Ok, renamed this and bumped it so people are aware and don’t do stupid things like ask me how I get up in the morning, which yancy was a real class act dick tread.

Hello Pinside!

It’s not every day one gets the bad news of their own demise, however this past week my Doctors actually held up a mirror and pointed to a interesting birthmark that I had never noticed before… “Best if used by 3/1/2025”.

I have been diagnosed with liver cancer.

My prognosis right now is not very encouraging. The MRI and CT scans have identified 2 tumors in my liver and to keep it topical, one is about the size of a pinball and the largest is just a little smaller than the circus ball in Circus Voltaire.

Size and number of tumors places me at Stage 4 liver cancer. Which is the really bad news, even though we caught it before I exhibited any symptoms. Currently I don’t feel sick and not experiencing any outward signs.

To answer your immediate question, we found this via yearly bloodwork, and then only by the fact my white blood cell and platelet counts came back being low.

I am scheduled for a PET scan to determine metastatic issues, such as did the cancer start elsewhere and end up in liver or did it start in the liver and has it moved outside it yet?

The Surgeon said I am not a candidate for resection (removal of tumor) and not a transplant candidate until we can determine if it is isolated only to the liver, but in his experience (28 years) he was fairly sure we will find it outside the liver. In this case, that would be the “worst” scenario.

Survival rates for liver cancer are not promising, and currently only 32 out of 100 patients live past 3 years, and only 12 people out of 100 are standing at 5 years. The problem with these numbers for me are they are based on finding the cancer in stage 1, and unfortunately we found it at stage 4, so my treatment is already way behind schedule, making my chances even slimmer.

Now, I will acknowledge you sunshine and rainbow types who will point out there ARE survivors at 5 years and that possibly could be my fate, and yes, that is the slim hope I do have to cling on to, but that was not the “mood in the room” when talking with my health care professionals.

Which brings me to the Topic of my post…

Pinball Bucket List.

Do you have one? What is on it? If you were given a more brief engagement on this planet than you had casually and originally expected, which machines would you like to spend you last days playing? Are they machines that traditionally kicked your ass and you would just like a few months “mono a mono” with them? Or would they be machines that make you feel good when you kick there ass like you always could? What machines would you turn to to make your pinball life as complete as possible before you grab your coat and hat from the coat check girl and head for the exit?

Currently, my Pinball Bucket list is short, simple, and consists of a single title, and one that not too many of you would probably choose, but of all the pinball machines that I have walked past, and now, after years of walking past it to play more modern games, wish I had dropped a quarter in as much as I did every Pinbot I NEVER walked past-

Bally Centaur

I do not think a more fun ruleset has ever been hidden away waiting for you to find it and play it on a flatwood pinball machine. Given a chance to play almost any kind of pin at ZapCon this year, including all the latest Rudy this, Rush that, Godzilla-smilla, Valhalla-schmalla, and a whole lineup of more than 120+ titles ranging across almost every decade, I spent it mostly playing a ton of Centaur.

But then again I am a sucker for an add a ball ruleset. Which is why I own a Gottlieb Subway… and yes it is almost as much fun as Centaur in a “for it’s day” kind of way.

So what’s on your list?

Thanks to all who have posted. Wife said go find a Centaur... so, kinda in the market for one in Phoenix. At this juncture, a working players game with minimal lost wood and aftermarket boards in either flavor cabinet... I own a centaur b/g for the rapid-fire version. Not that I won't find one, but pinball machines seem to magically appear when I least expect one to turn up, r.e. my South Park, Central Park, Playland, and Subway all came about by luck. And I even had a NOS South Park playfield fall in my lap to go with it. So now I just wait... chances are I will answer a Craigslist ad for a "old pinball machine" and there it will sit needing new rubber and good cleaning, with the batteries removed and $3.50 still in the coin box. A man has to have a dream...

SantaEatsCheese I think I understand the reason why my list is so short... I think it comes from the habit of dropping a quarter in every machine I've ever had (or not had) the time to play for over the last 50 years. I have been to more Expos and festivals and shows, auctions, arcades, and pool halls, strip clubs and bars, bowling alleys (where it all started) as well as game rooms, basements and club houses, lodges, and vfw posts. I have played almost every Gottlieb Bally Williams game from 1965 on, and most as new titles. So the list of unplayed games is pretty short. As for your recommendations, I do everything you listed currently. I am in a league, I compete in tournaments when I can, I've been to PHOF like 6 times, Pin Expo and TPF, CAX, and took my NIB MBrLE and FG to ZapCon this year. I did my first pf swap last Xmas, and I have helped newbies buy their first machines and set them up. I have built my own Video pinball cabinet out of.an old RollerGames cabinet, I have programmed and done video recreations of titles in Visual Pinball. My pinball journey has been pretty complete. I do all my own repair work including electronics (US Navy trained technician) as well as cabinet and graphics restoration. So my pinball bucket has runneth over many times in the past. Thanks for all the thoughts and concern to all who are posting. BH

Bump for PSA announcement.

