What Goes Boom in the Night?

Am I fated to live Odysseus' life, to be away from home for twenty years? Ten years to be spent fighting a war that seems near impossible to win? A war against an enemy that has nearly never been defeated. And If I win this war, storming the cancerous walls of Troy, to what do I have to look forward? Another ten years at sea, trying to find my way home? Having lost myself in battle, I will awake every morning to a phantom pain, a nonexistent affliction that agonizes my psyche. I will spend every month at first, then every three months, then every six months, then every year waiting for that ache of malignancy to return.
As she sleeps, my fiancee tosses and mumbles inaudible cries that seek understanding. Finally, she asks aloud, "How can I plan for a future with you when I can't even be sure that you will be there?" How indeed. And I have no reasonable answer for her cries. What can I tell her? How do you put other people inside of your mind? What if she could know what I see just before I fall asleep.
In those moments before I fall asleep - a demi-death so to speak, a veritable recreation of the death experience itself - while others dream of being Peyton Manning, or Barack Obama, or Bill Gates, or Britney Spears, I imagine what might be if I never opened my eyes again. I meditate on the idea that sleep and death feel the same, the only difference being waking up.
My eyes grow heavy, but I fight on against the force that threatens to close my eyes. And in my illusory perceptions of conscious sleep I can visualize the organs in my body. I see black, hardened tissue spreading over the pink, fleshy cells like locusts over a lush green meadow. I see the images from health class of a smoke-damaged lung, the black tissue is the gnarled and twisted metals of a building burned down. Negative images of my body scans paint the backs of my eyelids. My body is the view from a ski resort window in the Swiss Alps, white snow as far as the eye can see. The flickering of concerned eyes from friends and family while they hear the unfortunate news. The gaping mouths of disbelief. This is not the winter, nor summer, spring nor fall of our unhapiness, these are the days of our discontent.
Have I fallen asleep? Am I still awake? Every day there is something to remind me, something that tells me that I am sick, that I am dying. My response, continues to feel the same: show me something other than black pictures with white skeletons swaying to and fro on them, I DO NOT FEEL SICK. I only feel the cold touch of death while lying on the chairs in which you tell me to lie. Only after accepting the medicine that you tell me to accept. Come see me on the other days I tell them. Come and sit on the couch with me and watch "Step Brothers." Show me I'm sick then. The mind cannot feel what the body does, and, unfortunately, the body cannot comprehend what the mind ponders. If only the body knew that it was not sick, then perhaps I might wake from this nightmare. But the body knows what the mind is unwilling to admit. He senses the infiltrator tip-toeing here and then there floating through his canals on a trip to another part of the body...
I'm jolted awake... I finally can escape the hauntings of my mind. I do NOT agree with the ideas that penetrate the soft walls of my head during the night hours, but I cannot escape them since I cannot control them. Surely, these thoughts exist in my mind somewhere; in some cavernous Mariana Trench in the North Pacific Ocean of my psyche. These are not my thoughts. These are inescapable horrors that come with the territory. It is like watching a horror film: one enjoys the feeling of being scared - or at least they are able to cope with seeing it - but one cannot escape the fearful thoughts that creep into the mind and poison the dreams of individuals.
Rest assured that thoughts alone will not make me too afraid to look under the bed, because I know that there are no monsters that dwell there. Come out from hiding and face me head on, I chide them. Like I thought, they prefer the deep ocean trenches. I think their voices are made scarier by the echoes, which deepen the groans and heighten the screams.
I am not afraid, nor should you be My Love. They are shadows and dust only. So, sleep quietly and sleep soundly.
Do not fear what cannot hurt you; and thoughts alone cannot pierce the skin...

