It’ll Kill Ya

One of the many things that I’ve experienced thanks to my stint in the hospital during this year is a major disruption to what was a solid sleep schedule. Shoot, within a few minutes after pulling the covers up, I was out like a log and woke up a few minutes before my alarm would ever make a peep. It was a beautiful thing. With all the pharmacopeia swimming in my blood now, it’s anyone’s guess when and if I’m going to sleep, so I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling, reading, dorking around on Facebook, and just plain ruminating in the wee hours of the morning.

Suffice it to say, when you’ve been diagnosed with a fatal illness, your thoughts tend to wander off into territory that was otherwise uncharted before and considered the purview of people like clergy and philosophers. Well, just like foxhole conversions, these kinds of situations turn everyone into metaphysical novitiates of sorts. We all have opinions and I’m no different. It’s just that my opinions were now flavored by real possibility instead of just conjecture and casual conversation or actual study.

I really didn’t even want to go down this street.  I mean, who wants to talk about death seriously? There are a lot of people who talk about death and dying for a lot of different reasons. You obviously have the funeral and end-of-life industry folk who make their living off of this transition and then there are the people who actually are serious in their metaphysical and spiritual in their discussions, and then the people who talk about it as some sort of intellectual topic or ideal. Me? I dunno. I’ve not come to any real conclusion except that I’m at peace with the whole thing. It’s not like I’m ready to go as I’ve written before, but in a sense, I’m OK with it in that I’m not afraid. There is no fear because I was so close to it and didn’t realize it. Maybe there’s the ‘ignorance is bliss’ element to it. I will say up front, the process kind of unnerves me still. I’m really over the pain and discomfort thing as you might imagine.

It’s funny, in a sense, that as we age, there seems to be barely any cognizance of even the concept of death. We’re immortal as youths! Nothing can touch us. The rise of so-called extreme sports is more technological than anything else, but that attitude has been around forever. It’s exhilarating, it’s awesome, it’s amazing…and it challenges death in the face. The degree of difficulty, the bungee jumping, the Red Bull jump from the edge of space and so on thrill us and we see death pushed farther away from us.

And then we get older.

Our hair lines recede, the six-pack ab is relegated to our younger brothers, and the guy we see in the mirror looks more like our dad than ourselves. And…then there are the softball games, nights out steamin’ with the boys, and other things we used to do without thinking that now take a while longer to catch up. That bungee jump is looking more like a mid-life challenge to overcome the mini-van than adrenaline rush now.

You know the drill. We all have our list of things. The real irony for me is that over the past few years, my endurance has shot through the ceiling. I’ve participated in some very long bicycle rides for charity that I don’t think I would have been able to complete as a younger man. And it was at my apex of participating that I was faced with my own mortality: you, son, have acute myeloid leukemia.  You have 90 days to live unless we treat this aggressively.  Yeah, that’ll kill ya.

It wasn’t the short thing I had for cigarettes as an 18 year-old.

It wasn’t the hazardous career I had as a navy pilot.

It wasn’t the high-stress job I had on the road with less-than-optimum nutrition.

It wasn’t the possibility of getting taken out while cycling by some distracted teenager texting on her new iPhone.

It was a totally-out-of-the-blue diagnosis unrelated to anything I could have imagined – leukemia.

So, it’s back to laying in a motorized hospital bed thinking. There are a lot of complications in treating this rather nasty cancer I’ve got. It’s not like I have a tumor that you can feel and that causes pain, but it’s in my blood and is every bit as insidious as a physical tumor – perhaps more so. The chemicals do their job and then there are the side effects to these chemicals that make me feel oh-so-lovely, so I get more chemicals to offset them. I have the mother of all pillboxes to manage them plus a written grid/guide to keep them all well-organized and on-schedule. And I now get to give myself subcutaneous injections to keep my blood sugar leveled out (another side effect) each night. So, between the massive weight gain/loss and the injections, I will be extra sensitive to women who suffer PMS and diabetics…but whether it’s this cancer or either of these conditions would make me want to die outright.

You know, there are just too many things the media would try to scare you about. But life is too good, and at the sound of being cliché, too precious to ignore or to pass of as for granted, regardless of one’s age. As we age, even though it may seem so, life isn’t ethical, it just is. I’m 50 years old and while I’m more at peace with my own mortality, it’s no less a precious thing to me than when I was in my 20s.

