Life in the Stupid Lane

It’s been a week since the surgery. I needed to wait this long to write anything, because once they took the bag off and removed the chemo port, I wanted to make sure my insides actually worked — they do, sort of — before I let myself say out loud that this chapter of my life is coming to an end.

That realization first started to sink in the night I got home — last Saturday — when I sat in the shower for nearly fifty minutes, completely unbothered. No fear of the bag getting too wet and falling off. No fear of the ostomy discharging mid-shower and what that cleanup looks like after — and I’ll let you use your imagination there, but it involves a fair amount of bleach on the shower floor. For fifty minutes, I just sat there and enjoyed a shower in a way I’m not sure I ever truly had before.

It’s a strange thing, learning what you miss most when something simple is taken from you without warning.

What I don’t think I’d fully appreciated before the bag was how much of your life quietly reorganizes itself around it. What you wear — black, always black. Whether you go out, and for how long, and how far from a bathroom. Whether you let people get close enough to notice. Whether you stop at the sauna you used to love, or the restaurant with the long wait, or the friend’s house where you’d have to explain. You don’t make one big decision to shrink your life. You make about four hundred small ones, and one day you look up and realize how much smaller it got.

So yes. Fifty minutes in a shower. That’s what this year came down to, at least in the beginning.

If this were a movie, that shower would have been some kind of sweeping visual metaphor — washing away the memories of the last year, strings swelling in the background. But this isn’t a movie, and honestly, I don’t want it to be. I don’t have a clean takeaway from all of this yet. I’m not sure I’m supposed to. But I do think whatever I’m meant to carry forward will become clear with time.

What I have found myself returning to are four personal truths — things I probably already believed somewhere deep down, but that this last year somehow pressed into permanence for me. They’re going to sound like fortune cookies. Some of them probably are. I’m sure I absorbed pieces of them from people smarter than me. But that doesn’t make them any less mine.

 

1. You can’t live a great story and have an easy life.
2. It’s an amazing privilege to complain about the life you begged God for when you were younger.
3. Everything good in life lives on the other side of fear, embarrassment, or discomfort. Run to that side any chance you get.
4. Always drink the good bourbon when you can. There is no reason to save it for a perfect moment that will never come.

 

Take from those whatever you’d like — or nothing at all.

I still don’t have a clear answer to what now? — and honestly, that’s equal parts terrifying and kind of thrilling, and I’m finding I’m okay with not knowing. I figure if I hold loosely to those four ideas, whatever comes next should be some kind of adventure. For now, I’m going to enjoy all the small things I had to give up when the bag went on: wearing something other than black, getting back to the sauna, and taking as many showers as my water bill will reasonably allow.

This is where this chapter ends — mostly. There are scans ahead, and cancer could come back. But that’s true for all of us in one way or another, so there isn’t much point in borrowing that worry today.

For now, it’s on to the next adventure. Thank you for reading this long cancer chapter, its been a heck of a story so far…

It looked like a tiny corded mouse.

That’s what the thing looked like after almost a year inside me — my chemotherapy port, the thing that had made every infusion possible and made everything else harder — after every moment of embarrassment, every life adjustment large and small. Fifteen minutes and it was out. They held it up and that’s what it was. Small. Unremarkable. Anticlimactic in a way that felt almost insulting given everything it had put me through. I think I wanted some form of revenge on it. I wanted the removal to feel proportional to what it had cost me. Instead it looked like something you’d find tangled in the back of a desk drawer, and then it was gone.

I’m sitting in a Houston hotel room now, the incision point throbbing, and I’m smiling. That’s the last time it gets to hurt me. I’ll take that.

329 days ago I was sitting in this same hotel, staring out at the soft white glow of the MD Anderson marquee at the top of the hospital’s highest tower, wondering what was about to happen. I called it a seminal moment. That turned out to be accurate. Tonight feels like it could be another one, though I’m not sure yet.

Tomorrow, my surgeon — someone I’ve come to call a friend, though she might not say the same given that I am a difficult patient — will reverse my ostomy bag. Tomorrow should be, with some luck and the grace of God, my last surgery in this bullshit that has been cancer.

