It’s everywhere. Once a tumor here, a lesion there,
the cancer sprawls. God, it’s like the wild west,
everywhere you look another mountain to climb.
Its nature is to grow, and you have to admire that
ambition: it wants to take over everything, it wants
to be everything. And now it’s in David’s brain.
No one expected that. How did it get there, he wants to know.
Where in his brain? In the part that makes poetry?
It would be ok in the part that remembers his childhood,
not much there anyway, or his first wife. That would be
a blessing. She’s gone, pffft. There’s cancer in his brain
and now some pain, a headache. Just a headache.
You wouldn’t think a headache could mean so much.
He says nothing to Caroline who asks, when he returns
from the oncologist’s, if he’s going to die. Never,
he replies. And then he’s sitting in the dark past midnight,
dying, the red light of his MacBook winking seductively,
as if there’s a joke he’s not getting, a coded message from god.
We’ve done some research. Fascinating stuff.
Brain metastasis of PC is more frequent
than it used to be, thanks to hormones
that keep you alive longer. Be grateful.
Brain metastases (BMs) are the most frequent intracranial neoplasms in adults. Their estimated incidence in the USA in 200,000 cases per year with 8-10% of patients developing symptomatic BMs. BMs are common during the course of various types of cancer, mainly lung and breast cancer and melanoma. Patients with BMs have a poor prognosis, and most live for only 4-6 months after diagnosis owing to the very limited survival benefit of the available treatments.
That’s from Medscape, so you can trust it.
