This morning actually started off fabulously. I woke early, probably around 5:30, but with no real desire to get up right away. So I laid there in bed, read some email after a while and then decided to rise about ten or fifteen minutes after my wife got up to shower. When I went to stretch my legs and let the cat in to the rest of the house, my knees were a touch wobbly, but I felt great, alert and happily not at all nauseous. Continue reading The Chemo Diaries: Day Two
And we’re off! I began in the height of luxury here at the Keck Medical Center in lovely Pasadena on a beautiful Wednesday morning. The sun is shining, my daughter was off to a great start and my wife has cleared the day to keep me company in our five star accommodations. I have a heated, massage-lounge chair and my own hi-def satellite television service, robust Wi-Fi and some decent natural lighting behind me. Continue reading The Chemo Diaries: Day One
Today, I realized that it was important to let the parents in my daughter’s class know that I am about to start chemotherapy. Some of them already know about my cancer, but most do not. So I sat down this morning and wrote the following message (with some minor redaction). Tomorrow, my daughter’s teacher (who sent out her own thoughtful letter to the parent community) is going to engage in a brief talk with the class to address any concerns.
Dear fellow parents,
I am writing to update you all on an important issue that will be affecting my family, and which may end up coming home to some of you as a topic of discussion at some point. Continue reading The Letter to Other Parents
I’ve gotten a lot of good advice from well-informed people over the past few months. And I mean that. As I have discussed the factors of my cancer with peers, a lot of truly interesting and promising information has come out. Of course, there has been a lot of well-intentioned advice that has come around, too, without any of what I would call “proper vetting.” While I appreciate all of the advice, because it truly appears to be heartfelt and sincere, I’ll admit to it causing an overload of research. This is especially true of the well-intentioned variety, which I separate from the well-informed not so much based on the desire to help as by the ability to be helpful. Continue reading Well Intentioned Advice, Generally Speaking Ain’t So Grand
I am a 46 year old white man with stage 4 lung cancer, but at least I’m not a young, unarmed black man minding his own business in a public space. That is my takeaway from the last quarter of 2014. Privilege certainly exists in present day America and a huge part of that privilege is not having to fear for one’s life when going out for something as simple as a cup of coffee (more accurately, a latte or cappuccino) or a vial of perfectly legal medical marijuana.
People talk about luck all the time. Good luck that this happened, bad luck that that happened. It is spoken of as if “luck” is an actual thing, with a consciousness or purpose. Yet, rationally, we should all understand that luck does not exist. There is “chance.” There are “odds.” But there is no such thing as luck outside of an emotional response to fortune (or lack of it). That is to say, one might feel fortunate if, for instance, one were to be diagnosed with a chronic disease early enough to do something to stem the tide, or live in a country where the survival rates are generally above 50 percent and increasing rather than decreasing.
Of course, there are those who would be in a wealthy country with cutting edge healthcare and an early diagnosis who would still only see their personal misfortune with such a diagnosis. But this isn’t about those pathetically myopic individuals, this is about the reason we should be glad we don’t live in India. And if you happen to be reading this from within the borders of India, my apologies, but hopefully you are a politically motivated activist with the means to make your voice heard.
Continue reading When Being Unfortunate is Good Fortune
Today the results of my gene sequencing were the topic of discussion with my favorite oncologist. We had hoped that a specifically identifiable mutation would have shown up, qualifying me for targeted therapy, but in the generally disappointing fashion of Things That Don’t Go Your Way, none such mutations came to the party. Not that they were invited in the first place, since I have a tendency to leave the Truly Annoying and Unwelcome off the list, but when there is a fifty/fifty chance that your unwanted guest will be easier to evict, you do find yourself hoping for that loophole. Or at least I did. But really, fifty/fifty is a flip of the coin, and I got tails.
So I am going to start the more traditional chemo. This is inconvenient for a number of reasons. I mean, I will have to be on a strict schedule for, well, possibly the rest of my life, or at least as long as the benefits outweigh the risks (as my doctor put it with appropriate bluntness and a smile). Of course, travel plans will be difficult. And the prospect of being tired or nauseous for up to a third of my life seems kind of stupid. But wait: others have walked this road successfully before me. The path is well worn. While the annoyance factor is way up, is it really so bad?
We all have crappy things to face in life, but that doesn’t make it any less worth living. Not to be crass, but at least I wasn’t hit by a bus or infected with Ebola far from medical help. Sure, those things are occasionally survivable, but my thing has an industry devoted to keeping me alive and a growing number of survival stories each year. So sign me up for treatment. Sign me up for my the week drip. I’ve got good veins (the doc said so, again with that smile).
Old age is bad for you, but it isn’t necessarily going to kill you. At least not right away.
This concept may seem obvious, but I think it bears mentioning. Life is fragile. We complain all the time, it seems, about ailments and fears. I mean this culturally, socially, as something that simply is part of the ongoing discussion. And the older we get, whether that means moving into our 30s or 40s or through middle age into the senior years, it seems to occur with greater frequency. In my 20s I had back problems and knee problems and I used to bitch about them, more so in my 30s, along with headaches and other nonsense. So I get migraines. So I pulled that muscle. It’s all a bitch getting older.
Continue reading Old Age Is Bad for You
As a person living with cancer, I get suggestions all the time to look at non-medical treatments. By this, I mean mainly nutritional or holistic approaches that are meant to directly replace the use of “Western” medicine. Each suggestion comes with an anecdotal reference to someone who was “cured” by these methods, which range from the clearly bizarre to sensible health choices. Digging deeper, of course, reveals that every verifiable success story includes the use of early surgery or extensive chemo and radiation therapies.
And none of them, so far, have applied directly to my particular brand of cancer.
It doesn’t bother me so much to
We all have our daily battles. For me, these often have included little things, like holding my shit together while my daughter danced in front of the mirror instead of getting dressed for school or brushing her teeth. Lately, my battles have expanded to getting a deep breath after climbing the stairs, or getting up from a chair. Or just standing in a corner, leaning against a wall. Thankfully, that sort of battle is still relatively rare for me and only lasts a short time, but they remind me of how unimportant (or maybe very important) other battles have been–not in the fighting, of course, but in the experiences around them.
Continue reading Wartime Bad, Peace Good