Thanks for your support. It felt a little to close to home to let it lay so I just posted a little wake tf up message for everyone, but also I let them know WHY, because frankly I’m having a hard enough time actually getting out of bed some days.

I want to thank those posting. I don’t mind hollow promises for religious plights in my favor, what harm can it do? You want to say “I’ll pray for you” and you really talk to God for me, and maybe he listens to you? Who am I to argue, especially if he does grant people their pleas offered up in good faith. If his bounty is channeled to me by others good faith, I’ll take it. As far as I am concerned, he didn’t give me the cancer, but if he could talk to Dad and get me a reprieve, I wouldn’t argue one bit.

Even though liver cancer is terminal, bad fucked up shit, the radioembolization treatment is a miracle and it kills the blood supply to the tumors, effectively starving them and causing them to shrink. When the cancer “figures” this out, it will start to grow new blood vessels and we start this dance all over again. This coupled with immunotherapy can keep the cancer “beat down”, but it does nothing to actually get rid of the underlying disease, there currently is no cure, and my tumors are so large, and my liver so severely scarred, removing enough margins to effectively physically resect the cancer takes too much remaining good liver, it sends my liver into organ death, which leads to my own eventually.

I don’t mind sharing my medical condition, why would I be ashamed of being struck by lightning? Because, be it hit by a freight train, semi truck, being thrown under a bus, or cut down with liver cancer, why should I be ashamed or feel guilty for getting dealt a bad hand in life?

The one thing, and this is the hardest part of all of this, is the guilt you feel as everyone try’s to lift all burdens from you. “Don’t get up, I’ll get it for you” starts being the phrase you hate the most, because it makes you feel like you are a lazy slob, and can’t even wipe your own ass anymore. I went through that with my father and Parkinson’s, and when you get to that stage, that’s when the guilt really piles on.

So I only ask people be respectful of my feelings, that they know so they don’t say stupid things like “how do you get up in the morning?” Which is what prompted me to expound on my condition and let people know in the first place because yancy was unaware and put his foot in his mouth. That shit hurt, and I don’t care who gets their tits in a wringer about me calling him out.

Peace. BH

I willed mine to my nephews… they now eagerly await my death like vultures… I’m joking. They have to wait till my wife dies THEN they get them. So they keep asking to work on the brakes of our car…

That said, what you going to have to unload? I may be dying but I’m a sucker for a good deal

This is being saved until the tumors stop responding to radioembolization or after the third treatment, since this is the maximum they can legally expose me to radiation for my lifetime dose, also, this treatment is hard on “good” liver tissue which I have a limited supply of, and the treatment is indiscriminate on what it kills by killing the blood supply to it. If that is tumor tissue, the tumor shrinks, if that is good liver tissue, it dies and that liver function is lost mostly forever for me, my regeneration capability in my liver, though currently stable, could be pushed into liver death by any of these treatments. One thing all cancer patients become are armchair oncologists after all the research we do on cures, treatments, and mechanics of cancer.

I don’t mind suggested forms of treatment, it may be something I have not been exposed to and need to research, or I may have been down the rabbit hole already at which point I will acknowledge and move on. For instance, I had not heard of the above and will go and do a little follow up. It can only possibly save my life, so, I guess I see the benefit?

What does start to affect you is the spectrum of condolences and apologetic sympathies that are offered up when people are made aware of your diagnosis. I don’t want anyone to think I am not grateful, or callous , or heartless, or non appreciative, but some people do not “come out” medically just to avoid the endless, or so it seams sometimes to the recipient, outpourings of sympathy. To be honest, it can make us feel unworthy of the attention, and trigger unwarranted feelings of guilt. Yes I feel guilty for having a terminal illness and that is JUST FUCKED UP.

So I have to steel myself and gird my loins sometimes but I will acknowledge all who are decent, socially adept, and courteous well wishers and anyone who wants to suggest proven medical therapies or promising experimental ones in trials to me, feel free but please respect those like PopBumperPete who may not.

