Well, to me it seems like a set back.

The taste of rust is now there all the time, not front and center, mind you, but lurking back there ready to pop out and tell me I am being far too optimistic.

I have a pneumonia, a bad one, that has taken up residence in my left lung.

The way it was explained to me was is that there is this mass situated above scar tissue from one or more of my previous bouts and that it has to be treated with precision which is why they are feeding a combination of three AB aimed directly at the area in question.

The rust taste tells me that the blood is still there, not it in the quantity it was when I first came in, but it's still there.

My fever is gone, my appetite is returning and yet the blood is still streaking almost every tissue.

Now is the desperate time. The blood has to abate or I am not going home anytime soon.

The mishaps and funny stories, well I though they were funny when they were happening, are turning mundane and threaten to sap what any optimism I may still have in reserve.

They tell me this is important but it is hard to read these canny health professionals as they hide behind the safety of the surgical mask.

I keep up the banter, the jokes that they have come to expect from me but what was once plucky determination at 40 is turning into grimly hoping to survive until the promises of new technology in the field of lung transplant is realized.

Don't get me wrong. I still think I will live a long but compromised life and that I probably will never sing at carnegie hall. But this evolution of hope is turning me inward, making me more reflective something I have not been. I went for the cheap laugh, the rubber chicken, if you will.

Now I still want to make you laugh but perhaps I can make someone think about life in a different way. Even if it only for a moment. Empathy is the most powerful emotion and if you can make me understand your plight and i can share mine, perhaps we will grow closer and maybe just discover that we are not alone in all of this, that there is a connection buzzing about that makes us all part of something greater than the sum of the parts.