I’ve been pushing for both of these things for months. I wanted the port out. I wanted the reversal. There was hesitation from some people about removing the port this early — suggestions it stay in for a full year post-surgery, reasons ranging from what felt like superstition to the more obvious one nobody really wants to say out loud. I appreciated that conversation about as much as I did having the damn thing in me. While I was waiting in the procedure room I read that some people keep their ports for ten years. I don’t fully understand that, but I was grateful not to be one of them.

Here’s the part I’m still working out how to say.

For 329 days, cancer has been my entire identity. Every plan, every goal, every morning I woke up and knew exactly what I was doing and why — it was all pointed at the same thing. Get rid of it. All of it. And tomorrow, if everything goes the way it’s supposed to, that’s done.

I thought that would feel like pure relief. And part of it does. But there’s something else sitting underneath it that I didn’t expect — something closer to vertigo. Tomorrow will be the first day in almost a year that I don’t have a next thing. No port to fight to remove, no surgery to prepare for, no clear enemy. Just whatever comes after. I don’t know what that looks like yet, and that uncertainty — which is technically the good kind — is somehow harder to sit with than the certainty of the last year, even when that certainty was terrifying.

It’s a strange thing to realize you’ve gotten used to something you hated.

I’ll keep writing. There are things I’ve kept to myself this past year that probably deserve a page or two — if only for what writing them down does for me, which at this point I understand pretty well. I’ll write about the new normal, whatever that turns out to be. There is, for the record, a package of adult diapers in a CVS bag on the bed right now. My doctors told me to get them “just in case.” I expect that will make for a story.

But right now I’m going to get into this hotel bed and pick up the book I brought to Detroit a year ago — the trip I first got sick on — and never opened again after that. I’ve been carrying it around for 329 days. I think I can finish it here.

Seems like as good a place as any to start figuring out what comes next.

Yesterday I had to go back to the hospital for my post-op checkup — the appointment where I’d find out if I’d healed well enough to move on to what I hope will be the final surgery of this cancer journey. If the news was good, they would reverse my bag. It’s one of the very few things I’ve allowed myself to look forward to over the past year. Looking forward to a surgery sounds morbid, I know, but that’s where my life is right now, and I think it goes a long way toward explaining why I hate the hospital.

I don’t hate the people. Far from it — they’ve saved my life, after all. But for a long time now, I haven’t been able to see that place as anything other than somewhere pain lives. I’ve kept that to myself, mostly. Attitude matters, in life and especially in something like this, so I’ve worked hard to stay positive. And besides, the sadness that seems to permeate every taupe-colored hallway of the MD Anderson complex doesn’t need me pointing it out, no matter how bright the furniture is or how shiny the slogans on the walls.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to yesterday, even with the finish line this close.

At some point during the visit, I found myself completely lost in the basement, wandering hallways I didn’t recognize, trying to find the place where I was scheduled to receive a barium enema. If you can’t understand why someone might dread a hospital visit, I’d invite you to schedule one of those for yourself and leave a Yelp review afterward. Five stars and I’d question your judgment — and suggest a different kind of hospital.

But here’s the thing about being lost and not trying very hard to be found: you start to notice things.

Maybe I’d missed them before out of self-pity. Maybe the day-to-day weight of cancer had just crowded everything else out. Or maybe I’m simply oblivious sometimes. But wandering those halls yesterday, I started to see the beauty that’s quietly everywhere in that place, if you take a moment to look past the surface.

I noticed an overworked medical resident who stopped mid-stride to help a lost stranger — just because he could see I needed it. I noticed a family tucked into a corner of the cafeteria, a parent holding an iPad so the kids could watch cartoons, doing their best to build a small, normal moment inside a place that is anything but. And then there was the barista. She was talking to the elderly woman ahead of me in line, and something made me stop and pay attention. Instead of rushing through the transaction, she was fully present — listening, really listening, to this woman who was clearly on the verge of breaking. No hollow words of comfort, no move to hurry things along. She just held her hand, and gave her a free coffee.

Small things. Simple things. But they hit me like a light coming on.

It’s remarkable how quickly something like that can pull you out of one way of seeing the world and drop you into a completely different one — a better one — almost without your permission.

