Life in the Stupid Lane

I meant to write sooner.

That seems to be how I start a lot of these posts lately, which I guess is a good thing if you operate under the assumption that I’ve been busy living my life.

I’d like to think I have been, though there’s nothing overtly special about most of it. I go to work. I go to CrossFit. I go to church. I spend time with people I care about. I come home. Tugboat ignores the expensive bed I bought for him and sleeps in the closet.

Nothing particularly remarkable.

But late at night, when I’m lying in bed writing something like this and wondering why my dog would rather sleep next to my shoes than me, these days seem pretty special lately.

I won’t bury the lead, though. I know why most people come here. It isn’t for detailed updates on Tugboat’s sleeping arrangements or the ramblings of my mundane life.

It’s for the cancer updates.

I get asked about it more often than I expect. People somehow remember when I’m due back at MD Anderson or when another test should be coming, and that continues to surprise me. Not because I don’t think people care, but because everyone has their own lives and problems and calendars full of crap to remember. The fact that people make room in there for mine means more to me than I probably tell them.

This past week I went to Houston for round three of my clinical trial.

They took what seemed like an irresponsible amount of blood from my body, and now I wait another week to find out what it says.

There is one particularly stupid part of this process.

They take my blood in Houston.

Then they mail it to Austin.

Then the results go back to Houston.

Then Houston tells me what Austin said.

The lab in Austin shares a parking lot with my office.

I can see it from the window near my new desk.

My blood is basically across the parking lot from me, and apparently it has to make a round trip across Texas before I’m allowed to know what it knows.

I’ve considered walking over there and asking.

I doubt they’d appreciate some random guy wandering into the building saying, “Hey, I think you have some of my blood.”

And I can only imagine how quickly the situation would deteriorate when they refused to give me the results and I demanded my blood back out of spite.

Then again, maybe the stupid part isn’t the route my blood takes.

Maybe it’s the person it came from.

There is evidence supporting this theory.

At every clinical trial appointment, a nurse asks whether I’ve developed any new symptoms or side effects since my previous visit.

At my last one, I said, “Stigmata.”

I’d ripped open both palms doing too many pull-ups at CrossFit, so naturally I showed her my hands.

I thought this was funny.

She put it in my medical record.

Somewhere inside MD Anderson’s extraordinarily sophisticated medical system is now documentation that I developed stigmata during a cancer clinical trial.

I really hope this drug works.

Obviously because I would prefer not to have cancer.

But also because if this thing eventually becomes mainstream enough to get one of those television commercials where attractive middle-aged people inexplicably kayak while someone rapidly reads the possible side effects, there is now at least a small chance they’ll have to include stigmata.

That would make this whole thing worth it.

Well.

That or getting cured.

For now, that’s about as substantial as my medical update gets.

I feel normal.

Or at least as normal as I’ve ever been, which isn’t necessarily reassuring.

I work. I exercise. I see friends. I make plans. I laugh. I get annoyed. I do all the normal things people do when their blood isn’t taking road trips around Texas trying to determine whether they still have cancer.

And I wait.

I’ve occasionally gotten the impression that some of my medical team wonders why I don’t take all of this more seriously.

I’ve wondered about that myself.

The answer I usually give is that I take it exactly as seriously as I need to, given how little of it I actually control.

But sitting in church today, I realized that isn’t the whole answer.

My pastor was talking about the book of Samuel and, at one point, about sitting with people who knew they were dying. He talked about the difference he’d seen between people who had faith and people who didn’t.

It made me think about my own death.

That’s a strange sentence to type.

Cancer has made sentences like that considerably less strange.

I can’t say that I won’t be scared when my time comes.

I probably will be.

But I think I’ll be excited too.

I believe there’s something after this. More importantly, I believe there’s Someone after this.

And strangely, I think believing that has made me appreciate this a whole lot more.

Maybe that’s why I make jokes.

It isn’t because I don’t understand what’s happening to me. It isn’t because I don’t take cancer seriously. And it certainly isn’t because I think I’m guaranteed a good outcome.

It’s because none of this was ever guaranteed.

Cancer just had the courtesy to point that out.

Before all of this, I think I unconsciously divided life into important days and ordinary ones. There were the trips, celebrations, accomplishments, big moments and things worth remembering.

And then there was everything in between.

I don’t think I believe in the “everything in between” anymore.

There was nothing remarkable about today.

I went to church.

I thought about something my pastor said.

I came home.

Tonight I’m lying in bed writing this while Tugboat sleeps in the closet for reasons known only to Tugboat.

Tomorrow I’ll go to work, where I’ll sit within walking distance of a vial of my own blood that apparently knows more about my future than I do.

Maybe I’ll go to CrossFit and try not to develop any additional biblical symptoms.

Then I’ll come home.

And if that’s all tomorrow turns out to be, that’s enough.

More than enough, actually.

I’ve had a lot of remarkably unremarkable days since this started.

I hope I get a lot more of them.

For now, I don’t have any more cancer updates. In another week, hopefully I’ll know what my blood knows.

Until then, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing.

Living my mundane little life.

And being increasingly amazed that I get to.

