It's a Wednesday evening, and the power is out at my house because of a lightning storm. It's 10:00 pm, and I haven't had my cell phone on for the last several hours. But, because the power is out in the house, and I'm sitting in front of a candle, I decide I'll check messages.

I have a message. I dial my voice mail.

It's the oncologist, who tells me in the voice mail that my bone marrow biopsy results are back, and they indicate "a small amount" of involvement. That small amount of involvement immediately takes me to Stage IV.

This is the news I've been expecting, the news I've been waiting for. But it still hits hard--much harder than I expect. I know, in the grand scheme of things, it might not make much difference. Certainly it would make absolutely zero difference if I had been a Stage III already. But I was a Stage II, and with no bone marrow involvement, I would have been a potential candidate for local radiation therapy...which has been curative for about half of the patients treated.

With Stage IV, however, that's not an option. The disease is considered incurable (although there is some debate in the scientific community about that, but we'll get there when we get there).

I sit down, alone in the darkness (my wife is at the store, and my daughter is in bed), staring at the candle on my coffee table. Incurable. Stage IV. It sounds so very difficult and frightening. I know, in my mind, that Stage IV is more descriptive than prescriptive for this disease, but I feel like the last person who bailed off the Titanic and didn't get a seat on the lifeboat. It hurts.

Later, I'll consider how odd it is that the power is out at my house on 10:00 pm on the evening I get the staging news via voice mail. I feel dark.

But after a few minutes of staring at that burning candle, my mood begins to change. Even in this darkness, there is a light.