Prepare for Battle Soldier

After a treatment, the countdown towards the next treatment has already begun. It's a running timer that continuously resets itself and I cannot seem to avoid it. 25 of the last 29 months my treatments have come almost as sure as the sun rises. and when the breaks are given to you, that clock merely extends itself, but still it ticks away. Time doesn't stand still for a moment, except for the moments when you feel your absolute worst, when the clock seems to sit at 1:23 p.m. for an eternity. My pursuit against my disease seems to cast me as Sisyphus, the man condemned by the Greek gods to endlessly roll a boulder to the top of a mountain, at which point the boulder would roll back down from it's own weight. Laboriously, I accept my treatment and begin my banal ascent towards recovery at the top of the mountain. My Sisyphean task near completion, I reach the top of the mountain believing that, this time, my boulder might stay. The momentary hesitation of the stone only serves to reinforce my hopes that this time it will remain; yet, the boulder plummets towards the ground as I arrive back at the hospital for the next round of treatment. The fight and struggle seems futile, as the energy appears to be exerted towards accomplishing nothing.
The muscles tighten and fire electric signals to the brain, which relays back the physical movement of the body against its boulder. The body goes low for leverage and the foot digs into the ground. Sweat pours from the brow and often times the struggle seems too cumbersome a task. Then, the task is complete and the task is resurrected in the return to the chemo chair.
Sisyphus and I differ because he is dead and I am very much alive. My task may appear futile, but I have something that Sisyphus does not have: hope. His situation is infinite, decreed by the gods with no possibility for success, whereas though my torture may seem destined for failure, there has been no such prophecy.
I walk down the mountain towards my boulder smiling. Not because I am glad enjoy my plight, but rather because one day I will put the boulder in its place and descend the mountain with no plans to return.
So today, as I walk towards the boulder that awaits me in the chomo chair tomorrow, I smile, raise my glass, and propose a toast to life, to love, and to happiness (as I do every Wednesday night before chemotherapy). So, if you happen out on a random Wednesday night, and see me walk down the mountain and in the door of the bar, come and join me, we like company and good conversation, especially to clear the mind and become composed before we return to our burden. There is no cross we bear that is too heavy for our will to maintain, only a mind too irresolute to decide to do so.
"If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Art of War...

We arrive at 160 East 53rd Street in New York. We smile and say hello to the kind workers at the information desk. Elevator ride to the fourth floor. Say hello and check in at the desk. Fill out forms for perscriptions if needed. Then:
Take a seat and wait.
"Samuel, Andrew!"
Name is called and it's time to give some blood. Blood pressure, temperature, and pulse rate.

"Do you have a mediport?"
"Yes."
"Which arm has the best veins?"
"Most like to use the left."
The veins in my right arm silently weep as they slink behind skin and muscle. The phlebologist investigates the veins while she puts a tourniquet around my left bicep. She lines up her weapons: alcohol preperation wipe, gauze, bandage, needle equipped with a catheter, four viles to be filled with type A+ blood. The technician steadily pierces the skin on the inside of the elbow just to the right of the scar tissue that has built up over the last two and a half years. A slight wiggle and the blood pours forth, methodically filling up each vile in succession. She pulls out the needle (it always hurts more coming out for some reason) places the gauze over the small poke and bandages that bad boy up. Step on the scale. I can't read kilograms... And I'm done.

Take a seat and wait...
And wait...
The doctor's assistant walks right up to me to take me into the back to see the doctor. Her name is Jane. Sometimes it's Jessica. They know me well enough to not have to call out my name. Now I'm in the room sitting on the protective medical paper over the patient chair. Now it's time to:
Take a seat and wait...
And wait...
And wait...
Wait...
Wait.

Knocking at the door can either mean the doctor has arrived, or the attending doctor has arrived. It's the doctor. We exchange pleasantries and the doctor takes a nonchalant position leaning agaisnt the counter. I like my doctor a great deal. Not only is he extremely knowledgeable, but he is able to read his patients well. He knows that he can say things to me shooting straight from the hip and I like that. Good news or bad, I need to hear it straight and to the point. Nice little talk, maybe a little poking and prodding and examining.
Deep Breath...
And another...
And again...
And again...
And one more time.
And it's back out to the waiting room.
To wait...
And wait...
Wait...
Wait...
Waaaiiiiiiiiiiit.
"Samuel, Andrew!"

Called again and this time for the knock out stuff. Sit in the chair. "Would you like a blanket?"
I bring my own. It's not particularly cold at first, but with all the intravenous fluids going in, it cools down the blood. Nurse comes in and asks the questions. Same questions everytime. Now it's time for another needle stick.
The 'Huber' needle is a thicker gauged needle that is curved down slightly. It is pushed into the mediport that is embedded in my upper right chest. This stick is far more painful than the arm stick. The curved needle slices through the thick, protective skin of the chest and falls into it's place within the mediport. Usually. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to have the nurse just miss the void that exists within the mediport. Sometimes they miss altogether and other times they hit the surrounding lining,either way the medicine cannot get into the blood stream. When they miss, though, they don't take the needle out. They only pull it out a little and try and reposition it while the needle is still inside of you. This is not fun. Other times you are lucky enough to be pricked more than once by the curved needle.