What I don’t want to hear about are anecdotal instances where the cousin of your late ex father in law had a sister with liver cancer and survived for 15 years after her diagnosis by eating nothing but fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches washed down with Mr Pibb. This is an isolated, undocumented witness to someone who may have survived for 15 years because, had they done nothing differently, they would still would have got liver cancer, and had they NOT known they had liver cancer, still lived for 15 years. The sandwiches had nothing to do with it.

I am interested in scientific cures or published peer reviewed research on hepatic liver cancer and survival. Hit me up with anything not immunotherapy or radioembolization related to CURING or SURVIVING hepatic liver cancer. I know about immunotherapy and I have had radioembolization treatment.

BH

Thank you, the above was not aimed in your direction Gryszzz by the way, which is the reason I’m thanking you and all who have wished me well. That is definitely appreciated and appropriate. But I just had the “I feel guilty” talk with my mother, discussing with her that even the in-person sympathy from family makes me feel uncomfortable and the unworthiness comes from the fact that, my symptoms are mild, nearly nonexistent, so, because I am responding well, I have nothing but the mental anguish of a terminal cancer diagnosis really affecting me. I have chronic arthritis pain in both knees due to being bone on bone, but due to liver damage risk, post operative pain management is unavailable to me for elective surgeries. So my major discomfort comes not from effects of cancer, but from untreatable crippling arthritis pain when I walk. I was supposed to get knee replacements until diagnosed with massive sclerotic liver damage and subsequent hepatic cancer.

The Knee Nazi said “No knees for you!”

I have a semi-connection to a centaur 2 because my brother owns one in a storage shed, and I have a repro BG for it, but he has yet to unearth it since he fears he may have left it sit too long and what he will find will break my heart, but I kind of think it will take a miracle for it not to be roached out once he does get back to it. So no, is the short answer. Finding wedgeheads right now to fill the void, and when the wife isn’t looking, I sneak another into the storage unit. Shhhh!

Transformer we got, cabinet hopefully reworkable, pf is shot. There is a groove wore into the top arch, the center of playfield is inserts and wood, and no paint, so we need a new pf, the boards are questionable at best, mechs are serviceable. Probably looking at $2000 to get it to nice player’s condition, if a repro pf can be found. Unless there is hidden mold or rot you can’t see by just looking at outside of cabinet. He hasn’t excavated that deep yet. He’s likely going to keep it, grrr, but I can’t blame him, he got it for a song originally (less than $150 working 100% 20 plus years ago).

Hey guys, quick update on my cancer, latest MRI was not a clean one, though I got good news on a blood clot they found on last one. The clot is gone and one lession is stable, but the larger tumor has a margin edge showing signs of activity, but we are not sure if this is the cancer growing, or possibly liver tissue scarring from the radiation treatment, but either way, the tumor did not shrink or stay stable. There is a medical term for this condition, and it happens I guess more often than not in terminal cancer diagnosis.

It's called "Fucked", but it has degrees describing the severity of the condition, I will list a few here in increasing degrees of Fuckedness:

Sorta- the level where you may not be Fucked but probably are to some degree.

Kinda- the level where it is generally agreed there is some fuckery occuring, but the severity is limited and outcome is murky.

Mostly- the level where, given all scenarios and inputs, you're well on your way to being Fucked, but totality and completeness have yet to be determined.

No modifier or Plain- the level where all would agree, you are definitely "fully involved" and there is no ambiguity to your Fuckedness. You are Fucked. The severity modifiers beyond this level are mere indicators of the depth of your Fuckedness.

Really- this level is reserved for Fuckedness states that approach the highest levels of Fuckedness, but sadly fall short of the next big three:

Utterly- this is the level where, bar any outside intervention, the level of Fuckedness will continue unabated until even higher levels of Fuckedness are obtained.

Completely- the level only dreamed of by some, this is usually the pinnacle of everyday Fuckedness for most, leaving the highest levels of Fuckedness for the truly over achievers.

Totally- the penultimate level of Fuckedness. This is the last level of Fuckedness addressable by human actions. If you find yourself at this level, you would be well advised in seeking Devine intervention because all that is left is:

ABSOLUTELY- You have made it. There is no UP from here. This is as Fucked as you can possibly be. God must descend from Heaven, Jesus at his side, to change the state of Fuckedness you are in at this point. Not only are you sorta fucked, kinda fucked, and mostly fucked, you are just Plain Fucked. Like Really Fucked- to the point of being so Utterly Fucked that your only hope now is you skip over being Completely and Totally Fucked to arive back at being ABSOLUTELY FUCKED, the circular nature of which can only be broken by a higher power, usually one with mad God-like UnFuckedness skillz...

Currently I believe I'm someplace between Utterly and Absolutely, but I'm willing to learn and try harder...

as much and as often as we can.