What would Spock do (WWSD)?

A colleague visiting from Japan brought me a nice single malt whisky this week, which is very timely since my whisky collection took a serious and unforeseen hit a few months back. I'll tell you how it happened, since you asked. 

Have you ever wondered what you would do if you were told you might only have a few months to live?  I'll bet you think you'd hire a boat in the Caribbean and sail off into the sunset drinking vintage champagne to a soundtrack  by Hall and Oates,  toasting the good times with all your friends around you. Or possibly you're one of those people that sees themselves finally getting around to finishing Finnegan's Wake or War and Peace? Or maybe finding a quiet mountaintop and meditating on the meaning of life is more your thing? I thought along these lines until November, when my doctors first suspected cancer and I went for a biopsy of one the lumps in my neck. The long conversation with the oncologist went basically like this: 

Doctor: "Well, we're almost certain it's cancer and we've taken some samples of the tumor in your neck."

Me: "This makes me feel unhappy. How bad is it?"

Doctor:  "Well, it's either Lymphoma, which is fully treatable in about 80% of cases, or lung cancer which has metastasized to your lymphatic system, giving you, oh, about 3-6 months. We'll get back to you soonish with the results. Have a great weekend!"

The reality is that when I was actually faced with that sort of situation, I ordered out for pizza, cracked open several prized bottles of whisky and proceeded to get blindingly drunk. Channel 4 was showing an excellent string of 80's movies. Top Gun, Breakfast Club, Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. The one thing that really sticks out in my mind from that hazy weekend was the scene in Wrath of Khan where Spock saves the Enterprise but dies of radiation poisoning in the reactor room. This made captain Kirk and I very sad. I have a meeting scheduled with a radiologist this week to discuss irradiating my chest and neck with high energy x-rays and I'm wondering if Spock is trying to tell me something here.  And yes, cancer does make you a little bit crazy.