My sister Janet has colon cancer!

Well, I had intended to come home from our Easter sunrise service on the beach this morning and write on my blog about the service. Then I figured that I'd offer a medical update after my second chemo treatment this coming Tuesday.

That's all just been bumped off the front page by late-breaking news. My brother Roy Lee and my mother called me on our mobile phone as we were on the way home from the sunrise service to give me the results of the precautionary colonoscopy Janet decided to get, after my recent diagnosis of colon cancer. She said she and my other sister Andrea were both going to do it and I figured that was fine, probably not a bad idea, but just never gave it a second thought. We have NO family history of colon cancer, and the doctors all agree that family history is the primary predictor. The fact that I have it doesn't make her any more genetically susceptible than anyone in the general population, because our genetic predecessors never had it.

Yet, shockingly, they found a 3cm malignant tumor in her colon. They removed it along with a foot of the colon, and they think they got it all. She should recover fully with no need for follow-up chemo or anything like that. Her doctor told her that her brother saved her life. I'm too astonished for words.

I'm just stunned that she could have it, too, at the same time as me, and I'm stunned at the providential nature of the discovery.

My entire family now, parents, siblings, even cousins are rushing out to get colonoscopies.

I saw a cute poster once that started out quoting a famous poem that said: "If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs..." Then at the bottom of the poster it offered a different conclusion from that of the original poem. The poster finished the sentence: "...then you obviously don't understand the situation."

Man, when we live our daily life as if it's not precious and fragile, we're obviously not paying attention.