I don’t know why it took me until this last visit to notice any of it. Maybe it’s because this will be my last real visit. The news yesterday was as good as it could possibly be. I healed well. The bag comes off next Thursday. The chemo port the day before. With a little luck and the grace of God, I may never have to walk those hallways again for anything more than a routine check-up.

And somehow, that’s exactly when I finally saw how beautiful that place can be. Not just the patients holding it together with everything they have, but the doctors, the staff, the people sitting quietly beside someone they love — all of it, remarkable.

I’m probably more emotional writing this tonight than I’d be on any other night. Being this close to the end will do that to you. But it felt like a story worth telling — maybe the best one to come out of yesterday.

So I’ll end with this: look for the small beauty in the places you don’t expect to find it. It might make all the difference — for you, or for someone nearby who needs it just as much.

For now, it’s late. Tugboat is snoring on the floor beside me, and I’m ready to call it a night.

Seven days and counting

Eleven Days and Counting

Eleven days. Eleven days until they remove my chemotherapy port, reverse this horrible bag, and I find out what my new normal looks like. All of that is contingent on my doctors telling me this Wednesday that my internal surgical connections have healed well enough to allow for the reversal. Waste can’t pass over incision points that are still healing — and if that goes wrong, it likely ends in something bad. Something that ends in death. That is definitely not the way I want to go out. Not after all the shit — yup, still doing colon cancer puns — I’ve already been through this past year.

It’s somehow hard to believe it’s already been a year since all this started, but it has. Given how far along the cancer was, I think I ended up lucky, and because of that I keep coming back to the same question: now what? I don’t think God gave me this second chance just to return to exactly what life looked like before all this. At least I sure hope not.

I don’t have the answer yet, and I’m not in a rush to do something rash. I’m not about to quit my job, sell everything, and buy a small boat to sail around the world with Tugboat. I don’t know how to sail. I get seasick easily. Lattes are hard to come by in the middle of the ocean, and dying at sea honestly feels like a fate almost worse than dying of cancer. So — no rash decisions. But things do need to change, and more than almost anything else right now, I find myself asking God to show me what that change needs to look like. For now I just don’t know, so I can’t say — I’ll have to keep you posted as it becomes clearer. I can be pretty dense sometimes, so it might take longer than it should. I hope not, but who knows.

That said, sitting with this question as long as I have has led me to a couple of realizations — some from my own reflection, some probably from people much smarter than me who said something that stuck, though I can’t remember who or when to give them proper credit.

The first is that I need to focus on the moment. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I spend so much time dwelling on the past or worrying about the future that I completely miss what’s actually happening right now — and that’s just plain stupid. For the most part, I can’t control what’s coming, and I sure as hell can’t change what’s already happened. So why wouldn’t I just enjoy what’s going on in the moment and let the rest happen as it will? It’s a lot easier to say than to do, but it’s a work in progress. If that sounds like a good way to live to you, maybe give it a try.

The second is this: when you are in the moment, all the best things live on the other side of uncomfortable or embarrassing. I think that’s pretty self-explanatory, but in case it isn’t — embarrassment and discomfort seem to be the main blockers standing between most people and the really good stuff in life. I have no idea why anyone would run away from that instead of straight through it. I’m guilty of it all the time. But I’m done letting embarrassment hold me back. I’m going to seek out discomfort and see what’s waiting on the other side. At the very least, if it all goes sideways, it should make for great stories here.

Stay tuned — who knows what might happen.

For now, it’s bedtime. It’s 11pm, Tugboat is already in bed, and tomorrow is an interesting new adventure. See you soon.

It’s late February, and I’ve got about six more weeks to go before I can finally be done with cancer surgeries, bags, and the general inability to use a toilet like most people in this world. It’s been a hell of a year— and that’s putting it lightly.

Lately, I find myself staring at my healing incisions every morning, studying them like they might answer a question I haven’t quite figured out how to ask. I wonder what kind of scars I’ll be left with. I’m not worried about them from a vanity standpoint. I’m more curious about the story they’ll tell. What conversations might they start if they’re ever visible to the outside world? That probably won’t happen often, but still, I think about it.

In some of the Reddit forums I’ve been reading about cancer survivorship, someone wrote that scars are a reminder that cancer was there—and that it never really lets you forget it could come back. Scars aren’t “goodbyes.” They’re more like, “Don’t forget about me.”

