I'm just a little freaked

Leroy Sievers died over the weekend. You probably haven't heard of him unless you listen to NPR every morning like I do. I haven't heard his voice in a long time. His commentaries were about his cancer and its progression. He also blogged almost daily about his cancer. In fact, now that I think about him, it seems I haven't heard him since before I found out I had cancer. I think I would have paid more attention to his commentaries. Or maybe I didn't know what type of cancer he had.

Nowadays, I always want to know--when I read an obit that says the person died of "cancer"--I want to know exactly what type of cancer killed them. That's far more relevant to me than it was before...

So I looked up Leroy to find out what kind of cancer he had. Turns out he died of cancer in the brain and lung. But guess where it started?

His colon.

He had a "routine colonoscopy" (sound familiar?) and the doctors found cancer. They treated it, and he was cancer-free for four and a half years. Then they discovered cancer in his brain. And two years later he's dead. He was 53.

This scares me.