A lot of what I find myself writing has to do with different perspectives on similar elements. I come again to mortality not because I’m morbid or that I even face it in a real way, but rather find myself full of gratitude for the little things and hope that you don’t have to go through what I have in order to come to some of the things I’ve seen and felt. I won’t suggest being a hedonist, but rather making the most of what you have. Live your life without regret, without fear, without ulterior motive. You just don’t know what might happen tomorrow. After all…it’ll kill ya.

Be well, stay strong, and much love to you all!

Music for today from Phil Collins – True Colors

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh, I realize
It's hard to take courage

In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors
Are beautiful like a rainbow

Show me a smile then
Don't be unhappy
Can't remember when
I last saw you laughing

If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
Your true colors
Are beautiful like a rainbow

Can't remember when I last saw you laughing

If this world makes you crazy
You've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors
True colors are shining through

I see your true colors
And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors
Are beautiful like a rainbow

Fear Not

You’d have to be totally numbed to life to not have some fear about a cancer diagnosis.  Sure, every fiber of my machismo bristled at the thought that I was somehow infested with this thing that would try to take me out of the game on a permanent basis, but the real me – you know, the one who has feelings and kids and people who love me – that one was pretty damned scared. My military training was in full force in that I put on that brave face and tried to have it out with the doctor. Of course, if you’ve read anything that I wrote about that conversation, you know he pulled the trump card and won. That conversation went something like this:

   Me      I feel fine.  I don’t have any of the symptoms you listed.
   Doc     The pathologist was adamant that you have leukemia. You have 50% monoblast cells in your bone marrow. I want to admit you tonight.  This constitutes a medical emergency.
   Me      Let me get this straight. I feel fine.  I’m on my way to the gym and you want to bring me in here and give me chemicals to make me really sick?
   Doc     (trump card) You could leave tonight and I can pretty much guarantee you that within 30 days, you will be in the Emergency Room very ill and in another 60 days, you’d likely be dead. The choice is yours.

Insert discussion between mom and doctor here. 

   Me      Can I at least take my car home and put it in the garage?
   Doc     (not amused … and not wanting to let me leave to get an overnight bag. Kill joy!)

It was at this point, of course, my mind began to spin and I think there were some obituaries being mentally written at that point. But dammit, this was a VA hospital and I felt like cussin’ like a sailor, although admittedly, I really don’t have much of a potty mouth. This was one of those occasions my mom let the “F” bomb drop once we were on our way out to the car. I think I was in too much shock to let anything out.

A lot has transpired since that day. I’m past the 90-day mark that the doc told me would be my life expectancy if I didn’t get the chemo rolling and now still in the queue for a bone marrow donor. The transplant is a daunting procedure that will knock me for a loop, but I’ve spoken with a number of people who have been through it and are thriving now. The Leukemia-Lymphoma Society set me up to talk with a couple of guys who are survivors, one an eight-year survivor and the other a six-year survivor and I know personally two people who are about a year past their transplant dates. The common thread is that they’re alive and doing well. And that’s where my sights are set.

I harbor no illusions about sailing through it like I have the consolidation chemo treatments, but I’m hopeful it’s not as bad as I have shaped the process in my mind. I think we all tend to do that.  We build up this bogey man in our mind of what something is going to be and we live in that illusion of fear. Sometimes it’s downright debilitating. For me, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve built up the monster of an experience and while the actual event is not really pleasant, it wasn’t what I had imagined. I get through it and wonder why I had turned it into such a big deal. I can be my own worst enemy as I suspect we all can from time to time.

I think that’s why it’s so important to talk things out with others who have actually been through what’s in front of us. They not only help us navigate the mine field of our imagination, they can provide the real comfort we need. Cancer isn’t something any of us should fear. There are things we all can do to live a healthier lifestyle, but I’m living proof that even a healthy lifestyle of daily exercise and a decent diet isn’t going to deter this and I can’t say that genetics played a factor in my case. Everyone in my family lives to be pretty ancient and self-sufficient. Cancer just happens. When I’m on the other side of this, I’ll continue my daily exercise and balanced diet.  The “new normal” will certainly entail a bit more vigilance than before, but I’m going to be OK.

