I’ve been blessed with good health my entire life and retired in 2016 from a career in manufacturing and sales management. During my retirement, I went in a different direction and wrote two novels.
Nineteen years ago, just after I turned 60, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. I had noticed some blood in my urine, and the first doctor I talked to told me not to worry about it. Then over the next few months it got worse, and I decided to go to Fox Chase Cancer Center.
I’m 80 years old, and my wife and I live in Ambler, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. I’m a retired information scientist, but I still work as a consultant and write a regular column about information science events.
In 2017, I was having one of the best years of my life. I was about to turn 60, I’d lost weight, and I was feeling good and having a great time. Then, insurance stopped covering the medication I took for acid reflux and my stomach started hurting. I visited my family doctor to ask for something to control the reflux. I also asked for an ultrasound of my stomach and gallbladder, because two other members of my family had had emergency gallbladder surgery, so it was on my mind.
