Two of the major risk factors for esophageal cancer are excessive smoking and drinking alcohol.  Both the Mayo Clinic and the American Cancer Society web sites say the exact cause is not known but those are right up there as big time risk factors.  How do I know?  Google has made researchers of us all.  You can consider this my confessional blog.  I began smoking at 16 and when I quit in 1983 I had reached five packs a day. (Yes, five.)  I have not smoked a cigarette in 29 years.  Drinking alcohol is a different story.  I spent 33 years in the sales and marketing business when the "three martini lunch" was, in fact, the way business was done.  Twelve of those years were in Europe where wine at lunch and dinner was considered normal nutrition.  I still think a dinner without preliminary cocktails is barbarian.  Alcohol was an integral part of my lifestyle.  So I guess we could say: "Live by the life style, die by the lifestyle."  At this point I am not really concerned with what caused my cancer or why I got it.  Remorse does not seem to serve any useful purpose. When I was enjoying my "singing in the tavern days," the last thing in my mind was esophageal cancer that might hit me 50 years down the road.  I am reminded of one of my favorite verses from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

The moving finger writes, and having writ

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it

But that addresses the past.  What about tomorrow?  Omar also wrote:

I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,

Awake, my Little ones, and fill the cup

Before Life's liquor in its Cup runs dry

I don't think it's dry yet.