It’s been over two weeks since I wrote anything, which, in my world, is pretty good. It means nothing of note has happened, beyond a bit of a strain from doing things too hard at the gym. But that will be fine. Turns out, six months post-surgery, you might not want to try and kill yourself in the sun every day under a barbell… who knew? Clearly, not me.

What I can tell you about treatment is pretty much the same as it was. It’s going pretty easily. I don’t have any side effects, which I guess is good. No one really knows what to expect fully. One of the fun little games you get to play with clinical trials, whether you want to or not. I wouldn’t recommend it, though, because the list they do tell you could occur reads like a horror movie.

I should get some data that might give me insight into the efficacy of things in about three weeks. My second round of treatment ended today, and I have a week-long break before round three starts. On that first day, they’ll take a blood test that should tell me something useful… hopefully. I don’t really think about it that often because there is no real value in dwelling on things I don’t really have any control over.

Honestly, life has been pretty normal, which is nice. It’s strange to write about normality lately, but until things change, it’s refreshing. Life is hard for a lot of us, if not all of us, so these small respites of normalcy are welcome.

The one thing that normal does bring, though, is that life moves on and changes. A lot of people in my life are in a season of change, and as a result, I’m being dragged along with them, for better or worse.

My buddy Dean, who has been one of my closest friends, moved away today, heading up to Minnesota to be closer to his little boy. It didn’t really hit me until today, when we had our last guys’ coffee meetup, our last workout earlier in the week, and one of those goodbyes guys do where it’s, “See you later, dude,” rather than anything more meaningful.

But for six years, he has been one of the most prominent people in my life. We worked out together nearly every day for six years. Drank coffee and a lot of other things… mostly gin and Aperol spritzes together. We traveled together with some other buddies, and I got to see parts of the world I never would have otherwise. We yelled at each other, laughed with each other, drank in excess together, and made memories that I will forever hold dear.

I was with Dean in Montenegro when I first started getting sick. He has been a good friend, and while it sucks to see him go, it’s good to see him prioritize his responsibilities as a dad above anything else.

I start a new job at my current company tomorrow, too. Closing a chapter on working with a group of friends that taught me so, so much about software, management, relationships, how to run a team, and so much more I’ll never be able to put into words.

It’s bittersweet. Change always is.

But for me, like with this battle with cancer, it’s exciting because I don’t know what the future holds. I know I can’t go back to the way things were, but I also have real faith that what is ahead, not just for me, but for all those in my life, will be better tomorrow than it was today, even when today was a great day.

I think that is what I have learned most from all those in my life lately who are going through this change, and that puts a smile on my face during this brief time of normality, like only change can do.

I am probably romanticizing this a lot because I don’t have much else to talk about, the change is very new, and I have no idea what tomorrow brings.

So, like all these posts I usually write, I’ll go to bed soon, reading by lamp light for an hour or so while Tugboat sleeps his fat little butt at the foot of my bed, mad about something I did or didn’t do today.

Normal is pretty good…

Three days into my second clinical trial treatment and, once again, absolutely nothing interesting is happening.

Just like the first treatment, I really don’t have any symptoms to speak of. So when people ask me the question I get asked most often—“How are you doing?”—I don’t have much of an answer beyond, “Still good.” I understand why people ask, and I genuinely appreciate that they do. Unfortunately, I don’t have any new medical data to give you. I don’t know if the treatment is working. I don’t know how effective it is. I don’t know much of anything yet.

What I do know is that I still feel good. I’m exercising hard most days, usually outside, in the Texas heat, while doing my best not to die of heat stroke. The irony of dying of heat stroke before cancer would be, well… ironic.

I know I said in a previous post that I didn’t really want to talk about cancer all the time, but treatment is important, and I know it’s what most people want to know about. That and Tugboat. For those of you keeping score, Tugboat remains fat and happy.

My nephew came into town last weekend to stay with me, and Tugboat completely lost his mind with happiness. My nephew was considerably less interested in Tugboat than Tugboat was in him, but that didn’t seem to matter. Tugboat was thrilled just to have another human being around who might possibly be willing to pet him.

It was a good weekend. Even if kids are basically energy vampires.

Having him here got me thinking a lot about my own childhood and, specifically, my Uncle Marvin.

When my dad died of cancer, I was six years old. My older brother was eight, my sister was four, and my youngest brother Micah was two… I think. I honestly don’t remember the exact ages anymore.

What I do remember is spending the summer in a little country town outside of Houston called Manvel with my Uncle Marvin after my dad died. My mom had a lot to deal with. Four kids, a husband who had just died, and one of those kids being a six-year-old version of me was probably more than anyone should have had to handle at once.

So Uncle Marvin stepped in.

He spent far more time and effort than I could possibly have appreciated at six years old making sure my sister and I were happy, unburdened by the weight of a parent’s death, and loved unconditionally no matter what.

I remember the little things. He let us drive his truck down country roads. He took us to Astros games. He let us jump on his old, creaky trampoline. He drove us around his giant country yard on a three-wheeler, which was basically a death trap considering how easy those things were to tip over.

And here’s the thing I didn’t understand then: We didn’t think about any of it. We didn’t think about cancer. We didn’t think about death. We didn’t worry about what was happening to our family. We were just kids having fun.