I don’t know yet if that’s where my mind will go once I get some distance from all of this. I hope not. I hope I’ll be strong enough to look at those scars and think something more like: I know cancer fancies me, but that doesn’t mean the asshole gets to dance with me. (That could’ve been a cancer pun, but it wasn’t this time.)

Still, I’m trying to brace myself for the moments that will inevitably come—the random ache, the strange pain, the odd feeling that makes my stomach drop and my mind race. The “what if it’s back?” moments. I don’t yet know exactly how to combat that fear.

What I do know is this: the best defense I have is the mindset I’ve been building this year—the belief that today is a gift. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. None of us do. But right now, in this moment, I can choose to fully engage with whatever is in front of me. Big things. Small things. Ordinary things. I don’t want to look back someday—whether cancer ever tries to cut in again or not—and wonder why I didn’t take advantage of the time I had.

It’s easier said than done. Living like every day matters sounds great on paper. In practice, it takes intention. It takes reminding myself over and over again.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of this, it’s that no one grows during the easy seasons. Growth comes from the stretch, the discomfort, the uncertainty. So by that measure, I must have grown a ton this past year.

I’m not entirely sure yet where or how.

But I will

This has been an oddly hard week.

I’m laying in bed at a Westin inside the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, staring at the ceiling and waiting for tomorrow morning’s flight. I haven’t been in Detroit in a little over a year. The last time I was here, I technically went home knowing something was very wrong. It was the first real indicator that I was sick. A few weeks later, I would get my diagnosis.

I wasn’t hesitant to come back. I don’t really think the location itself had anything to do with what happened over the last year. But coming back cancer free did feel surreal, like revisiting the scene of an accident you somehow walked away from. A friend of mine even sent me a shirt that said, “Round two Detroit! You hit like a bitch!” and genuinely expected me to wear it while I was here. Self-preservation—and the good sense not to tempt fate—kept me from even bringing it, but it did make me laugh.

Earlier this week, James Van Der Beek died of nearly the exact same diagnosis I had, as far as I can tell. We were nearly the same age. For reasons I can’t fully explain, that shook me. I don’t know if his treatment didn’t work, or if it came back, or if his situation was completely different. But it’s impossible not to make comparisons. Impossible not to wonder if somewhere down the road, I could end up in the same place.

I know that’s not logical. No two cases are the same. But logic doesn’t have much authority when fear decides to show up.

By Wednesday, those thoughts had mostly quieted down. I had a scheduled phone checkup with my doctor, and I’d been looking forward to it. Healing, at least physically, seems to be going well. The pain that’s been with me since surgery has faded a little more every day, and as of now, I’m mostly pain free. Some of the wounds still have a lot of healing left to do, but she was happy with my progress.

We scheduled the reversal of my ileostomy bag for March 24th.

Six weeks.

Six weeks until I get back to some version of normal.

She was quick to remind me, though, that “normal” is going to be a moving target. She explained that there will be bad days. Probably a lot of them. There’s no way to predict how my intestinal tract will behave without a colon, and accidents aren’t just possible—they’re likely, especially early on. That part sucked the celebration out of the good news a bit.

I’d like to believe my streak of beating expectations will continue here too. But it’s hard not to imagine the alternative. The idea that adult diapers might become part of my daily life is still something my brain refuses to fully process.

This is where the internet becomes both a blessing and a curse. If you go looking, you’ll find plenty of stories from people who adapted, who found their rhythm again, who live normal lives. You’ll also find stories from people who didn’t. I suspect the people who ended up okay are more willing to talk about it than those who are literally shitting the bed every day. Either way, eventually I’ll find out which group I belong to.

Today did not inspire confidence.

I was in the bathroom at work here in Detroit, emptying my bag, when it slipped as I opened it. What followed was less of an accident and more of a crime scene. Floor. Wall. My very, very white shoes. Everywhere.

For a visual reference—if you’re sick enough to want one—there’s a bathroom scene in the movie Desperado involving Antonio Banderas and Quentin Tarantino. It wasn’t exactly that, but spiritually, it was in the same neighborhood.

White leather, thankfully, doesn’t stain easily. Small victories.

