Fighting Cancer While Accepting Humility

When I went in for the first day of chemo, I was ready to kick cancer’s ass!  I immediately passed out during the first blood draw.  As if to say get ready because the only ass getting kicked here will be your own.  I remember saying that I felt a little dizzy and then realizing I was asleep and thinking, oh crap why am I sleeping right now.  I know I have something important that I am supposed to be doing and I should be awake!  As I came to, there were several women in my face with their hands on me holding me from sliding out of the chair and I remember putting my fists up like I was going to fight off these attackers that were actually nurses.  

Fighting Cancer

My first lesson of chemo is that I am not some hero or fighter.  Physically I am a lump at the mercy of some of the most compassionate and amazing healthcare professionals that do the fighting.  Every day on behalf of myself and an endless stream of the afflicted, they bring diligence, cheer, and humanity to people like me that feel so far from it.   As I go into a zombie like fog during infusion treatments, they make sure everything happens perfectly.  The dose, the settings, the management of side effects.  

The Reality of My Chemotherapy

The best way to describe chemo is that it is literally poison.  Cancer cells are a little weaker than healthy ones, so as you are poisoned they die slightly before your healthy cells do…but only slightly.  This is why I am monitored so closely. Even after chemo, it will take my body many many months to repair and heal from the damage.

For something so common, chemotherapy is freaking hard!!! Based on NCCN guidelines, I kind of had a choice between 4 cycles of 2 poisons (EP) or 3 cycles of 3 poisons (BEP) but it would be more aggressive.  Of course I went for the 3 because I prefer quick and hard rather than draw it out.  It also has some anecdotally better results for my type of testicular cancer.  I had to get a lung and kidney function test before starting to make sure that my body could handle the cocktail of three.  

How Chemotherapy Felt For Me

In the beginning it was just the constant nausea, difficulty eating and sleeping, and feeling out of it.  Toward the middle added in, the ringing in my ears, my fingertips hurting too much to play the guitar, the constant blood coming from my nose whenever I blow it, and the inability to focus on anything resembling useful or productive thought.  By the 3rd cycle, my lung function is so poor that I attempt a walk around the block and weeze like I have run 6 miles.

By the end of my 3rd cycle, I kind of feel the loss of my humanity.  I have no ego.  It’s not just that I have no hair and there is a port in my chest.  Things aren’t funny to me, and I don’t have the energy to make conversation.  I try to not hold a painful face when I notice how forlorn I look.  On some days I spike fevers and the nausea rises to debilitating on others.  I try to fake some conversation with the boys so that they know dad is just putting in some time but everything will be ok. 

The Lucky One

Chemo for me is 9 weeks that feels like a year.  However, I know that others go through 6 or even 9 cycles.  I can’t imagine how you feel emerging from that.  However, I will venture that it crushes the soul and out the other side comes a diamond or just a handful of dust.  It humbles me.  After all, I am told that if you have to have cancer, I have one of the “good ones.”  My chart reads, “treatment with curative intent.”  I talk with other patients sometimes in passing.  This guy has pancreatic cancer.  She has lung cancer. 

Weird Things Happen When You Have Cancer

Weird things happen to you when you have cancer.  I remember way back in mid December someone telling me “wow testicular cancer you really dodged a bullet there.”  Someone else told me they heard “about my scare.”  People also tell you that you are brave or a hero.  But it sure doesn’t feel very heroic just lying in a chair. I  I also don’t really have a choice.  I could be the least brave coward of all time but it doesn’t matter.  We deal with reality as it presents itself.  

People text me asking how I am feeling today or if I am feeling better.  I am not feeling better and will not feel better by design.  The chemo builds and I will feel worse until it is over.  A few days later they text me the same question again.  Please just send me a joke or pictures or you doing something awesome.  Either would bring a smile to my pallid face.  A week later…”hey how’s it going”…me undergoing 7 hours at the infusion center and popping pills like tic tacs.    

