Law school

While I'm glad to now be enrolled in the clinical trial in Boston, the periodic travel there and side effects from the new medication will derail, for now, my longtime goal to go to law school. I had been planning to join the incoming class at Georgetown Law School in the fall in a part-time program that I hoped would be compatible with continued medical treatment, but I have now requested deferment of my enrollment to Fall 2017.

I realize this all seems a bit unrealistic. Given my medical reality, it’s fair to ask how I could expect to embark on a four-year academic program that leads, one would hope, to at least a few lawyer years afterward. A clear-eyed evaluation of my odds of doing all that would be grim.

But there's always the chance that things will turn around.  For instance, there's the one-in-a-million case: a cancer patient catches an unusual infection and has an extremely unusual immune response that tackles the cancer as well as the infection. That kind of thing requires an Act of God, when the good Lord looks down on His creation and selects from among His humble servants one who is worthy of such extraordinary grace. Clearly I’ll never make that cut.  But perhaps, as He surveys the state of His creation, He will figure that the humble servant may one day need a good lawyer and bring me along as well.

It is somewhat more likely that one of the great minds behind my clinical trials and cutting-edge treatments will strike on a particular combination of drugs that accomplish the same thing, or that a novel application of existing therapies will keep me going long enough until something else comes along. Or maybe, for whatever reason, I'll just keep going.

So just as it's prudent to get the estate plans in order and make clear my views on what's politely called final arrangements, it's also OK to dream a little. It's now July. I shall spend the next three months watching the Nats and Royals march on to the World Series, and after Game 7 is decided in an extra-inning walk-off, I shall turn my attention to preparatory reading about the law -- lawyers defending the downtrodden, bad lawyers going to jail, good lawyers redeeming the reputation of the profession so that it is once again a respected way to make a living. Well, as noted, it's OK to dream.