Looking back now, I realize that summer was probably one of the darker periods my family ever went through. But that’s not how I remember it. I remember it as a good time. And I think that’s because Uncle Marvin made it one.

That realization stuck with me when my nephew came to visit. I found myself trying to give him the same thing Uncle Marvin had given me without ever realizing how valuable it was.

I wanted him to have a weekend where he didn’t have to think about my cancer. I didn’t want him worrying about me, asking whether I was okay, or wondering what was going to happen. I wanted him to just be my nephew and me to just be his uncle. A weekend where he could just be a kid.

I don’t think I succeeded quite as well as Uncle Marvin did, but I think the boy left happy. Hopefully with some good memories, too.

He wants to be a chef, so we did some cooking lessons. We made meatballs and homemade marinara sauce, along with crème brûlée. We played far more video games than we should have. We ate most of the junk food Trader Joe’s has to offer. And then, because apparently I am incapable of letting a child have a completely relaxing weekend, I took him to CrossFit on Sunday.

I’m not sure he loved that last part. He didn’t complain, though, so I’m fairly certain I still solidified myself as the fun uncle.

That is an important title for me to hold onto. Especially now.

Because the uncomfortable truth is that I don’t know how long I’m going to be around. I don’t know if I’ll be at his wedding. I don’t know if I’ll meet his kids. I don’t know if I’ll get to watch him become the chef he says he’s going to be.

Maybe I will.

I really hope I will.

But I don’t get to assume that anymore.

And that’s what made this weekend mean more to me than it probably would have before cancer entered my life.

I realized that I wanted to make sure that, when London gets to be my age, he can look back on this weekend—and hopefully a lot more weekends in the future—the same way I look back on my summers with Uncle Marvin.

I want him to remember the good times. The meatballs. The homemade marinara. The crème brûlée. The video games. The ridiculous amount of junk food. Maybe even the CrossFit workout.

I want him to remember that, even when things weren’t easy for me, I never made him carry that burden. I want him to remember that his uncle loved him and wanted him to be happy. I want him to have memories he can pull out of his head when he’s older, when life is hard, and think, “Man, those were good times.”

And maybe smile.

That got me thinking about something I’ve written about a couple of times before.

Legacy.

I’ve said a few times in this blog that I think legacy is mostly pointless. I’m starting to think I was wrong.

Not completely wrong.

I still don’t care how the world remembers me. I don’t need my name on a building. I don’t need a plaque. I don’t need some stupid statue of me that pigeons eventually shit on. I don’t need to accomplish something great on a grand scale.

But I would like to leave behind memories.

I’d like my nieces and nephews to remember me as the fun uncle. The guy who took them places, taught them things, fed them ridiculous amounts of food, played games with them, and occasionally made them exercise against their will.

I’d like them to have memories they can pull out when they’re older and think, “Those were good times.”

That feels like a legacy worth having.

And then I started wondering about Uncle Marvin.

I wonder if he ever thinks about his own legacy. I wonder if he realizes that it extends far beyond me.

Because the things he did for me when I was a little boy going through one of the hardest things a kid can possibly go through have now influenced how I treat my own nieces and nephews.

He probably never thought about it that way.

He wasn’t trying to build a legacy. He was just taking care of his sister’s kids. He was just trying to make a really shitty summer a little less shitty for a couple of kids.

But here I am, almost forty years later, trying to give my nephew the same kind of memories he gave me.

And maybe that’s what legacy actually is.

It’s not being remembered by everyone. It’s not changing the world. It’s not doing something important enough that people write about you after you’re gone.

Maybe it’s just doing something good for somebody that sticks with them long enough that, decades later, they do something good for someone else.

Maybe that’s the whole thing.

Maybe London will remember this weekend. Maybe he won’t. Kids forget a lot.

But I remember Uncle Marvin.

And because of him, I know what kind of uncle I want to be.

Maybe someday London will be the fun uncle. Maybe he’ll take his nieces and nephews somewhere they probably shouldn’t be driving a three-wheeler. Maybe he’ll teach them how to cook. Maybe he’ll feed them too much junk food and let them stay up too late.

And maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll look back on those moments the same way I look back on mine.

If that happens, then Uncle Marvin’s legacy will have reached a whole lot farther than he ever could have imagined.

It will have reached me. And then London. And maybe whoever comes after him.

I used to think legacy was about what people remember about you.

Now I think maybe it’s about what people carry forward because you were there.

Maybe legacy does matter after all.

Today is my birthday.

Which, honestly, I haven’t cared much about for most of my adult life. But this year feels a little different for obvious reasons. If they’re not obvious, maybe go read a few of the earlier posts.

I don’t really remember doing anything for my birthday last year. I was in the middle of chemo, I know that much, but beyond that I don’t think I did much of anything.

This year I took the day off, mostly turned my phone off, and spent a couple of hours reading at my favorite coffee shop with Tugboat. It was awesome.

That’s about the most exciting—or even interesting—thing that’s happened over the last couple of weeks, and honestly, that’s kind of nice.

I’ve finished the first round of my clinical trial, and I don’t have any data yet that tells me whether it’s working. Surprisingly, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would.

I think that has something to do with a conversation I had at the hospital.