And today, I’m not afraid of tomorrow.  Yup, I’m a bit intimidated about the bone marrow transplant procedure as I do have this allergy to pain, but don’t we all? Actually, I have a relatively high threshold of pain, but I don’t like pushing it any more than the next guy. Truth be told, I’m really getting pretty tired of the needles. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched the Frontline presentation: Facing Death. That’s a laugh a minute, especially since two of the people they featured were dealing with failed bone marrow transplants. Actually, I watched it because of how I see death now. I’m not expecting to die, but I do have to face that eventuality and its possibility, no matter how unlikely, in my treatment. If I can face that ultimate fear, then everything else is pretty much gravy, right? (Nod your head here in agreement).

There are a lot of things in life that elicit fear – and I’m not talking about spiders, snakes, and small spaces. Watch TV for even 30 minutes and pay attention to the language: everyone’s trying to scare us into doing something. Advertisers want us to buy their product or else… and then there’s the danger lurking in our very own kitchen cabinets, details at 6:00… or the other political party is downright unpatriotic and dismantling our freedoms… or it’s just not safe to go to the (you fill in the blank). And the list goes on and on. We give these people even a moment of our attention and we feel threatened and moved to action as our fight-or-flight instinct kicks in.  Our blood pressure rises and we ask our doctor if this medication is right for us and we lock our doors, turn on our security system and become a high-strung hermit that has been scared right out of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by the same system that was created by those noble ideals.

So…stop it!

Stop living in fear. Some of us will have bad things happen to us for no reason that makes sense. Some of us will have our houses burn down because of something that no one could have foreseen; some of us will lose loved ones to circumstances we couldn’t have imagined…and yes, some of us will get cancer. But we can’t live like we’re going to lose it all, but rather, may I suggest making the most of the life you have with those that mean the most to you…and that includes *you* today. And take care of yourself now and say the things you have in your heart to that special someone before you talk yourself out of it. Live your life with gusto and intention and make your decisions devoid of fear. Absolutely, weigh your options and consider the consequences, but don’t *not* do something out of fear.

Music for today - These Times by Safetysuit

 

These times will try hard to define me
And I'll try to hold my head up high
But I've seen despair here from the inside
And it's got a one track mind

And I have this feeling in my gut now
And I don't know what it is I'll find
Does anybody ever feel like,
You're always one step behind?

Now I'm sitting alone here in my bed
I'm waiting for an answer I don't know that I'll get
I cannot stand to look in the mirror
I'm failing
I'm telling you these times are hard
But they will

And I know there's someone out there somewhere
Who has it much worse than I do
But I have a dream inside, a perfect life
I'd give anything just to work
It's like I'm only tryin’ to dig my way out
Of all these thing I can't
And I am
Sitting alone here in my bed

I'm waiting for an answer I don't know that I'll get
I cannot stand to look in the mirror
I'm failing
I'm telling you these times are hard
But they will pass,
They will pass
They will pass
These times are hard
But they will

These times will try hard to define me
But I will hold my head up high
Sitting alone here in my bed
I'm waiting for an answer I don't know that I'll get
I cannot stand to look in the mirror
I'm failing
I'm telling you these times are hard
But they will pass

And I know there's a reason
I just keep hoping it won’t be long ‘til I see it
And maybe if we throw up our hands and believe it!
I'm telling you these times are hard
But they will pass
They will pass
They will pass
These times are hard
But they will pass

Undaunted Courage

Every one of us has to face challenges from time to time. Some of them are personal, some are physical, some are moral, but they stir within us something that is greater than ourselves. One of the challenges I’m most proud of is completing the AIDS LifeCycle – an event raising money to care for people living with HIV and AIDS and the service organizations that care for them.  It involved training far beyond my then 49 year-old frame was prepared for. I thought I was at least a decent cyclist until I came across some of those nasty damned hills in Orange County. I had some days where I felt like I just had to pull over and throw the bicycle off the side of the road and call it quits, but I had a whole team-load of people encouraging me, cajoling me, prodding me, and teasing me to keep going. After all, I was training for an event that wasn’t about me.

 

So, I gave up what I had of a social life and trained on Saturdays and as the event got closer, other days of the week as well. I put up with the blowing sand near Solana Beach and saved a bundle on that microdermabrasion treatment I wasn’t considering, I learned how to change flat tires, and I learned a lot of humility and life lessons along the way. I won’t say that I didn’t have just a little trepidation about doing this 545-mile ride, but I was determined. I had supporters, both financial and physical that made it possible and I had beneficiaries, some I’d visited in training, some I’d heard about as a teammate carried their names on military-style dog tags around his neck, and some I’d met on the side of the road thanking us for remembering their loved ones.  It was profoundly moving because it wasn’t just an ego investment in riding my bicycle a long distance. It forced me to take my eyes off my poor achin’ bod and keep these very real people ever before me. I was inspired, I was moved to tears many times, and I was never the same afterward. My very much daunted and intimidated self was forever changed in the course of a week.

