I can't go on. You must go on. Times when the pain is too great and all you wish is for the light to blink out Not to be asked to take one breath more When all they have in store for you is pain and more pain. When the very cells of your body bleed into one another. Anguish will not vanish. Steps forward are taken in invisible increments, too small to measure. And we cannot go on. But do. And somewhere in the howling dark, one switch is switched and then, somehow, another. And yet another. Till, finally, all the man-made monsters can measure is nothing. There is not one cancer cell that has survived. It is Thanksgiving's Eve, and Ally, almost two, has been pronounced cancer free. Nothing ever has been or ever will be larger than this. jjl 26 November 2008