On the Road to Room Temperature
If the nurse takes your temperature at the doctor’s office and it’s the same as the room temperature, you might be dead.
My name is George Gould. I am a 62-year-old husband, father, retired naval officer, and Army infantry veteran of Vietnam. In case you haven’t figured it out yet (from the preceding), I am supposedly dying.
On July 23, 2010, I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, a particularly aggressive form of cancer with a 3% five-year survival rate for those in Stage 4 (metastases to other organs – in my case, the liver and possibly the lungs). The median survival time after diagnosis is 7 months. I have made it 22 months as of writing this page. Unfortunately, the odds are working against me.
Nobody knows exactly when they’re going to die – certainly not I. That is way beyond my pay grade. I can, however, be reasonably certain that I will die at some time in the next year or two.