 

I had registered to ride this same event this year and had I not been saddled with a bit of a medical setback at the Salt Lake City VA with an IV pole, would have crossed the line at the Los Angeles VA amid the cheers of the thronging multitude.  No, really…it is a crowd that will make you cry no matter how macho you think you are. I followed my teammates via Facebook as they rode down the coast with pride and envy. They really became an extended family of sorts and I broke out my orange beanie in solidarity with Team OC this week. I can’t say that I’ll have the strength to ride in 2014, but I’m going to do my best to see them off or greet them at the finish line next year…and depending on how my health is the following year, I’ll be looking at making my way down the coast in 2015!

Despite the physical and mental demands of something like this, I did it! (Read about it here if you like). I overcame my doubts, my physical limitations and stretched beyond. In the process, I changed. It made me into someone else. I had someone equate the event to a religious experience, and I guess in a way it was. I think that any major challenge will touch your spirit in some way and you have to rise to that occasion or be destined to repeat the lesson some other way. Suffice it to say, a cancer diagnosis is one of those things that steers your eyes at things that you wouldn’t otherwise look. I’ve written about a number of those things, but it’s fair to say that there are yet many of those lessons in humility, life lessons, and opportunities to face my fears and overcome them.

I believe you can face your own fear with undaunted courage without having to face your mortality. Maybe in my case, that’s the only way for me to stop tending my many irons in the fire long enough to take care of myself for a change.  Maybe not.  I’ll be able to look back at some point and say with some certainty what that is. My hope is that I don’t doom myself to repeat the lesson by ignoring what’s in front of me. I’m still a bit spooked about the future, but I’ve spoken with enough people to know that I can do this. I may falter along the way; I may feel like pulling over and chucking the IV pole out the window; I may feel like my courage just isn’t enough to carry me through, but just like my Team OC compadres, I need you, dear reader to be alongside me.  This, like the commitment to ALC I made, is a long-term deal.  I’ve been told by every survivor that it takes a good year, post-transplant, to feel 100%. I don’t anticipate being sick very much of that time, but healing isn’t a short-term process and it’s not something I can do solo. I need you – all of you.



This is my extended SoCal family - Team OC (Orange County)
at the end of a long, hard, week, yesterday - June 8, 2013.
You can't manufacture those smiles!

I'm sharing a couple of things from this year’s ALC, which ended yesterday, mainly my teammates who gave me the courage to keep going under some pretty rough conditions that included an evacuation by the Red Cross on day 2. Hypothermia for all my friends (and me, too) as well as a video that was shot during last year’s event. It is this kind of support, this kind of pushing through the discomfort, this kind of looking past the here and now to the hopeful future that keeps me going some days. I also want to challenge you to face your fear with undaunted courage and to cheer others on who are giving their all as they plod up a steep hill in their own journey. It’s OK to have reservations, bad days, or even tears, but with people alongside you, you can rise up, get back in the saddle, and succeed…and become a different person in the end.

Be well, stay strong, and much love to you all!

Today’s music:  Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel

In this proud land we grew up strong
We were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail

No fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I've changed my face, I've changed my name
But no-one wants you when you lose

Don't give up 'cause you have friends
Don't give up you're not beaten yet
Don't give up I know you can make it good

Though I saw it all around
Never thought that I could be affected
Thought that we'd be last to go
It is so strange the way things turn
Drove the night toward my home
The place that I was born, on the lakeside
As daylight broke, I saw the earth
The trees had burned down to the ground

Don't give up you still have us
Don't give up we don't need much of anything
Don't give up 'cause somewhere there's a place where we belong

Rest your head
You worry too much
It's going to be alright
When times get rough
You can fall back on us
Don't give up
Please don't give up

Got to walk out of here
I can't take anymore
Going to stand on that bridge
Keep my eyes down below
Whatever may come
and whatever may go
That river's flowing
That river's flowing

Moved on to another town
Tried hard to settle down
For every job, so many men
So many men no-one needs

Don't give up 'cause you have friends
Don't give up you're not the only one
Don't give up no reason to be ashamed
Don't give up you still have us
Don't give up now we're proud of who you are
Don't give up you know it's never been easy
Don't give up 'cause I believe there's a place
There's a place
Where we belong