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.

The Final Confrontation: A Story in Pictures

And Then There Was One

Cancer keeps you from updating blogs. It also keeps you from beer, but not for long. That's right; in T minus 4 days I will be through with chemotherapy (assuming all goes according to plan, and like my dude Hannibal Smith, I love it when a plan comes together) and ready for the next phase- radiation.

This means one thing: in a few weeks when my body recovers and starts to agree with what I want it to do, I'm going to get turbodrunk. Why? Because that's how you kill cancer. Don't argue with me.

So the last chemo session was not a red letter day for manhood. As evident by my last couple of updates, I am so disconnected from reality that I may as well be an Erasure song. But sometimes timing the medication to coincide with getting drugs blasting through your veins just doesn't jibe, and things get a little sickly. Pukey, in fact; and that's exactly what happened for the first time thus far in my Cancer Odyssey. I took it like a man, though, even telling my nurse to just keep pushing that shit into my system in between vomitous hurks into a trash can. Let's hope Chemo: The Final Fight (which we may playfully call this Friday's last confrontation) goes a little better.

Anyway, hope things are well, suckas