Needle is in the skin now. A little saline for a while to hydrate the body. Then the anti-nausea intravenous medicine.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy the next two hours. It's chemo time! I'm oddly composed as I watch the fluid in the bag race towards the tip of the needle lodged in my chest. I've always felt a relative calm in the chemo chair. A relaxed acceptance that the moment of calamity is upon me and it cannot be outrun. So slowly it comes and yet so consistently. I feel it the first time my heartbeat circulates the chemical-containing blood through my heart. It flutters in the beginning. The anti-nausea kicks in at this point. It's Benadryl. I started to figure it out. They drug you so you can't feel the initial effects of the treatment until later. My mind is stubborn, though. I stay awake as long as possible. The darkness takes over slowly. The clouds roll over the horizon. My mind grows tired, my eyes glazed, my speech erratic.
Fading...
Fading...
Faded...
Out.
The outside sleeps, but the inside fires off nuerological impulses as constant as ever. I can hear bits of conversations happening outside of me, and the war for dominance wages within me. It's the Battle of Bull Run on the inside and the outside peacefully sleeps with barely a rustle of the body. The Yankee troops of the normal cell tissue stages a battle. Massively out numbered and predicted to lose a quick war to the superior Confederacy. The Rebels of the dissenting cancer cells are highly skilled and highly trained soldiers prepared for swift victory over the Yankees. The Yanks win a surprising victory to start off. But much blood is spilled before the war ends. This, however, is the the microcosmic civil war. One body battling against itself. A single union divided by unavoidable issues. The dream wages on in my mind.
It is a lucid dream and I think I dream while I am awake.
It is a dream that does not end when I open my eyes.
It is a dream that does not end on the drive home.
It is a dream that does not end the next day.
It is a dream that has not ended.
My civil war rages and when my Yankee army is depleted and wounded and the superior killing machines of the Rebel South close in, I will recall Abraham Lincoln's words:
"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."

Let's have a party at Appomatox Court House when this war ends. Who's bringing chips?

Paradise Found...

...in those sometimes green, sometimes brown, always beautiful eyes.
...with hearing my brother's silent agreement.
...behind my parent's attempts to hide their smiles.
...watching the way my sister is "all growns up" and so much better than either my brother or myself.
...during late night movies.
...kicking back for "Couched-Out" Sundays.
...during Friday and Saturday nights out and about on the End of town that always goes West.
...on hot summer days and humid summer nights and dogs that won't stop barking.
...with all night bonfires.
...grilling steaks for 30 while sipping on a cold one (or more).
...playing marathon volleyball matches.
...seeing my sister-in-law in a pretty dress.
...in Rock Band.
...knocking knees on 'Our' back steps.
...finding the 'Mud Bandit' of 2008.
...seeing old friends every once in a while at the Inkwell
...winning state-championships.
...drinking 10 a.m. cocktails in a country that has English as a second language.
...remembering: cat. apple. table.
...performing full-recoveries.
...on trips to the flight deck on Sunday mornings.
...thinking about awkward questions at the first family dinner.
...inside of two cases of 'stones, 1-on-1 beer pong, and a little hard to get.
...looking unpleasantly at dimples on the butt
...listening to advanced battleship during Desperate Housewives.
...enjoying Super Bowl XLII.

These are a few of my favorite things...

Creative Writing...

I remember rubbing my hand against the protective paper over the medical examination chair. the doctor was talking, but I was barely listening to him. The sound my hand made against the paper was the sound of waves crashing on the shore in Monmouth Beach on a mid-summer day.

I envisioned myself on that beach. She was in a chair to my right putting on some tanning lotion. I smiled and said I was going to take a dip in the water. Of course I asked her if she wanted to come, but she said no as she usually does. "The waves could gobble me up and swallow me. I'm just a little itty-bitty!"

"So, in other words, there is no way that I can confidently tell you how long I believe you have left to live, because cancer is such an individual disease. Some people have the smallest of lesions and don't last more than a few months and others have very bad cases and end up having a nice quality of living for a long time."

