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The scans were clean. For the first time in almost six years, I seem to be cancer-free.

I was first diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma — bile-duct cancer — in the fall of 2015. The cancer manifested itself with a tumor in my liver. The only sure treatment was to remove the tumor, but mine was inoperable because it had encased the hepatic artery. The doctor who gave me the news was very professional. “How long do I have?� I asked. He said there was no way to give an accurate dateline for an individual. “What if I were 100 people?� I asked. He considered it for a moment. Eleven months, he said. That seemed awfully precise and begged for a snappy rejoinder, but I merely nodded. My wits weren’t all together at the time.

Our daughter lives in St. Louis, but our son, who now lives in Texas, was then living in Arizona. Mary and I drove to Tucson to talk with him. Then we went to Phoenix to see some old friends, and then we continued north through Santa Fe and Taos. In the high desert of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, Mary said, wishfully, that what we needed was a flying saucer to land and one of its doctors could then cure me with a wave of a wand.

That was one of the nicest moments of my life.

Back home, the doctors took out my gall bladder and inserted a pump that would inject chemicals directly into the tumor. Perhaps that would shrink the tumor away from the artery. Before that could happen, I developed internal bleeding. The pump was removed.

I wrote about some of this, and people were very, very kind. Religious men and women of several faiths told me they were praying for me. Douglas Rexford, who was living in an ashram in India, sent me some Tibetan prayer flags. Mary hung them in the living room. The St. Louis Press Club gave a Lifetime Achievement Award. I was a happy lion in winter.

But there was something unsettling. I did not feel sick. I began to imagine that people were being snarky when they’d say, “You look good.�

I had a knee replacement and so for a while I was using a walker. That seemed more appropriate. But then my knee got better.

The Cubs won the World Series in 2016. I watched it in my basement.

What had happened? My oncologist, Dr. Benjamin Tan, got me into a program in which I was given Keytruda, an immunotherapy drug. It turned out that my tumor had certain genetic markings (or something equally unintelligible) that allowed the Keytruda to alert my own blood cells that something was amiss. The blood cells, finally aware of the urgency of the situation, then attacked the cancer. That seems more far-fetched than a flying saucer and a magic wand.

Before the cholangiocarcinoma was completely gone, I got colon cancer. I had surgery, but there was metastatic migration. Lymph nodes were loose, carrying cancer. Fortunately, they were just sort of kicking around instead of aggressively hurtling through my body.

I had lymph node removal surgery at the Mayo Clinic and they got almost all of the offending nodes. Almost all. The oncology radiation team at Siteman then radiated me. The scans I took before leaving for Michigan would let us know if the radiation treatments worked.

Yes, they did.

I know I speak for almost all people with cancer — and for those who love them — when I say that this cancer journey is very strange.

And, of course, I have been fortunate beyond telling that I encountered cancer just after I turned 68, so my kids were grown, my life fully lived. There are not many things that are easier to do as you get older, but receiving a dire diagnosis is certainly one of them.

When I received a terminal diagnosis, I remembered having read something about the emotional stages people go through after such a diagnosis. They start with denial and eventually reach acceptance.

I decided to go straight to acceptance, but after a while, that becomes a sort of denial, too. As I said, this cancer journey is a strange one.

One of the most encouraging things I heard during my journey was that Lance Armstrong, a cancer survivor, did not think that attitude was important. He said he had known people with good attitudes who had died and he knew people with bad attitudes who had lived.

I do not know if that story is true, but I liked it. I did not feel that I had a “good� attitude. That is, I was not intent on fighting my cancer. Things are what they are.

The strange journey of a cancer patient is filled with cool and interesting people, both patients and caregivers. Often, in treatment rooms where six or eight people are getting chemotherapy, there is a quietness and people leave each other alone. But sometimes people will talk and share stories and even hopes or fears. Those were special moments. I valued them then and savor them now.

If you were one of those people sharing, thank you.

Jake Earvin Light was a man I met in a treatment room. He was not one to suffer quiet. He grew up in the hills of Reynolds County. He was one of six kids of Jake and Effie. Like their neighbors, the Lights lived without electricity, running water, telephones or cars. In 1944, when he was 18 and about to be drafted, one of the family’s six dogs, an old hound named Driver, fell into a small sinkhole in a limestone cliff. He was about 25 feet down and able to bark at his would-be rescuers. But the ground was fragile and liable to collapse so the rescuers decided to come through the side, which meant drilling through 30 feet of limestone.

The community came together. Somebody set up a forge and the men heated the tips of poles and pounded them into the limestone. They’d put a stick of dynamite into the hole. The rescue effort went on for 10 days. The Post-Dispatch and the Star-Times covered it. Wire services picked up the story. Old Drive, as he was known, became a celebrity. Reporters wrote that Drive was the best hound in Reynolds County.

“It was God’s own miracle that such a voice could come out of an animal that barks and eats cornpone. When that hound of heaven was in full cry it was like a golden trumpet played by angels riding on the wind.�

Ah, the golden days of journalism. But, of course, it was more than that. The country was in the midst of a long and difficult war. Old Drive made it though his challenges. That was something worth celebrating.

Maybe that’s why Jake’s story was such a treatment room hit.

I am no longer getting any kind of treatment. In six months, I’ll get more scans.

But at the moment, I’m clean.

I believe in karma. My intention here is not to tug Superman’s cape. But as long as I have written about having cancer, it’s only fair that I should write about not having it.

And mainly, I wanted to thank you for the wonderful words of support, for all the prayers and the good wishes.

Thank you.