Because it's Tuesday

A lot of people have been asking me about This Cancer Life, which is something you would expect. Most of the questions fail to go further than "how are you feeling." I find this nice because they want to know a little bit, but not more than to simply let me know that they're thinking of me. Who can blame them? These are the folks that don't want details about the nasty stuff, just the Cliff Notes: Are you ok? Check "yes" or "no."

I appreciate these. It's not that I want to dodge giving deep thoughts to my answer; more like I don't want to relive the 145+ hours of misery that long post-chemo recoup weekends have given me. Want to know how I have such an exact number? I play too many video games that track that stuff. Just the fact that I admitted that to you should tell you that I'm serious about this topic.

The other inevitable query people get (because I can over generalize the cancer population. You can't, by the way) is something along the lines of "does this totally change your perspective?" Also fair, I suppose.

See, so far with this stuff it's been guns blazing. While there has certainly been plenty of time to stop and reflect (which I have seldom shared with you, against my original plan, Maybe that's to your benefit, though), I'm more of a roll-up-your-sleeves kind of guy. Fix the problem now and think about it later. This has gotten me into trouble plenty over the years, but I'd rather just put the thing together and stop bickering about it rather than figuring out the best method. The "change" question, then, can give you some pause.

Obviously, the quick answer to this is sure, my perspective is changed. But I guess that doesn't do the question, and therefore the person whom asked it, the justice it deserves. So by answering so quickly to something like that and not giving too much depth, I'm pretty much saying that no, my perspective on things hasn't changed much at all. I still have a wife and family that love me. I still get up and go to work. I come home and have a beer now and then (and then and then). I guess this makes me a pretty bad cancer survivor when I can finally say that I survived cancer.

Then my cousin, bless his bald heart, went and fucked it up over Christmas. After telling a group of people what the next steps are, he stops, looks at me, and says "you had fucking cancer. Cancer." Funny enough, it dawned on me that people that talk to me about this actually use "cancer" less in conversations than "fucking." That little exchange shut me up for a second, and I drove home from Toledo to Cleveland silent, brutally reminded that I have "fucking cancer. Cancer." And maybe I'm not dealing with it as well as I thought.

Two weeks ago I was watching movies with friends. One of them asked if this was it for Hodkins; if remission means that I'm just living on borrowed time before it comes back. I calmly tried to explain to him that Hodgkins is 90-100% curable and that it'll probably never come back. I could see it in his eyes that that statistic didn't phase him, because he knew that deep down, it didn't really mean that much to me, either. I could be dead right now. Someday down the road this might come back and I might be dead then.

You don't stop and think about that (I hope), but I sure as hell do. You also don't think about the time when you share an awkward cake and tell your coworkers that you wish that you knew them all better. The time you remind your parents that they did right by me and that I love them. The time when you thank your best friends for what they've done for you and how they helped you through the worst. The last time you see the your nieces or nephews and hope that they have everything they need. The last time that you ask your wife if she just wants to take a walk.

Does cancer change your perspective? Absolutely. All of that stuff I just said is a bunch of things that I'm never going to have to do.

In one week I'll have my final PET scan. A week after that I get a follow up with my oncologist -again, a kindly English gentleman- to find out if I still have cancer.

And I'm not fucking dead yet. Period.

Thanksgiving has come and gone. As you'd imagine, I sort of have a lot to be thankful for this year. Chiefly, I'd like to thank the world Jimmy John's. It ain't for everybody, but it sure is for me. Oh, and thank God that I'm done with treatments. Man, did that get old, amiright?

Radiation was actually pretty reasonable comparatively. Yes, I only did it for about 3 weeks and some people go much, much longer (insert stamina/ prowess jokes), but the side effects were minimal and my energy didn't drop like it did for chemo. The worst of it was near the end where it hurt to swallow food, specifically bread. Think I'm kidding about Jimmy John's? Try giving it up for a few weeks. See that? No joke just dangles here.

The plan henceforth is thus: in about three weeks I'll visit my radiologists again for a check up. He's a roundish, bearded gentleman that kind of reminds me of that good scientist that helps you against that evil scientist (you know that guy, right?). He even has a mousy side-kick fellowship doctor to do his dirty work (not that I know what that is). I feel I'm in pretty good hands, even though I'll be out of them pretty soon. After all of that, I return to the taller, slender, Britisher doctor that is steering this ship for follow-ups and the Final Scans.

Then we're gonna party. More on that later.

So let's talk about my coif. Yes, I finally shaved my head about a month before chemo ended. I really didn't lose that much hair until more than half-way through, and by the time it was all coming to a close I was yanking out entire clumps when I would wake up in the morning. I'm not so in love with my hair, but this is a little bruising to the ego; I really thought that my particular cancer comic book would be subversive to the usual mass consumer trite. Turns out we all sell out sometime. Oh, well.

The plus side is that it is, in fact, coming in thicker than what it was before, but I'm resigned to keep it at a short, buzzed length from now on. Combine this with the copious stubble that I prefer to wear on my brick-like chin, I now resemble a more American Jason Statham (or Jason Statham resembles ME. Whatever flips your lid). But something much, much more mysterious has happened.

My immediate family is cursed, you see. Having a father and two older brothers, I can tell you this with downright scientific accuracy that the Learned men cannot reliably grow a mustache. My father, the reigning champion of the 'stached men of my family, had one when I was very young, but shaved it around tenish years ago. He finally let slip a year or two ago that it took him more than six months to grow it. To my brothers and I, whom have struggled since needing to shave in the first place to grow a flavor saver, this was like finding out that Santa existed, but he was just the foreman for the elves whom did all of the heavy lifting anyway.