While I was waiting in the infusion center, I ended up talking with an older man whose cancer was much further along than mine. He was one of those guys who just wanted to pass along a little wisdom, and considering I usually need all the help I can get, I was happy to listen.

He only really gave me one piece of advice.

“Don’t let your life be defined by cancer, no matter what happens.”

I’ve thought about that conversation a lot.

It’s probably part of the reason I haven’t written much lately. I’ve noticed that telling people my cancer isn’t gone tends to generate pity more than anything else, and that kind of sucks.

I don’t really want to be pitied.

I’d much rather be admired for not letting this shit break me.

Which is funny to write because that’s basically the mantra of the main character in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series—the audiobooks that have gotten me through more long drives to and from the hospital than just about anything else.

I’d try to explain the premise, but you’d probably decide I have a brain tumor in addition to colon cancer. You’re better off reading a synopsis or watching a couple of YouTube clips.

But the main character’s mantra is simple:

“You will not break me.”

He’s talking about the monsters trying to kill him, but he’s also talking about the baggage he’s carried his whole life. It’s a little cheesy, sure.

I still love it.

It’s become a pretty good mantra for me, too.

My buddy Mike even got me a sign with those words on it for my birthday. It’ll probably end up hanging somewhere private in my house where I can see it on the days I need the reminder. I have to assume there are still a few of those days ahead.

But they won’t be anything I can’t handle.

For now, things are about as good as can reasonably be expected.

Round two of the trial starts next week, and after that I’ll have a much better idea whether it’s doing what we all hope it’s doing.

Either way, it won’t break me.

And I think it’s time I started writing more about the things that define me a whole lot better than this cancer shit ever will.

Ending on a colon caner pun still feels right…

A bit more time has passed than I meant since my last post. I’m now three weeks into the first month of my clinical trial, and so far there isn’t much to say about how it’s going because I don’t have any real data points since the treatments began.

I did get a baseline blood test—the same one that first told me my cancer wasn’t gone. That number has quadrupled, but it still represents an extremely low amount of cancer DNA in my bloodstream. What it does tell us is that those first few tests weren’t flukes. There is cancer somewhere, and it’s growing.

It wasn’t a good day when those results came in, but it also wasn’t unexpected. My medical team will check again in a few weeks to see if the trial is working. We’ll see what happens.

For now, life goes on as best it can.

Which has been a frustrating thing for me lately.

This is going to sound a little like a pity party, and maybe for today it is. The reason is simple: life seems to be going on without me.

What I mean is, the longer this cancer shit continues, the longer I feel like I’m being held hostage by it—to the point where I can’t live life the way I normally would or the way I imagined I would in the future.

Maybe the worst thing about cancer is that it traps you in a way you don’t fully realize until it’s already stolen a big chunk of your life.

For over a year now, life has been on hold for all sorts of shit reasons. The ostomy bags made travel too difficult to even attempt because everything was so new and uncertain. Radiation required me to stay tethered to a hospital as if I were Tugboat out for a walk with whoever happened to be holding the leash that day. Surgery and recovery slowed me down for almost three months. Now this clinical trial requires so many blood draws and conference calls that I think they might just be seeing how much blood they can take before I finally run out.

All of that makes planning anything that isn’t medical—or at least very short term—nearly impossible. That’s been the hardest part of cancer, at least for me, and by extension for anyone I would have otherwise been out living life with.

I didn’t realize that going into this, and I don’t think it’s talked about very much. Everyone talks about beating cancer. Not many people talk about what it feels like while you’re waiting to find out if you’re beating it. That’s the really shitty part of all this. The longer it goes on, the more frustrating it becomes as you watch life pass you by from a hospital waiting room, an infusion center, or the window of your car while driving the 184 miles back and forth between home and the hospital.

But like with everything, I try to find the silver lining.

While this particular frustration has been harder to work through than most, there’s always hope. Hope that soon I’ll finally get to check off some of those bucket list items I wrote about when I started this blog. Hope that when all of this is behind me, I’ll have new, unexpected hopes that could only exist because I went through something like this.

That’s actually kind of a cool thing to think about when I stop long enough to do it.

Thankfully, I have about 20 more hospital visits and roughly 4,000 more miles of driving ahead of me to think about exactly that. So I guess even though the frustration keeps growing, maybe my hope in the unknown is growing right alongside it.

How was that for wrapping things up on an upbeat note?

Tugboat is sitting on the floor next to me, completely unconcerned with any of this. His only question is whether I’m going to take him for a walk before bed.

So maybe being tethered to something isn’t always a bad thing. Tugboat seems pretty okay with it… most of the time.

Maybe I just need to be more like that fat little corgi.

I’m finishing out the first week of this clinical trial, and for the most part I’ve been asymptomatic. They told me I might have high blood pressure, but since I have no idea what high blood pressure is supposed to feel like, I can’t tell if this low-grade headache is my sinuses or a side effect. Honestly, I haven’t even wanted to ask because I don’t think I really want to know. I’d rather assume it’s my sinuses and that it’ll go away. That feels like a better mindset anyway.

I think I need that mindset, too.

Ever since it became apparent that I still have cancer in me somewhere, my mind has started wandering into places I don’t consciously want it to go whenever I’m not focused on something important. My little sister would probably try to diagnose me with something beyond cancer, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening.

