Short, sweet and to the point since I have to type by the hunt and peck method. They have my fingers occupied with monitors and 2 IVs in the top of the hands.

I am doing GREAT. MDA is doing a tremendous job of managing my pain, starting before surgery even. The anesthetic is wearing off though, so they told me to expect tomorrow to be tougher. That sounds like a challenge to me. The nerve block to the ribs should wear off in 3-4 days. Between the rib spreader and the cut rib, I expect to feel like I've been rolled by a rodeo bull. Hmmm. That may be my cover story.

Good night all. Keep the funny, irreverent stuff coming. You guys are cracking me up It helps the lungs and the attitude! Finally, sleep well tonightl knowing your prayers for a great surgery were answered. You guys are THE BEST! 

All of Round 1 dealing with The Little Bastard felt like a mission. First, let's gather some intel. Now, we'll go find the big guns (MD Anderson) and draw up our battle plans. Radiation and chemo? Done. Excellent. Now let's do the surgery, which was my favorite part. If felt GOOD to go in and get The Little Bastard. Ha! Take that, you son of a bitch. Then the follow up chemo. I called that "mopping up." Let the chemo roam all over the body looking for it's victim(s). Hello, little cancer cells. You look like you're a long way from home. How about I buy you a drink? Bottoms up! (Ooh, no pun intended, but that was an inadvertent good one!) Finally, I moved into just monitoring the situation every 6 months. Mission accomplished! Ah, the new normal.

Just like George W. Bush, I hung my "Mission Accomplished!" banner too soon, and alas, 6 months after finishing chemo, Spot showed up. My new normal came to a screeching halt. To be honest, I was expecting this all along. Just maybe not quite this soon. If you go back and read "The Good, Bad, and the Ugly," you'll see that I tried to communicate that the pathology wasn't very encouraging. The report said TLB had wanderlust. And indeed, he wandered. So here we are; Round 2. Shit.

For Round 2, I have much the same attitude that you saw in Round 1. I still feel good. I'm still running. I still don't look like there's a damn thing wrong with me. And as I've assured you all before, I'm still not given to worrying much, thank God. Literally. But there's something different this time; an undercurrent. I feel like I'm going on just like before, but just out of view, and only audible if it's completely quiet, is this:

Part of me will go very willingly into the OR tomorrow morning, but part of me will be kicking and screaming on the floor of my brain and having a class A temper tantrum. I don't want to do this. I don't want them to crack my chest wide open, I don't want them to whack at my lungs. I don't want my husband to be worried, our daughters to wonder what this means, my family and friends to be pulling double duty and all parties trying desperately to keep it all together. I don't want to be facing cancer again! God damn it. I. Don't. Wanna.

 This sucks, God. I'm mad as hell. I'm mad that I was motoring along, minding my own damn business and it all came to a screeching halt just because I felt a little constipated one day. I'm mad I had no other warning signs. I'm mad I spent a good portion of my life morbidly obese and that's when the seeds of this were most likely sown. I'm mad I lived 50 years not appreciating I had it so %&*#$ good. I'm mad that when I finally felt like I was getting my life together, it all fell apart. And on top of that God? I'm scared. The little girl in my brain having that temper tantrum is really scared.

So, I took my pre-surgery tests today. Good news there. I have great lungs, so I hope to have enough left to run again when this is all over. After I was done with the lung check, anesthesiology, an EKG, and some blood-work, I walked by the little chapel in the hospital. I go every time I'm at MD Anderson. So, I went in, kneeled down, and talked to God a little while, then I exchanged a "Peace be with you" with a fellow Catholic kneeling in another pew and was heading for the exit. That's when the automatic doors opened and an entire team of nurses and assistants rolled in with a man in a bed, attached to more IVs & machines than I've ever seen mobile before. One of the machines helped him breathe if he initiated a breath. That HE had to initiate it first was obvious by the irregularity of his very audible, ragged breaths. Following all of this commotion into the room was the man's wife, in heart-breaking distress. At this point, I was still in the room and felt like I couldn't, nor shouldn't, walk out. I couldn't walk out on my fellow patient, obviously so very close to death. I couldn't walk out on my fellow supplicant with whom I'd shared the wish of peace. I couldn't walk out on the team that had dropped everything to bring this dying man and his wife to a place that wasn't a hospital room. And I couldn't walk out on the wife, who was with her husband and his team, yet was also so fundamentally alone. So I stayed. And we all cried.

