What Should WilliamC Do With His (Remaining) Life? [Mod Note: R.I.P Dr. William Colley]

[WilliamC]

Ok so here it is.

I'm in a bit of a dilemma at this point in my life and have been for a while now, but it is time to move forward and at least try to do something positive with the time I have left, if only I can figure out what positive means in my situation.

I'm 48 years old and up until around 2007 was doing pretty well, or so I thought. I had a job that I loved, a wife I loved (and still do, details follow) and 3 children who are now obviously the most important thing in my life. I was working as a research scientist at a major research hospital and between the wife and I we were making close to $100,000 a year, not really that much but considering the cost of living in Mississippi not too bad either.

I really enjoy science, in fact were I independently wealthy I would have no problems working in a lab setting again for free. However the specific lab I was working in was run by an individual who turned out not to be so interested in producing honest, reproducible data. This individual happened to be married to the Chairman of the Department the lab was part of (interestingly enough she had been married to the Chairman of the Department of the previous institution she worked at as well and divorced him shortly before marrying the current husband right before she got her new position, so make of that what you will). To make a long story short I had been working for about a year and a half on a project involving a robotics platform that could do high-throughput microbiology tasks. When I was told that this would be my new 'part-time' project the first thing I did was to call around to several other labs who were using the same type robot and ask them for advice. All of them had a team of people (at least 3) who did nothing but work with the robot full time, so immediately I understood that I would have a difficult time doing this since it was supposed to be me alone and I still had other projects I was expected to work on also. Also, the institution has a department dedicated to high-throughput robotics experiments and when I went to talk to them I was told they had already been approached by my boss but she rejected them because they wanted more control over the experiments than she was willing to allow.

So anyway I was able to make the robot do some of the tasks it was supposed to do and after a while I was able to start trying to do similar experiments albeit with limited success since it was impossible to do everything myself, especially data collecting and analysis. And there was sharp disagreement between my boss and I as to how to design the experiments; I wanted to include controls that would reproduce previously published data to make sure the new data was valid but she didn't. As time went on I grew more and more frustrated since I could tell I was wasting my time and many thousands of dollars with little to show. I started shopping around the institution for a new position but despite applying for over 20 in the course of a year and going to talk with several other lab directors that went nowhere.

Finally I did manage, despite being told not to, to do two successive 'duplicate' experiments which, had they worked, should have given essentially the same results. Instead there was no overlap between the results of the two experiments which basically indicated all the data I was generating was garbage, it was in no way reproducible. When I showed these results to my boss she essentially said it wasn't my job to worry about the data, just give it to her and she would decide what was important and I was to just shut up and not tell anyone about the fact that it wasn't valid. Did I mention my boss had promised the institution that purchased the $300,000 robot that it would be a shared resource for many labs, but after 1.5 years only our lab had used it and despite my efforts I couldn't get anyone else interested in using it? Well this finally exhausted my patience and I turned in my 2 weeks notice shortly afterward and took a much lower job at a University which only paid half what I was making before.

Now this wasn't the whole of my plan, since working with the robot had convinced me that I lacked the appropriate analytical skills to properly design such experiments and interpret the data. So my idea was to take some undergraduate math classes at the University and transition into a graduate program in mathematics with the goal of getting a Masters degree. I figured it would take me 3 years or so but at the end I'd be able to apply for jobs that I wasn't currently qualified for, basically designing and developing data analysis techniques for various high-throughput biological/chemical screens.

So from mid-2007 to mid-2009 I worked as a tech in a very dull lab, only a couple of other people there and they weren't really what you would call highly motivated. Often it was me alone in the lab and there was an extreme lack of money for needed equipment and supplies. But I did take enough undergraduate math classes (free) to get me in good with the professors in the Math Department and after 2 years the funding I was being paid from ran out. This was in July 2009, and I was going to take 2 semesters of classes to finish my undergraduate requirements and start graduate school in 2010. I had saved enough money to pay for the classes and live off of, and my wife was still working full time, so while it would crimp our lifestyle we would get buy just fine.

Two weeks after I left the job and right before the beginning of classes I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Bummer. So instead of taking classes I had to go through radiation therapy and chemotherapy for a month, which knocked me from 170 to 135 lbs, and then have surgery to remove a portion of my sigmoid colon and upper rectum. This left me with a temporary illeostomy, which I had reversed with another surgery, then I had more chemotherapy. It was during this time I started trying to change my diet and take some herbal supplements, but I ran into sever resistance from my wife who thought I was being crazy and should 'just do what the doctor told me' and all my trying to eat healthy and exercise and such was too disruptive to the household routine. Also during this time I drained most of the money I had saved paying medical bills and such.

So fast-forward to May 2010, I'm done with chemo, radiation and surgeries and starting to recover and trying to adopt a super-healthy lifestyle despite the resentment from my wife. She wants me to go back to work ASAP. Note we still had and still have a decent amount of wealth in PM's that is for the children and we had no debt except the mortgage so it's not like we were impoverished, but I wasn't bringing in an income and she resented that and was undoubtedly more than a bit scared at the responsibility of being the sole breadwinner. I still wanted to finish my two semesters of undergraduate classes (I had been studying a lot during my illness and knew I could ace the classes I needed) and get into graduate school, where at least my classes would be paid for and I would make enough of a stipend to pay for my expenses. And I knew if I went back to work it would never happen.