What I mean is this: if anything feels even slightly out of the ordinary, my brain immediately jumps to, “Is that the cancer?”

For the last couple of days, my left trap and upper back have been sore. When I wake up in the middle of the night because of a sharp pain there, my first thought—before I’m even fully awake—is that it must be cancer.

Tugboat is not at all happy when this happens.

I tend to jolt awake, and since he sleeps on the left side of the bed near my feet, he gets jolted awake too. I assume if he could talk, the glare I can feel him giving me in the dark would be accompanied by something like:

“Hey, dumbass. It’s not cancer. Two days ago you spent an hour pushing and pulling a sled behind the gym in the middle of a Texas summer without drinking enough water. You strained a muscle. Stop waking me up and go back to sleep.”

Since he can’t actually talk, he settles for huffing dramatically or occasionally snapping at the back of my feet under the covers before going back to sleep.

He’s probably right.

It’s highly unlikely this cancer is growing anywhere quickly, if at all. The whole point of this trial is to kill it, so assuming it’s already causing physical pain isn’t exactly the logical conclusion.

Unfortunately, logic doesn’t always get a vote.

My subconscious likes to throw these thoughts at me before I even have a chance to react, and that’s frustrating as hell.

I don’t have a great solution yet, but I’ve been experimenting.

I tried reading before bed, but that doesn’t work because the book I’m currently obsessed with is also incredibly depressing. I should probably switch to something lighter, but it’s just too good to put down.

I used to watch random YouTube videos, but last week the algorithm decided to be an asshole.

It served up one of my favorite videos ever, made by some friends of mine more than a decade ago, called A Tribute to Denali. I highly recommend it, even though I’d completely forgotten what it was actually about.

It’s a love letter to a guy’s dog.

What I forgot was that the guy in the story—Ben—also had colon cancer.

It’s funny what you do and don’t remember about something until you can relate to it yourself. Everyone remembers the dog because everyone can relate to loving a dog. I honestly didn’t even remember the cancer part beyond a funny line about rabies.

The video ends with one of my favorite lines ever, and rather than spoil it, I’ll just tell you to go search for it.

It’s beautiful.

It’s also not exactly what I need before bed these days.

So what were my other options?

I briefly considered heroin, but I don’t know where to buy it, I don’t know how to inject it, and if I’m being honest, I have enough PTSD from people sticking needles directly into my veins that I’m going to pass on that hobby.

I already quit drinking bourbon, so all those bottles collecting dust aren’t much help either.

That leaves me with one remaining option besides the various woo-woo suggestions from well-meaning friends who don’t believe in science, medicine, or basically anything resembling common sense.

Video games.

I’d forgotten how perfect video games are before bed.

They’re an escape from reality in a way that takes me back to one of the happiest periods of my life. Today’s games are incredible, but they’re also so much more advanced than the memories that permanently occupy the happiest corner of my brain.

When my brothers and I were little—I think I was seven—my dad had just died, my family was dirt poor, although I didn’t really understand that at the time, and the original Nintendo had just come out.

I didn’t even know what a Nintendo was.

Somehow my mom managed to get one for us for Christmas.

To this day, that still blows my mind.

You see, we were poor. Really poor. Getting a Nintendo back then would’ve been like someone handing you ownership of an NFL franchise for Christmas. It was that ridiculously impossible.

And yet somehow, Mom pulled it off.

For the next year, I don’t think my brothers and I left the room where it lived except for school, food, and the once-a-week mandatory shower our mom insisted three gross little boys take whether we wanted to or not.

We played Super Mario Bros., Top Gun, Section Z, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, and the original Legend of Zelda until our thumbs probably didn’t have fingerprints left on them.

When I sit down and really think about it, I can’t come up with many happier memories.

So these days, before bed, when my brain wants to wander into places I’d rather it didn’t, I pick up a controller instead.

And it works.

I go to sleep smiling.

I think Tugboat would agree that’s a whole lot better than the alternatives.

So, as I wrap this up, my shoulder still hurts, my clinical trial is going well, and a video game is somehow helping me smile before bed.

Life isn’t too bad…

Even if it’s wildly uncertain right now.

Turns out getting repeatedly killed by a video game is a surprisingly healthy distraction from worrying about everything else.

 

A Tribute to Denali – https://vimeo.com/122375452 

Today the clock started.

At noon, my clinical trial officially began.

I meant to let everyone know sooner that I had finally gotten the insurance mess sorted out and completed the last test I needed last week, but I just ran out of time. That may end up being a theme for me over the next six months.

The clock is running now.

I have 180 days in this trial. Which means, at the very least, I have 180 days to be overly confident that I’m going to be cancer-free when they’re over. If not, it’ll probably be time to start facing a different set of realities. The kind that involve conversations about quality of life versus quantity.

I know nobody really enjoys reading that. Trust me, I don’t exactly enjoy writing it.

But I’ve become a pretty practical person over the last couple of years. I’d love to tell you it’s because I’ve matured, but that would be a lie. I probably never will, no matter how long I live.

I think it’s just because I’ve always worried more about other people than I do about myself.

Before I go any further, though, I want to make something very clear. I believe this trial is going to work.

