Raise your glasses...

...and toast to the fact that I am now entering my 4th year in remission.

It was three years ago that I got the good news that there was no more Lymphoma in my system. That first year post-treatment was pretty scary. The second year I got nervous every time a test was due. Now, three years on, I'm starting to feel pretty confident that I kicked that whole cancer thing in the patookis. It deserved much worse, let me tell you.

Anyway, I was looking for a graph that would show how my chances of getting sick again decrease over time. Instead I found this:



Basically, what this means is that the chance that the Lymphoma will come back drops very low by the time I make it to about 7 years - but I'm already past the most common recurrence period.

The bad news is that 40% of people who get Lymphoma kick it within 25 years, usually due to secondary cancers caused by the initial cancer treatment (ironic, no?). This is why health insurance policies want 3,000 dollars a month to cover me, and why life insurance providers refuse to even give me a quote (I have tried). From their point of view, I am a ticking time bomb, ready to blow up in a blaze of medical bills and abandoned dependents.

But let's keep this all in perspective, shall we? After all, this study was done on people who got sick in the 60s. For all I know, they were injecting patients with rocket fuel back then.

For what it's worth, I feel like one of the lucky ones.

IN OTHER NEWS, tomorrow Jorge and I fly back to the U.S. for two weeks! We have a whirlwind trip planned to New York, Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, where we will see numerous friends and relatives, but have too little time to actually hold a conversation with them. We'll just whizz by and yell "Hey, you look great! Love the hair! Gotta go now!"