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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – When I was 55 years old I was diagnosed with chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis, a rare and terminal blood cancer. My doctor explained, “It’s a disease that attacks the body in any number of insidious ways that are impossible to predict before it kills you. You probably have three to five years to live.” He then gave my wife and me a partial list of the “insidious ways.” As for the doctor’s prognosis, I’m now 67 years old, a stubborn sort who’s gained great satisfaction from messing up medical mortality statistics.
My wife and I understood that cancer affects not only the patient. Rather, like a rock splashed into a still pool, it causes ripples, displacing the calm waters and disturbing whatever is in its expanding path. So, we made clear to my daughters that they were free to ask my doctor any questions. They did, never receiving the answers for which they’d hoped.
Ten years into my diagnosis, one of my daughters was a vice president and chief legal counsel for a company that, for a fee, performed genetic testing for any member of the general public. She understood the danger I was in. She had witnessed me suffer numerous wretched symptoms. She knew that inexorably my disease was progressing.
She decided that maybe one person could make a difference, and fight this beast that was afflicting her father and tens of thousands of others. She convinced the owner of the company to create an initiative to allow her to enlist, for free, 1,000 patients with my category of blood cancers, to secure their DNA, and to enlist world-class researches who would donate their skills in an effort to try to find treatments and cures. After a year to put this project together, she publicly announced its launch. Will it succeed? If it does, will I be here to benefit from the research? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I will take with me into eternity that, motivated purely by love of her father, she’s tried. Her love is like a stone carefully dropped into a still pool, not to cause disruptive waves, but to generate gentle ones, intended to bring comfort to all in its path. I am a man well blessed.
Author’s bio:
Harvey Gould is a former trial lawyer who splits his time between San Francisco and Sonoma County with his wife, Karen. Gould’s memoir, A Fierce Local, chronicles 20 years of Irish adventures and his subsequent battle with a rare blood cancer, which would take him further than he ever imagined into Irish culture—to the wing of a Limerick hospital and a full-blown transfusion of Irish blood. Still fighting his disease 12 years later, Gould continues to fight cancer head-on with unwavering endurance, humor and positivity. For more information, visit www.harveygould.com or Gould’s blog at www.harveygould.authorsxpress.com.
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