Nothing about today changed that. I’m not writing this because I’ve suddenly lost hope. I’m writing it because starting the trial doesn’t make death any less possible. It just gives me a timeline that makes pretending it’s impossible feel a little dishonest.

So I think about it. Probably a healthy amount.

Not because I’m expecting it, but because if things ever do go the wrong way, I want to leave as little for the people I love to carry as possible.

After my dad died, for years I assumed he was the one who suffered the most. Cancer absolutely ravaged him. Thankfully, I was too young to really understand most of what was happening or remember much of the worst of it.

What I do remember is everyone else.

I don’t think that anymore.

That’s the cruel thing about death. The person who dies isn’t really the one who suffers. It’s the people left behind who have to carry everything that comes after.

So lately I’ve found myself doing things I never imagined I’d be doing in my forties. Getting a will together. Making a list of all the important stuff. Making sure people know where everything is.

Trying to figure out how to get away with tax fraud so that if things do go south, whatever is left ends up with my family instead of Uncle Sam.

Plus, I kind of like the idea of committing tax fraud as I’m walking out the door that is life.

I’m probably romanticizing fraud a little too much there, but whatever.

With those things finally starting to get checked off the list, today felt different.

Today wasn’t another scan. It wasn’t another surgery. It wasn’t another delay because insurance decided to remind me why everyone hates insurance companies.

Today was Day One.

I was back on the ninth floor of the Mays Building at MD Anderson, sitting in the infusion center on one of those hospital beds that apparently gives me a little PTSD from the months I spent there during chemo.

Thankfully, this visit was easy. One IV. About an hour. A nap. Then they sent me home, and I drove myself back to Austin.

For the next six months, I’ll take one pill every day for 21 days, take a week off, and then do it all over again.

Honestly, I don’t think this part is going to be that hard.

I also don’t have some overwhelming desire to suddenly start living differently.

I’m not going skydiving or Rocky Mountain climbing or doing anything else from that annoying Tim McGraw song about how you’re supposed to start living once you find out you’re dying. That just seems dumb.

Tomorrow I’ll go to work. Then I’ll go to the gym. Then I’ll probably eat some fat kid food.

Life is still life.

And if you’ve read this far, I hope that’s the biggest thing you take away from all of this.

I believe this trial is going to work.

I’ll spend the next 180 days assuming it will.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up, take my pill, and move on to Day Two.

It’s Tuesday evening. I had expected to start my clinical trial yesterday and have something of interest to write about today, maybe even something like the trial immediately giving me a superpower.

That is not what happened.

I didn’t start the trial. No superpowers. Not even the mildly inconvenient kind.

Last week I started driving to Houston at 5 a.m. for two different tests that were prerequisites for the clinical trial. Thank God for self driving, because by 7 a.m. I was already in that familiar state where you are technically awake but also absolutely not functioning at full human capacity. Waze was already telling me I was going to be 15 minutes late for my first appointment. I hate being late, so I called ahead and they told me it didn’t matter. An EKG takes five minutes. They can see me whenever I get there.

Which, in hindsight, is about as clear a warning sign as you can get without someone explicitly telling you today is going to be a bad day.

I’m not usually one to believe in foreshadowing, but that was pretty hard to ignore.

I got to the hospital at 8:15 and was done with test number one by 8:30. The first test was in the main building of MD Anderson and the second was in the Mays building. There is a long sky bridge between them and a coffee shop along the way in the Rotary House.

I stopped for coffee.

Hospital coffee has a very specific personality. I don’t think it is intentionally bad. In a hospital everything is either trying to save your life or trying to kill you. Coffee is doing neither, which honestly might be worse.

At the time I was too tired to fully appreciate the symbolism.

By the time I got to my second appointment I found out that insurance had not approved the test yet. My medical team was, as always, great. They were working on it, communicating, and doing everything they could.

I don’t blame them.

I do, however, blame the insurance company for things I probably should not write on the internet without cooling off first.

What followed was seven hours in a waiting room with no food, no coffee, no book, no Steam Deck, and no real answers about whether the test would happen at all. Just sitting there watching the day slowly turn into something I was no longer in control of.

Eventually I had to head home because Tugboat was home alone. I had originally expected to be gone for about six hours. I was on hour ten.

The drive home was mostly self driving again, which was probably for the best. I did make one stop for real coffee and three tacos from a place that looked extremely sketchy and somehow delivered exactly what I needed. So, silver linings.

The test I didn’t get was a cardiac imaging study using nuclear medicine. It is one of the last prerequisites for the clinical trial. Insurance denied it outright regardless of what MD Anderson said. Their reasoning was that an echocardiogram was sufficient given my age and fitness.

The subtext felt pretty clear. This is cheaper, so this is what we are doing.

The problem is that MD Anderson did not have any echocardiogram appointments available before the clinical trial cutoff date. So everything got stuck in that very specific kind of medical bureaucracy limbo where everyone agrees there is a solution but no system can actually produce it in time.

Naturally, I took this well.

There was a brief moment where I started mentally assembling the required ingredients for Molotov cocktails. That bourbon collection that had been quietly going unused for the last year, combined with all the medical supplies the hospital had given me over the last year that I had also not used, suddenly felt like they had a very specific and extremely unhelpful purpose.

