A Reprieve of Sorts

In the old movies, the cop would come up to the prisoner standing behind the bars. "Its your lucky day Lefty. The governor has given you a reprieve." The prisoner, usually a James Cagney ripoff would look at him and make a cynical remark about how he would "rather die than live in this dump."

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as the delay of punishment or to give relief for a time. Good old Merriam telling us it is for a time or it is a delay. That is a key element, the time period. It sort of tells you the sword of Damocles is still hanging by a thread or horse hair to be more exact. Life seems good until you look up and notice the sword hanging by the horse hair thread and like Damocles you want to return to the safer former life.

The doctor saw my love and she asked what the process was to be. "Well he said the tumor has shrunk dramatically and that I am walking without much pain. I told him I still got pain when I stood for a long time and he said he did too. So I asked him what we were going to do once the chemo stopped in a few weeks? Would we move on to surgery then radiation and hormone therapy? He said that he wanted to continue the chemo cycles until we complete eight cycles. That would be in February. He said we would probably start hormone therapy and be on it for about five years. He took surgery off the table and said we wouldn't need it."

Did you catch that? The doctor took surgery off the table, said hormone therapy for five years but did not mention radiation. Perhaps I am reading things in to it about the radiation, perhaps not. Anyway it is a reprieve of sorts. Now if we could just get rid of that sword.