Weirder Things Happen When You Have Cancer

Weirder things happen when you have cancer.  I ran out of meds and made an impromptu trip that I’ll call “fear and loathing at the King Supers Pharmacy.”  The meds weren’t ready yet so I tried to dizzily walk around the store but immediately was so out of breath that I rested on a stack of 12 packs by the pharmacy window.  The lady in front of me in line turned to me and said “do you know fear is just an illusion.”  Some other woman tried to cut in front of both of us but this strange lady protested.  She continued, “You can do anything but they don’t want you to know that.”  She brought up Jesus and the government.  “I see you,” she said.  “You are important.” I looked her in the eye.  I could see the chemo in her face and she wore a cancer beanie like I had on.  Not because you care what you look like but simply because your head gets really cold without hair.  “I know you,” she said.  “I have been fighting cancer for a couple of years and have another disease too.”  “I see you.  You are important,” she kept repeating loudly like a street corner prophet.  The other woman waiting looked terrified and I had tears in my eyes.  I don’t know if it was being overwhelmed in my weak nauseous state in desperate need of emetics, or whether it was because cancer is f*cking lonely, or whether it was because I could see the humanity screaming out from someone who had been through a years long battle of repeated treatments with cancer and more.  She could be any of us.    

What Can I Do To Fight Cancer

What can you actually do to fight cancer?  If you know me personally, I am probably one of the most unwavering optimists in your life.  I can show up every day and try to keep a positive attitude.  I can never miss a treatment. This is hugely important and easier said than done.  However, it sits in the back of my mind that much of my attitude or my thoughts may not matter.  It is all up to how the drugs take to the cancer and to the metabolic pathways of the cells over time.  I try to envision the cancer shrinking.  I take walks around the block at least 4 times a week despite it all.  We do what we can one day at a time.

Support Comes From Surprising Places

Through this experience so far I have had extended family that flew across the country during my 3rd cycle and were a half mile away but didn’t drop by or call.  I’ve also had distant acquaintances offer to take me to all day infusion appointments or text me weekly motivations to get through this.  Some people are great with stuff like cancer and others suck at it.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  

In all, the outpouring of support that I have received has been kind of amazing to me.  Neighbors have shoveled our driveway every single time it snowed.  Our freezer is full of overflow meals and a group of my friends gave me a pretty much endless Door Dash gift card that has been a godsend.  Total strangers who follow this site have reached out with love, support, and words of wisdom that I never expected.  I have connected with cancer survivors, health care professionals, and many of you have shared your stories, your well wishes, and your appreciation for some of these writings.  As a guy who has always been fiercely independent, I have leaned on you and I thank you.  In a time of heightened anger and partisanship I have gotten a huge dose of how good people are.  

Support Comes From Familiar Places

My siblings each flew out to be there during chemo which was great even if I couldn’t express it very well because of the fatigue. My parents pitched in to help with meals, driving, and chemo as well. At the center of it all my lady took on everything that I normally do and more. She organized schedules, was there at every critical appointment and did it all while working and going through cancer 2nd hand herself. Everyone asks how I am doing but few ask her. Cancer spouses go through it too but are even more powerless and have less support in some ways. I wish I could say that I had the presence of mind to see this from the beginning but the truth is that I am only realizing it now as chemo winds down. Thank you partner.

I Finished Chemotherapy

It is the end of my final week of chemo and has been a few days since my last treatment!!!  My sense of taste has come back a little bit more when eating and water tastes less like metal.  I don’t know if the chemo was successful.  I will get a scan in a couple of weeks.  If that looks good, I am in “remission” for years with tests and the ever present possibility that the next scan shows tumors.  What I am saying here is that I need to adjust to a new normal of living life despite risk and fears.  In some ways it is really just an exaggerated form of what I had to do to claim my financial independence.  We could all die or get cancer at any time after all.  

Am I Cancer Free?

Those who have been through this have told me that if the first scan is negative everyone will want to celebrate but I may not be there yet.  They say I may also benefit from some therapy or talking with others.  It is not a trivial experience to go through a disease that has a chance of killing you and I am a big proponent of prioritizing mental health.  For me strength is getting the therapy.  That is the hard but necessary thing.  Weakness is gritting my teeth like some 1980’s action hero only to end up with PTSD or having things vent out in weird ways onto those close to me that I care about most. 

I am hopeful to be adventuring through life and finance again and sharing whatever seems like it might help or inspire others along the way. My goal is always to live my best life under whatever conditions I am presented with.  So I guess here I go boldly one day at a time.

Feel free to share your own experience, ask a question, or offer comment below…