I didn't like how often he referred to the term quality of living. As if feeling sick every day, being bald, throwing up, being too tired to do anything was any type of living besides a shitty kind. Was it supposed to make me feel better that every so often he treated someone that had a pretty bad case who made it more than a few years. I didn't want to delay the disease. I wanted to get rid of it. I can hear him talking over the thoughts in my head. What was that? He has treated someone as young as 19 years old who had a stage IIIa disease...

"How long did his 'quality of life' last, Doc? Is he still with us?"

"I'm not really able to discuss other patients with you."

I didn't think so. I don't want to be in this room right now. The worst thing is that I have about 10 people out there in the waiting room waiting for me to go out there and say, "You know what? They made a mistake. I'm just perfectly fine," but I'm not perfectly fine. I'm perfectly fucked. I can't say that I'm particularly angry at anyone. I can't really say that I don't deserve this. I think it's just pretty much something that happens and this time it has happened to me. What is it going to be like for my parents to have to bury their son? That's not the way it's supposed to go.

How can I look into the eyes of the lady I love and tell her that everything is going to be okay when the other doctors aren't sure if I'm going to make it out of August?

I just have to keep everything together. Don't let them worry about you more than they already are worrying. If the worst happens at least you won't be around to have to watch your loved ones cry. If anythign else happens just tell yourself it could always be worse...

I don't want to die right now. I want to marry her. I want to have kids. I want to see my brother's kids. I want to be a best man. I want to be an uncle. I want to graduate college. I want to see the Grand Canyon. I want to see Niagra Falls. I want to own my own business. I want to be a grandfather someday. I want, I want, I want...

Did he just say that I should consider freezing my sperm? Well, thanks, Doc. That sure as shit made it awkward with my parents in the room. I'm not going to be able to have kids! There might be some people that think that's better off though. I guess I will just have to wait and...

"Yeah... Thanks, Doc... I know... Okay, two weeks, can't wait...Bye."

"Are you okay, Son?"

"Let's just go. I want to get out of here."

I want to have a cigarette. I want a stiff drink. I want to get wasted and stop having these terrible thoughts in my head. I don't want to keep imagining lying in a bed with everyone around me crying and concerned. I just want to go to that party tonight where nobody knows and I don't have to keep dealing with it...

"No, honey, everything was fine... The doctor is very optimistic... We aren't sure yet. I have to coem back in two weeks...Yes, I still want to go to Justin's... No, I promise, I won't drink or have a cigarette... You're right. I am lying. Maybe just a few cigarettes."

That's it. I never want to see that look in her eyes again. You tell her it's going to be okay and then make sure that it's going to be okay. Make a promise to yourself right here. Be the exception to the rule. Be the one who writes the statistics, rather than the one that follows them. Don't lose the faith. What did Mickey used to tell Rocky in the movies? 'You're a machine. A machine. Put your head down. Keep moving forward. Run right through 'em!' That's what I'm going to do. Accept everything that happens, but never fold your hand. Break them and keep breaking them as long as they let you. The world doesn't owe you anything. It has no reason to take it easy on you. But you don't owe the world anything either. Who says you have to take it easy and just lay aside while the black hole sucks you in and tears you apart? You have two options: live or die. You can attack life and do it the right way for whatever time you have left, or you can lay back and let life happen to you. Attack. It's what you have always done. Go for the throat. Keep moving forward. Run right through it. Run right over it. It's not over until every bone in your body is broken and every muscle inside is torn apart. Let the world come after you and try and take you - death isn't and option, it's an inevitability - but you give the world the toughest fight it's ever had. Don't give up.

The birds are twittering outside of the window. My leg is super hot for some reason. I just had a weird dream. Death was attacking me. I kept jumping out of the way of the sickle. I pushed him off the cliff. But he told me that more would come after me. And keep coming until I'm the one who falls... I'm staring at my wall. I can hear birds and feel warmth and I can see my wall. It's been over a month. 'What now, CANCER!' Fuck it. I'm done. I'm done worrying. I'm done with all the darkness. I'm done with the waiting. I'm done with it all. I just want to go on. It's going to be tough. Forever. It will never be the same again. But I'm going to spend my life doing my best to make everything exactly the same.

