I don't want to waste your time with music you don't need

I read this blurb about Patrick Swayze and how he wants to live long enough to see a cure for his pancreatic cancer.

I have turned into such a skeptic.

I don't think I ever really believed in a cure for CF even as a kid when my parents used to talk about it. It just seemed like such a moot point - I felt like they could hope all they wanted, but while I was living with this thing I wasn't about to get my hopes up. As I've gotten older and some understanding of pathology and genectics and pharmaceuticals and maybe just common sense, it is completely obvious there will be no cure.

What has been cured? I can't think of anything. Eradicated via vaccination, yes; prevented via nutrition, education, etc., yes; rendered livable via surgery, or pharmacy, yes. But cured, no. People could argue cancer has been "cured" by chemotherapy or radiation - but not really - isn't there always a constant threat of preoccurance, coming out of remission? They surely don't use the word cure to speak of cancer. So what has been cured? Nada that I can think of.

So I read of poor Patrick Swayze, so quick to wear the cloak of disability: the heroic disabled fighting through until there is a cure, and I just felt bad for the guy. It seemd so much easier knowing the cure is intanglible and unreal than to buy into the idea that there is one on the horizon. I feel like it is the wrong way to motivate. Besides, there are much smaller miracles that I can rely on amazing me everyday.

I had a recent conversation about what life could have been without CF. I used to think if I ever got three wishes from a genie (you know, like that same day they find the cure) I would first wish to have had no CF.

I'm not so sure now. I'm certinaly not all oh-I-love-my-Cf-so-much. I hate it. But I can't think of anything that has been a bigger motivating force in my life than that. Sure through pure definace and rebellion, but certainly a driving force.

I don't think my life would be much at all like the one I know now if I had not had CF. And so how can I really want to trade that in? There are parts I would of course like to eradicate, but as a whole, in the whole cosmic scheme of things I think things have worked out for me as they were meant to in much the same way the earth is just the precise distance from the sun. And I think that force has been so much more real. It was intrinsic: there was no waiting on "them" to figure it out for me. I was who I was because of Cf, not because of what life might be like without it.

I hope Patrick Swayze gets his cure and inspires thousands of cancer sufferers to have hope, but I hope they aren't fighting on for some elusive goal but rather fighting for the sake of the euphoria and the chalenge of the fight itself.