I did not act on any of it.

Eventually my medical team was able to get me scheduled at The Woodlands for the test, which means I should still be able to start the clinical trial on Monday.

I am currently putting the metaphorical Molotov cocktail ingredients back where they belong. For now.

I have always disliked insurance. Not the people working in it, but the system itself. I am sure I do not see all of its complexities, but from where I sit it often feels like a system where cost becomes the only variable that really matters, even when it collides directly with time, access, and sometimes urgency.

And I will be honest, that part tends to pull on older memories. Things I don’t usually sit with for long, but that show up anyway when you are alone in a hospital waiting room for hours with nothing to do but think.

At some point the anger shows up. Then it just sits there. Until someone close to me reminds me that I am not really in a position to judge an entire system or every person in it based on the worst version of what that system produces. That is a hard thing to argue with, even when you are still annoyed.

There is a quote from Ted Lasso that kept coming back to me. Ted says something to Coach Beard along the lines of hoping that either all of us, or none of us, are judged by the actions of our weakest moments, but by the strength we show when, and if, we are ever given a second chance.

I don’t know that I have anything fully resolved here. I just know that idea sticks. That people are more than the worst function of the systems they are part of. And that anger, while very real, does not have to be the final version of the story.

Tonight Tugboat is snoring at the end of the bed like none of this happened. Monday starts one hell of a new chapter.

See you then.

I sat down at my computer this morning intending to write about my clinical trial.

The start date is set now. The appointments are scheduled. Things are finally moving forward. I figured I should probably start writing more regularly again as all of this ramps up.

Then Tugboat looked over at me from across the room like I was making a terrible decision.

He was right.

I’ve spent so much time over the last year thinking about what I might miss out on if things go the wrong way that I sometimes forget about all the things I still get to do right now. The little things. The ordinary things. The things that probably don’t sound important until you start realizing they’re actually everything.

So instead of writing, I put on my shoes, put in my earbuds, turned on an audiobook, and took Tugboat for a walk. It was his second walk of the morning, but that didn’t seem to matter to him.

We made our way down Fifth Street toward Nate’s Baked Goods, my favorite neighborhood coffee shop. Tugboat stopped every few feet to sniff or mark something he had already sniffed or marked a thousand times before, and I listened to The Vegetarian by Han Kang. So far, it’s really good. Also really bizarre. I have absolutely no idea where it’s going, but I enjoyed listening to it while Tugboat and I slowly wandered through the neighborhood.

When we got to the coffee shop, I switched from listening to one book to reading another because apparently I don’t know how to consume stories one at a time. I spent about an hour reading The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner while Tugboat collected treats and belly rubs from the yoga girls getting out of Black Swan’s 9 a.m. class.

I still can’t adequately explain what The Flamethrowers is about. As best I can tell, it’s about a girl dating an Italian guy whose family makes motorcycles and then they go to Italy. That’s probably doing the book a tremendous disservice. But I’m enjoying it, and I’m hoping to finish it tonight before bed.

After the coffee shop, I spent a couple of hours at the gym with friends doing squats, deadlifts, power cleans, and pushing and pulling a sled around in the Texas heat. I sweated out what felt like every ounce of water in my body and then sat in the sauna to make sure I got the rest. I have a love-hate relationship with every minute of it. But somewhere along the way, I’ve found myself becoming grateful for every rep. Every set. Every workout I still have the energy to do.

The rest of the day was spent doing ordinary things. I cooked tandoori chicken. Took a nap. Walked Tugboat to the dog park and Healthy Pet. Called my mom twice. Some days we don’t have much to talk about, but those conversations are always welcome.

I also stopped by Trader Joe’s and picked up some food for Ruben, the homeless guy who lives on the corner near me. He’s a really nice guy. A little crazy, maybe, but loved by God just as much as I am. Buying him crackers and black beans isn’t something I do because I think I’m a good person. It’s something I do because it feels like a privilege God has given me. I still don’t know how he opens the cans of beans. But somehow he manages. So I keep buying them. It’s only a few dollars worth of food. I never mind.

Later in the afternoon I watched a few Yes Theory videos about people finding incredible community in places the world says it shouldn’t exist. Those stories always make me dream a little. They remind me there are still places I want to see and people I want to meet.

When I finally came back to my computer this evening, I spent a long time staring at the blank screen. Not writing. Just thinking.

And it hit me that I’ve spent so much of the last year worrying about losing life that I’ve sometimes overlooked the life God keeps giving me every single day. Not the big moments. Not bucket-list experiences. Not accomplishments.

The small things.

Walking Tugboat to get coffee. Reading books on a patio. Working out with friends. Calling my mom. Buying Ruben food. Taking naps. Cooking dinner.

The mundane things.

The things that don’t seem important until you realize they’re the very things you’ll miss most someday.

The funny thing is that I know people probably came here hoping for an update about treatment.

So here it is.

This Friday I’ll be at MD Anderson for an EKG and an echocardiogram. Then the clinical trial starts the following Monday. The plan is to take a pill every day for twenty-one days and receive an infusion at the beginning of each cycle. Then there will be a seven-day break before starting again.

