Attitude

My odds were not very good for most of my treatment.  On one particular call with my oncologist,, my wife and I asked for treatment alternatives and were told to either spend my remaining time with my family, or consider a bone marrow biopsy.  Okay, so that was not the beat bed-side manner but did bring me to my lowest point emotionally and I decided to do as Monty Python suggested and “always look on the bright side of life.”  See, those guys were funny and inspirational!

While in the hospital my wife and kids were bringing me technical projects to work on.  My daughter and I would Facetime while she was in the basement and I could direct her to tools, equipment, books on the bookshelves, etc, for them to bring over.  Ham radio operators will understand this: I never quote learned about Smith charts but decided to study them and learn how to use them.  I also loaded up a circuit simulator and proved that well-known L/C filters worked and tweaked designs for some of my projects.  Also spent a lot of time studying crystal filters and matching networks.

Keeping busy and keeping positive were extremely important.  Yes, death was likely, but I decided to have as much fun as possible in the time I had left.  There was a lot of time to plan out partially completed projects, and order parts to finish them.  I tried not to start anything new, given how many uncompleted projects were already in the basement, garage, and back yard.

Between hospital stays I’d try to keep as busy as possible on my projects and did finish a lot of them.