David Foster was diagnosed with Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma in April 2005. Translation: stage four kidney cancer and the sixth deadliest form of cancer. Not a great disease to acquire. Also not the end of the world. Just ask David who is busy working as a National Strategic Advisor in Augusta, Georgia, headlining within the independent magazine community, hanging out with dog Gracie, and documenting his journey in a blog he calls David Foster's Kicking Kidney Cancer's Arse.

He's no wimp, this guy. Just read his June 23 post, titled May kill me, but it ain't gonna beat me. He didn't let that hard-nosed kid Jerry whip him when he was eight -- he smacked him so hard in the lunchroom, Jerry was left stumbling and bleeding -- and he won't let cancer bully him either. Still, David admits: he is sick. He explains it all in a post he calls Mr. Foster, are you really sick?

David got an e-mail one day. It read, Mr. Foster, are you really sick? I read your blog and you don't sound sick.

Regardless of how he sounds or feels, David tells readers that he truly is sick. How does he know? There's the pills -- Sutent, steroids, dilantin, nausea medication -- and the nausea, the dry heaves, the sick feeling that comes just before he goes for a MRI or CT scan, when the uncertainty about his life bubbles to the top. Yes, David Foster is sick. But he's also very much alive. And at this very moment, sickness does not plague him.

This place David inhabits -- one of his cancer friends calls it a place of sickness without illness -- is hard to handle. It's nice, to not always feel sick. Yet it's mentally taxing, to know a life-threatening disease consumes him. With a bit of balance, though, David works it out in his mind by embracing a warrior's attitude and borrowing from the wisdom of other cancer soldiers. Another cancer friend once told him: "A mayfly only lives a day. I bet he makes it a good one."

Call it a hunch, Mr. Foster, but I bet you make every one of your days a good one.