Remember the old joke:  “They told me to cheer up, things could be worse. So I cheered up and things got worse.”  That seems to apply to my adventures with cancer.  It seems every time I feel terrific a doctor finds something else bad.  The cheek melanoma was discovered three years ago during a routine physical I passed with flying colors and I felt great.  That was surgery number one.  With that out of the way I was once again feeling terrific so they check the prostrate and bingo!—bad news again.  But before they go after that one they decide to take a full body scan.  Feeling great is evidently no indication of the evil lurking within.  They found the esophageal cancer. After recovering from the horrific experience of chemotherapy and radiation I finally started feeling good again. Really.  Hair came back, tai chi at the Y, playing petanque Saturday mornings, riding the bike, mowing the lawn.  Life is good and once again I feel great.  Then a routine scan to check that the throat cancer crap is still gone shows a spot on my left lung that turns out to be more melanoma!   So now we are about to undergo surgery number two.  But before that I had to see yet another doctor, a cardiologist, who must attest that my heart is working well enough that I will not have a heart attack on the operating table.  The good news is that I feel great and I passed the cardiac nuclear stress test and have less than a five percent chance of expiring on the table so the cardiologist says I can have the lung surgery.  The bad new is the cardiologist says I can have the lung surgery.  Maybe if I felt really lousy these things wouldn’t happen.