So despite my better judgement and my wife's wishes I took out a student loan. I figured for one semesters worth of loans I could pay for all my classes. So in the Fall Semester of 2010 I start classes, but about 3 weeks into them I go in for a PET scan and find out the cancer had spread to my liver. I was now stage 4 and would need more chemotherapy and more surgery (I read the medical literature and even then my cancer was considered 'curable' if all went well). So I had to drop my classes, I was driving ~90 miles a day and could not do that and go every week to chemotherapy as well and repay the portion of the loan which had paid the University. Now I finally broke down and applied for, and got, Social Security disability, since the probability of me working again was essentially zero. In March I had surgery to remove the cancer from my liver but when they opened me up they concluded that they could not operate on my liver so I had what is called a futile surgery. Even still they had essentially removed my liver even though they didn't cut on it and it was a pretty hellish recovery. I went through more chemotherapy after that and it seemed to at least knock the cancer back to almost undetectable levels.

So about 3 months after this 3rd surgery my wife tells me I have to leave, she doesn't want me in the house anymore. So I moved to Mobile where I stayed with a friend of mine for about 5 months. I not only recovered during this time but re-started doing Bikram yoga and swimming and by October I was feeling better than I had in several years, I knew I was healthy, I was swimming a mile or more a day and doing yoga every day and was eating healthy and feeling better and better. However I had another PET/CT scan in early November and the cancer was back. My oncologist sent me to see a 'liver surgeon specialist' about having yet another surgery and he claimed he could possibly do what the previous surgeon couldn't, namely cut all the cancer out of my liver and leave enough to keep me alive. But a subsequent PET scan picked up cancer in a lymph node outside my liver so that cancelled the possibility of a surgical option and now I am no longer considered curable by the medical establishment.

However I had moved back to my home in anticipation of the surgery, but that didn't last more than a month before my wife tells me she wants a divorce and I have to get out of the house or she will take the children and leave. So in December 2011 I got a room in a house about 20 miles from my home, where I can be available whenever my wife needs me (like now, while she is out-of-town with my oldest for a few days and I'm taking care of the other two kids). I had been going to a local YMCA every day for some cardiovascular but started taking an oral chemotherapy drug in March and find that whenever I get my hear rate up now I can't catch my breath; I have enough energy for 'normal' activities but not for strenuous exercise. I'm sort of at a stalemate with my wife on the divorce issue, she want's it but isn't pushing it. I have ~$1,100 a month from SSDI, another ~$600 a month that's designated for my children, and a car with 290,000 miles on it and that's about it. My only assets are the equity in the home, $10,000 cash (from the initial SSDI backpayment) and the bulk of the PM's. To my mind these belong to my wife and children, not me, so really they aren't 'my' assets and if we do get a divorce neither the cash nor the PM's will even be mentioned in the paperwork (my wife is at least willing to keep these off record) and I will leave them with her.

SO, after this long-winded tirade, what should I do with my life? Conventional wisdom tells me I should simply stay where I am and be available as much as possible to help my wife and children and otherwise do nothing. But there is a part of me that still thinks I can actually defeat my cancer and heal myself if only I work hard and smart enough to do so. But I can't seem to do this on my own and if I want to do this it would be easier if I lived somewhere much closer to a Bikram yoga studio like I was in Mobile. I don't know how long it would take but I would very much like to essentially devote myself to health and exercise indefinitely.

So I feel caught between my self-preservation instinct and my duty to my family. If I move back to Mobile and stop taking the chemotherapy I think I can at least get myself feeling healthy again and maybe, possibly, work myself so hard that either I kill the cancer or myself doing so. But I can't do that where I'm at because I am 40 miles from the nearest Bikram yoga studio and daily Bikram yoga would be crucial to my success. I barely have enough money coming in to support myself, but if I give up everything else except rent and food and exercise I might be able to pull it off. But if I let my wife divorce me who knows what $#@! the court will decide, my wife thinks I'm crazy for thinking that the court system would be 'out to get me' but she is clueless on this. Oh, I do have ~$6,000 of unpaid medical bills but they can go to hell as I have no assets they can seize nor income they can garnish, if I ever do get more income I'll settle with them; they've already been paid on by insurance anyway.

So should I stay where I am and just get by until I am no longer able to live independently, at which point I'll take care of things on my own (no lingering death in a hospice for me) or should I move to Mobile (my hometown where my 85 year old father and what few friends I have live) and try to save myself at the expense of being available to help my wife and children? I could try to drive the 80 plus miles a day to Memphis for yoga but at 290,000 miles I don't know how much my car can take.

Seems most everyone else who gets cancer has some sort of support mechanism to help them, all I've got is me. What should WilliamC do?