The trial lasts six months.

Somewhere along the way, and again at the end, they’ll do blood work to see whether the cancer is gone.

I don’t really know what to expect. But I do know that the doctors aren’t anticipating many side effects, and for that I’m grateful.

Beyond that, my plan is pretty simple.

I’m going to keep walking Tugboat to the coffee shop. Keep reading through the ridiculous stack of books waiting for me. Keep working out with my friends. Keep buying Ruben food. Keep calling my mom. Keep thanking God for every day I’m given.

Because the reality is that none of us are promised anything. Not next year. Not next month. Not tomorrow.

All any of us really have is today.

And today was good.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up and do my best to enjoy whatever ordinary blessings God puts in front of me then. Next week the trial starts. Maybe it will be difficult. Maybe it won’t. Either way, I’ll keep showing up to the life in front of me.

The coffee. The books. The dog walks. The gym. The friends. The family. The small things.

The things that are easy to overlook until you realize they were the things that made life beautiful all along.

I’ll probably be writing more regularly once the trial gets underway. Expect at least a little hyperbole. Otherwise these updates might get pretty boring.

For now, though, I’m hungry, ready for bed, and looking forward to finishing my book before the week ahead begins.

See you all soon.

I meant to write something sooner. The problem is there hasn’t really been much to write about.

Lately life has felt like driving through West Texas. Not the pretty parts. The other parts. The parts where you’ve been staring out the window for three hours and you’re not entirely convinced the scenery is changing at all. Every now and then a gas station shows up. Or a billboard advertising fireworks, Jesus, or fireworks for Jesus. Then it’s right back to miles of highway and scrub brush and the same horizon doing the same thing it was doing 20 minutes ago.

That’s kind of where I am right now.

I’m in the clinical trial. I don’t actually know when it starts yet, but I do know I’m in it. Which feels like a weird sentence to say out loud, but here we are. I know what the treatment plan will look like once it kicks off. Pills for 21 days. Infusion on day one. Seven days off. Then repeat that whole thing for six months and try not to overthink it.

I had a PET scan and it came back clean. Which is good. I think. Cancer has gotten really good at giving me updates that are both “great news” and “cool, still annoying though” at the same time. Nothing showed up on the scan, which is obviously what you want. But also, the reason nothing showed up is because whatever they’re looking for is apparently too small to see right now. So the official situation is: it’s there… we just can’t see it… which is awesome… and also not awesome.

So we wait. And we treat what we can’t see and hope it gets bored and leaves.

The treatment itself doesn’t sound too terrible. At least that’s what everyone keeps telling me, which is exactly what you say right before handing someone an 80-page list of things that could go wrong. I started reading it, then stopped reading it. Somewhere around page 12 it stopped feeling like medical information and started feeling like the Terms and Conditions for being alive.

I’m pretty sure I saw something in there about losing the ability to turn left, which I think is technically called Zoolander Syndrome. If you didn’t get that reference, just Google it. Or don’t. Your life is probably better either way.

What’s been interesting lately is how many people seem worried that I’m losing hope. That’s probably my fault. Because the truth is… not much has changed.

I still wake up. I still go to work. I still go to the gym. I still walk Tugboat. I still read. I still laugh at dumb things way too hard. I still spend way too much time thinking about books I’m not finishing, cars I’m not buying, trips I’m not taking yet. Most days are just… days.

And I think I’ve finally realized that’s not a downgrade.

When this all started, I think I expected a personality shift. Like the movies make it seem like you get diagnosed and immediately become someone who quits their job, climbs something dangerous, forgives everyone, and suddenly becomes spiritually enlightened while also learning piano. That hasn’t really happened.

What has happened is I mostly just want more Tuesdays. More boring mornings. More normal workouts. More evenings on the couch doing absolutely nothing important. More walks where Tugboat acts like he’s being recognized in public for reasons I still don’t understand.

I don’t really think about bucket lists the same way anymore. Not because there aren’t things I want to do — there are plenty. I still want to drive from Antwerp to Montenegro with Dean and Mike, stopping anytime something looks remotely interesting or stupid enough to justify pulling over. I still want to travel. I still want to see new places.

But I’ve realized that’s not really the thing I’m trying to hold onto. It’s everything around it. The boring stuff. The stuff you don’t think about when everything is normal. The stuff that doesn’t make a good story. The stuff you don’t post. The stuff you only realize mattered when someone reminds you it’s not guaranteed.

And the weird twist is that if this trial works — and I really hope it does — the actual reward isn’t some dramatic “new chapter.” It’s just… getting to be bored again. Back to work. Back to the gym. Back to reading books I probably bought too many of. Back to complaining about the Austin heat like it’s a personal betrayal. Back to Tugboat being a celebrity for no reason whatsoever.

Just the normal stuff. The good stuff.

Tonight I’ll read a little more of The Flamethrowers. I’ll probably try to pet Tugboat while he snores like he’s paying rent. I’ll look at the stack of 44 books on my dresser and pretend that was a responsible decision at some point in my life. It wasn’t. But that’s Future Me’s problem.

For now, I’m just sitting here in the middle of this long stretch of West Texas highway. The scenery still hasn’t changed much. And for once, I’m not in a rush for it to.