I'll leave you with these two thoughts about pushing yourself to the extreme and giving all your body can muster up:

"Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it." - Steve Prefontaine
"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift." - Steve Prefontaine

I don't know what my "Gift" is... but I know that I'm ready to bleed.

I got white dog crap in my belly, then you lay this shit on me...

It all comes down to treatments...


Immediately, almost instinctively, we imagine nausea, vomiting, hair loss, weight loss, fatigue. Images flash before our eyes like the camera toys for kids where you slide in a film strip and click through to see the images. There's the Eiffel Tower. There's the Sphinx. The Pyramids of Egypt. Machu Picchu. Statue of Liberty. The Great Wall of China. Except these pictures are altogether more sadistic: We watch ourselves wasting away in a hospital bed. Running to the bathroom to throw up. Looking down into our hands to see our hair falling out. Darkness and death.

What does it feel like?

It's about as bad as you can conjure up in your head, and then make it a lot worse.


My frist treatment was filled more with anxiety than vomitus. I was worked up and scared and nervous. What would it feel like? Would it hurt? How long would it take?

Will I still be myself afterwards?


Outcome: uneventful. I got nauseous and was a little tired in the days following the treatment. But I did not think it was that bad. So, I went in to the second treatment thinking, "Maybe I'm just lucky. Maybe the chemotherapy just doesn't affect me in the way it does other people." Stranger things have happened.

I was wrong. The second treatment hit me like a baseball bat to the back of the head. I was OUT! I was in bed for a couple of days straight. I couldn't eat. I couldn't drink. My tongue felt like a piece of sand paper. I was dizzy. I couldn't open my eyes. I felt like I had fallen away from the world, just my bed and I.


The doctor told me I HAD to eat during treatments, and I explained to him that eating would be lovely and I enjoyed doing it, but not when swallowing would be concurrent with vomiting. My solid food diet was suspended and I was relegated to drinking Gatorade, Boost, and Ensure. I had all the flavors I wanted... I still couldn't drink them. I drank them so often that the smell of those drinks nearly made me vomit.


Before I was diagnosed and began treatment I weighed a stout 175 pounds, which was normal for me. In one month's time, I weighed only 145 some-odd pounds. I lost over 30 pounds and looked like a walking corpse. I had not weighed that light since 7th or 8th grade. I grew out a beard to hide how frail and gaunt I had become. For my two year anniversary, I had to wear a jacket from 7th grade, because I looked like a ten-year old in his father's suit.


Then the hair started to fall out. Now, I have always had a ridiculously, unnecessary abundance of hair. The range basically went from the top of my head to the tips of my toes without a break. As such, though my hair fell out, I still had remnants, though they tended to be sporadic and non-uniform. My eyes brows vanished (though the existed in some purgatorial state that made it seem as if I was waxing my eyebrows into a shape indicative of the St. Louis Arch). Similarly, my eyelashes disintegrated. Tears poured forth from my eyes in the slightest of winds. Even my nose hairs disappeared and nose-bleeds were a plenty. You don't realize the beauty of design in the human body until those things are robbed from you. My chest hair thinned (I spent the majority of my life until that point wishing that it woudl go away, and I found myself missing each strand of organic velcro that had once garnished my body). I found that it was extremely surprising how warm all that hari had kept me when I had it, and how ridiculously cold I was now that I no longer had it.


A lot of people have tried to figure out how chemotherapy "feels." I cannot seem to really put it into words that give it justification. All I can say is that the physical ailments and the torture (and it is indeed torture) that your body faces is less than nothing compared to the mental agony that you have to endure. I will never be able to fully express how you feel physically during treatments; it's incomparable to anything else I have ever experienced. And I hope that you will never know what I mean. I can only try and put you in some type of mind frame to try and see if you can begin to get the mental strain you undergo.


The only way to save your life is to engage in an act that while possibly giving you a chance to become better, simultaneously threatens to kill you. And you must bring yourself to the hospital willingly to sit down in that chair and have them hit you with the hard stuff, knowing beforehand how crappy you are going to feel and knowing that the side effects only get worse the further along you go.

But there is an African saying:
"Rain beats a leopard's skin, but it does not wash out the spots."

For more about the theory of 50/50 see the writings of Chuck Klosterman