Shitty week

This has been an absolutely terrible week. It seemed as if it would be great. Wrestlemania 23 saw the defeat of Batista by the Undertaker; this will be Taker's 5th reign with a WWE championship, 4 with the WWE Championship and now his first run with the World Heavyweight Championship. All seemed pretty well.

Then I find out that a good friend of many years is now dying. He's fought lung cancer as well as a tumor under his shoulder blade (most of which was removed) for nearly two years now. He was winning the fight. The spots on his lungs were going away and some had been surgically removed, the tumor was removed successfully and he was in rehab to basically relearn how to use his arm.

Now, I find that the cancer has moved to his heart. I didn't even fucking know there was such a thing as heart cancer. It's apparently extremely rare, and in even those cases it is rare for it to be malignant. Your heart cells rarely divide, if ever, which is why the heart is not as susceptible to cancer. Talk about all of the stupid fucking luck. He beat the hell out of the tough cancer, then the rarest of the rare comes back to claim him. The hospital just sent him home; there's nothing they can do now.

I'm 31 and my friend is several years my junior. He never smoked, but likely got lung cancer from second hand smoke in the clubs where he played saxophone and piano/keyboard. The world is about to lose one of the greatest people who ever walked on it. There is no bright side to this, no silver lining, no "happening for a reason"; it is an untimely end to a wonderful person.

I don't believe in god, not one solid bit. No god would put someone they loved through this. You can't rationalize this, justify it, nothing. Things don't happen for some divine reason. We've come a long way in the battle against cancer, but obviously there is more which needs to be done. I'm still coming to terms with this. I remember the days we played in a saxophone quartet together, the jokes we played, the many times we went to the local TGI Friday's for dinner, all of the great times we all had. This is like losing a brother and I honestly don't know how to deal with it.

To top things off, my wife's uncle died at 59 and her friend' brother, who has cystic fibrosis, is dying, likely within the next day or so. I'm obviously not close to those people, but I can only imagine what everyone is going through.

Please, support cancer research and stem cell research. Put religious superstition aside and support the fight against these diseases. One day it could be someone you care about, or it could be you.