Do Something!

I was a philosophy major (among other things) in college, and I went to school at a time when pretty much everyone was convinced we were all going to die in a nuclear war -- nuclear war or cancer, set aside the issue of scale and it might actually be a debate -- so I wound up taking a lot of game theory and "strategizing your way through potential nuclear annihilation" classes.

Don't let anyone ever tell you a college education isn't useful. 

Anyway, I had this prof once who likened the subject at hand -- nuclear war? terrorism? doesn't really matter -- to a kid's soccer game. The prof apparently had small kids and so spent a fair amount of the weekends watching the kids play soccer, and, more important, watching the parents watching the kids. Apparently, at one point as he was watching, Team A got the ball and start running toward Team B's goal, with Team B largely trailing behind. What struck him was when the Team B parents began shouting at their kids to "Do something!" to prevent the inevitable goal from being scored. 

Far less clear was what the parents envisioned their kids actually doing. With Team B trailing behind Team A, and Team A sprinting for the goal, what, exactly, did the parents think their kids could do to stop Team A? The time for countermeasures had passed, and at this point all everyone could do was pretty much watch and wait to see what happened. Which, of course, for this prof became a metaphor for all the various situations we find ourselves in when someone's, literally or metaphorically, shouting "Do something!" at exactly the time when there's essentially nothing to be done.

I've gotta admit: that's how the cancer is feeling these days. I'll find out Thursday what the tumors are doing, but I expect a somewhat incoherent outcome. Not definitively bad, but not definitively good either. And at the same time, I'm not sure how much longer I can take the status quo. The treatment is laying waste to me. I'm constantly tired, everything hurts, and pretty much every countermeasure I'm given for those effects is, quite frankly, a joke. 

Hard to figure out what to do in those circumstances, even when a lot of folks seem to think I should do something. Or rather, Do Something!