Now don't get me wrong, I am in no way interested in being primarily be-stachioed. Nor am I interested in the current hipster-stache trend that follows pretentious college kids. But I likes me my beard. It's kind of punk rock lumberjack, after a fashion. But if it ain't right on the upper lip, I look more like emancipating rather than river-hogging.

Cancer, though, has somehow broken through my gene pool and mutated me in ways that nobody expected. Ladies and gentlemen, I leave you with this:

Magnum

Lee Van Cleef

Har Mar

The guy on the Pringles container

Learned

Halloween next year is going to really kick ass.

Three hours ago, I sat on a hospital bed and received my last radiation treatment.

I just fucking killed cancer.

That's right, no more treatments. No more VinBlastine. No more radiation. (Sadly) no more wacky radiologist stories. I really thought I would have deeper insight or maybe even more clever things to say, but I don't. Accept that. I just gave Hodkin's the body splash off the top fuggin' turnbuckle, Snuka style.



I will say that technically I can't say that it's all over because I have to wait about two months for final scans, but it feels like I just finished a P.Hd. today; or maybe the first time I finished Super Mario Bros. 3 without warping (have you ever F-ing tried that? 8 hours of your life gone).

I killed it. I win.

Talk to you soon

Cancer,

Tomorrow at sun-up.

Yours,
The Guy That's Gonna Spin Kick You in the Face

...!

I'm so sorry I didn't post this on Halloween

A Conversation With My Radiologist (Paraphrased)

Ladies and gentlemen of the reading public, meet Rachel. At least, meet the cipher that is Rachel, because Rachel isn't her real name. Anyway...

Rachel: What are you up to this weekend?

Me: blah blah blah, probably nothing. You?

Rachel: Getting... ready to go on vacation... (insert strange awkward pauses that are telling for such a short sentence)

Me: Oh yeah? Going anywhere or staying home?

Rachel: Mexico...maybe

Me: Wait, you're going to Mexico 'maybe'?

Rachel: Yeah, my boyfriend and I are on the outs.

Me: Oh. Youch.

5 minutes later, after maximum radiation zappage...

Rachel: Ok, so my boyfriend and I are fighting kind of at the moment. Actually, we've been kind of fighting for, like, five weeks. And I'm the type of person that wants to finish conversations when they happen, he just gets up and leaves and gets wasted with his friends. Come on, a 31-year-old guy getting wasted with his friends?

Me: Um, I'm 30-

Rachel: No, I mean like every night; all the time. Now, granted, I'm 26 and there's a bit of an age difference, but I don't need anybody to take care of me; I'm super independent. He moved up here from Miami, and he was living there, but he had this crazy bitch ex-girlfriend. She had a kid, but she was all kinds of messed up: you know, probably drugs, money problems. She bought a car but he put his name on the title because of her bad money problems. Stuff like that. But this is the type of shit that just goes on all the time. He travels a lot for his job so we don't really see each other for months at a time, so I think we might still be just getting used to each other, but we've been living together since September and things are a little more testy than they should be. Both of our names are on the lease, and it's a 14 month lease because of how we dealt with the landlord, but now he's saying stuff like, "I don't know if this relationship will work the way it's going." And then I'm like, "great, I'm glad that we might go to another country and you could leave me there." And then I think, well, it is all-inclusive. If it sucks I guess I could just drink my way through it. But my brother just kind of says to me, "well, you really fucked up now." Which I guess I can agree with. He's about the same age as my boyfriend and he gives good advice. I dunno, should I go? I just need a vacation. I need a mental vacation from this place and all of that.

Me: Uh...

Rachel: It's cool. Poor Gina [another fake name for another radiologist] has been listening to this for, like, a month.

Gina: You should go.

Rachel: Yeah. I don't know.

What you should take away from this: Once you're a patient, you're family. They even save me the good coffee. I love you, Cleveland Clinic.

Look Out!

I hate long breaks.

For some reason, and this is partly my own fault for thinking this way, I was under the impression that radiation therapy would happen immediately after chemo was over. As you can probably imagine, I was dead wrong. After nearly an entire month from the Final Confrontation, conversations (yes, conversations) about my radiation treatment has begun with the promise that I will begin getting zapped come Monday.

Things to note about rads:

1. It needs a better name than that. I'm leaning toward "Radical Throwdown," but it's a work in progress
2. To prepare you for getting bombarded with power beams, not unlike a certain Dr. Banner, one must be aligned on a table. Sounds kind of anticlimactic, right? Well, it is, and it takes two separate hospital visits for to get it right. I'm not even joking.
3. Supposedly, they can get you in and out of the office within 30 minutes during sessions. Except when one of their machines is down; in which case it's anybody's guess.
4. You get tattoos. Don't be alarmed: they're simply freckle-sized dots for table alignment. Having no previous ink on my body to begin with, this also felt anticlimactic because no tequila was involved. Ho hum.

And thus, the next phase has begun. The really good news is that it's only going to be 2.5 weeks of treatment (5 days/week) instead of the originally projected 4-6, which is all kinds of gravy.

The downside? Well, the effects of chemo are starting to wear off (which is nice), but I finally had to suck it up and shave my noggin a few weeks ago because I was starting to pull clumps of hair out of my head (unsightly!). Combine this with the fact that my eyebrows are now almost completely gone and imagine walking down the street. Or through your office. Or in your larger place of work as a whole. Nobody will recognize you. Now, I'm kind of an outgoing cat but when half of the people that you walk up and say hi to basically give you the "who the fuck is this guy" look, it get's a little awkward for them and off-putting to you. Nobody's to blame, here, but it almost makes me feel like it's less worthwhile to speak to anybody. That's a little conflicting for a guy that more or less talks to people for a living.

I guess this is what they mean by the psychological effects of treatment. Be sure to bring your copy of the DSM IV for our next meeting so we're all on the same page.