd hate to see it at night; I'd be blinded for seeing anything else on the road.

I would hope if that truck got in an accident, the cops would ticket the driver for being a hazard on the road.

But then I got the mail, and some much happier news.

For years, my parents went to a particular allergist in town. Eventually, she had to retire - she developed a form of leukemia (ALL). At first, she tried chemo, and then finally had a bone-marrow transplant. That looked like it took care of it, but then she had a relapse.

Apparently chemo didn't seem to work after that, so she went into an experimental T-cell program (essentially: teaching her immune system to reject the cancer). Normally it is just children that got into this program but she got in because they wanted to see how an adult did.

They briefly described the side effects and they were pretty awful but once they subsided, she started getting better....apparently the treatment took and she is currently in remission. (No ides how long this one will last, but that's part of the study).

I remember her as a very kind person and someone of deep faith, and that may have helped her in this.

Anyway, she was quoted in the article my mom sent me as saying something like, "Even if the treatment didn't work for me, I figured they'd be able to learn something from my experience and help someone else." And yeah. I totally understand that - if I had some disease or condition that was likely to be fatal, and a researcher came to me and said, "We can try this experimental thing, it might work, it might not" my reaction would be similar - "If I die, at least my dying will teach them something that might help someone in the future."

But I'm glad it seems to have worked for her. They were having a party for her at her (former) practice to celebrate her remission.

Hopefully, someday cancer will be kind of like strep throat is now - an annoyance that is treatable with medication but very rarely fatal.