Cory and I have each blogged about Arijit "Poop Strong" Guha, a 31 year-old sustainability PhD student in Arizona living with metastatic colon cancer. Arijit was an interesting guy before his diagnosis, but we wrote about a couple notable things in his life after cancer became part of it: first, his righteous battle with an insurance company that tried to screw him out of covering his cancer costs, then turned around and did the right thing (or, well, as close to it as a for-profit insurance company is ever going to do). And then, there was the time Arijit wore a funny TSA-mocking t-shirt designed by Cory through a TSA checkpoint, and Delta dicked him around for flying while brown.
Today, there is news that Arijit's cancer has progressed.
From his blog post:
We don't know how much time he has, but are hoping for the most we can get; it is almost impossible to predict these sorts of things. The point isn't to count the hours, but to enjoy them. If we asked for a specific time table from the doctors, we'd just end up fixating on how little time Arijit has left, rather than how much time he has. We cannot know or control the amount of time, but we can control how we spend that time, and we refuse to waste it worrying about the unknown. We like to think that we'd live each day with the same gratitude, appreciation, and enthusiasm whether he had was six weeks or six months, so what difference would it make? There are too many things we want to do in the present to bother ourselves with an unknowable future.
Love you, Arijit, my cancer brother.
Read more: A Health Update.
They're having a sale in Arijit's Poop Strong webstore, which was created to help him cover out-of-pocket medical costs after insurance. "Everything must go, and nothing more than $10." All proceeds beyond his costs and personal medical expenses not covered by insurance go to @CCAlliance and
@CancerSupportCm.