Afterwards, I went back to my room. After a bit, I changed into my running clothes and went for a run. I learned long ago to switch from saying "I have to go for a run." to "I GET to go for a run." To be able to run is a privilege not to be taken lightly. And today, I didn't take it lightly at all. What a blessing. Despite everything, I am so blessed to be able to lace on a pair of shoes and RUN. There are so many for whom this is impossible. And like always, running triggered the reset switch in my brain. And instead of being mad at God, I am back to being grateful to God. I am at the best place in the world, under the care of an amazingly skilled team, with incredible health in spite of my cancer, with my husband and Mom on their way to Houston to be with me. At home, I have an incredible network of family and friends taking care of each other and all that needs to be done, all the while praying their hearts out for me. It is all humbling and awe-inspiring. And it makes me cry in the very best way. So, the tantrum has subsided and been replaced by a much better feeling of love and peace.

I'll see you soon. And in keeping with the theme of today, Peace be with you, my dearest family and friends. Peace be with you.

He made it sound so simple. So straightforward. So easy. It's growing, he said. In fact, it's doubled in size, so we need to do something about it. I would recommend we surgically remove it. Pull the weed by the roots from the garden. We could irradiate it, or ablate it (with heat or cold), try more chemo, but none of those gives 100% control. With surgery, we get it all. We could go minimally invasive, but I'd have to remove lung by anatomic sections instead of by feel and you'll lose more. You're a runner, so we want to preserve as much lung tissue as possible. So, I'd recommend we do a wedge resection via thoracotomy. I'll cut under your arm up to your shoulder blade, through a rib and the muscles and move everything aside. From there, imagine a pea inside a basketball. I'll make a wedge shaped cut down to the tumor and remove it. Then, I'll feel the rest of your right lung. Even though the CT shows only the one nodule,I'll be able to assess the middle and lower lobes too and address any areas of concern. Any questions?

Nope. Seems pretty straight forward Doc. Questions? Questions I know the answer to, I don't really need to ask, right? I used to say that phrase in a very flip manner, mostly in regards to situations where I've heard it said it's better to ask forgiveness than permission, as in, "Are we allowed to do that?" "Questions I know the answer to, I don't really need to ask." Wink, wink. Well, I wasn't feeling quite so flip this time, but the principle still held. I knew the answers. Is it going to hurt, I wanted to ask? Yep. Will it show up again? Maybe. Maybe not. We don't know. Will everything be OK? Will anything ever be the same? Can I rewind 2 years and get a do-over?

I'm scheduled for surgery on Friday, Sept. 16 down at MD Anderson. My surgeon is Dr Wayne Hofstetter. He's Deputy Chair of the Dept. of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery, so he has some pretty impressive credentials. He's about my age and wants to own a ranch someday. We'll have to invite him for a visit. Maybe I'll bring him a Downey Ranch hat. In any event, we sat there the other day together going over all of this and he took out a little purple marker and proceeded to graffiti me. On my ribs under my right arm, he wrote,

Those are his initials, and the "yes" indicates this is the correct location. Wouldn't want to start whacking at the wrong lung. He gave me the marker, because as I shower, or work up a good running sweat, I'll need to redraw it periodically. Hmmm. I have the marker. Maybe I should take this unique opportunity to write some other message. I've thought about drawing a zipper where they'll be cutting. I've thought about writing "Boston Marathon Runner." "Good luck!" crossed my mind, but didn't seem quite right. "Measure twice, cut once." sounds a little too Bob Vila. Actually, a treasure map just occurred to me. I may have to get some more markers.

Maybe we'll make this another contest. Although, after the "Save the Anus" debacle, I'm more than a little worried about what you all will come up with. But what the heck. Here goes nothing. Put your suggestions in the comments section below and we'll have a few laughs. Of course, I'll be already under by the time our artistic endeavors are revealed to the prep team, but if we're really creative, I should hear about it afterwards. Have fun with this, folks - nothing's sacred. We could all use the laughs!