I did my best to clean myself up, then went and sat through a three-hour workshop with my new boss and my new team, hoping to God there wasn’t any lingering smell or visible evidence of the war crime that had taken place one floor below. There were several moments during that workshop where I briefly considered whether jumping out of a fourth-floor window would be an overreaction. Thankfully, I chose restraint.

Still, it was another reminder that even though I’m cancer free, I’m nowhere near back to normal. That dignity, at least the version of it I used to know, might be gone for good.

I wish I could have talked to James Van Der Beek. I’d want to know if he dealt with things like this too. If he had moments where his body betrayed him in public. If he ever sat in a room full of people, pretending everything was fine while silently praying no one noticed something was very much not fine. I’d want to know what he learned. What he feared. What he would have done differently—if anything.

Not so I could avoid it. Just so I could understand.

Either way, this week sucked.

Detroit does not, in fact, hit like a bitch.

Doctors are both incredible and terrible at the same time.

And no matter what, always wear black pants when traveling for work. Just in case the bag decides to commit suicide while you’re meeting your new boss.

These are lessons I really wish I never needed to learn.

Oh well.

I’m almost home.

I’m laying on my couch, watching mildly ridiculous YouTube videos about surviving in the Alaskan bush during insane weather. I hate the cold, so this is a skill set I will almost certainly never need. But after the last year, I’ve learned not to rule anything out.

Physically, I think I’m healing pretty well. At least, what I can see on the outside looks good. The inside is a mystery. I have no real idea how my intestines are doing, and that’s occasionally nerve-racking. Still, as unsettling as that is, it’s nothing compared to this newest chapter in the saga.

The ileostomy bag.

I really thought radiation would be the hardest part. Or chemo. Or surgery. Or the anxiety that cancer might come roaring back the way it did with my dad. Surely one of those would be the worst thing.

Nope.

It’s the bag.

This is my second type of ostomy, and I assumed it wouldn’t be much different than the first. I had already learned that system. I’d adapted. I’d figured it out. How hard could Version 2 be?

Very hard, apparently.

Because this one sits much higher in the digestive process, everything moves through at warp speed. It fills up fast. Really fast. The contents are either liquid or applesauce consistency and, mercifully, mostly odorless. That last part is a blessing. Everything else is… not.

When I change the bag—which is usually every two or three days—I do it right before a shower. With the old bag, I could more or less time things. I had a system. I could remove it, shower, clean up, put the new one on, and walk away with minimal drama.

This one does not believe in systems.

This one believes in chaos.

I have absolutely no idea when it’s “safe” to take it off. There is no predictable rhythm. No warning. No courtesy knock.

So there I am, in the shower, trying to scrape off the stubborn remains of medical adhesive that apparently has been engineered by NASA to survive reentry. And at some point, without consultation or consent, my stoma—this little piece of intestine sticking out of my stomach—just decides:

Now.

Now is the time.

And it proceeds to spew.

I know this sounds vile. It is vile. But I’ve never shied away from embarrassing details before, so why start now?

There is something uniquely demoralizing about sitting naked in a shower while a part of your body you no longer control calmly defecates onto the floor. You can’t rush it. You can’t stop it. You can’t negotiate with it. You just… wait.

Sometimes for up to forty-five minutes.

Forty-five.

In those very long showers, you have a lot of time to think.

First, you briefly consider burning the bathroom down afterward as the only reasonable form of sanitation. That idea quickly runs into reality—mainly that you don’t own the place and arson is expensive.

So Plan B becomes Clorox.

A lot of Clorox.

I scrub that shower floor like I’m performing an exorcism. And honestly, it feels appropriate.

But before any of that—before the bleach, before the cleanup—I’m just standing there, trying not to cry, trying not to lose my mind, trying very hard not to get anything on my feet. Repeating to myself: This is temporary. This is temporary. Just a few more weeks.

Which helps.

A little.

But not much.

Because nothing really prepares you for this particular indignity. Not the scans. Not the surgeries. Not the hospital rooms. Not the needles. Not the fear.

Nothing prepares you for watching bodily functions happen in front of you, beyond your control, while you wait it out in a shower.

I was warned that the last mile of the cancer journey is often the hardest. I understand that now. There’s no “bright side” to moments like this. There’s no inspirational quote that fits. It’s just gross and exhausting and deeply humbling.

It has also given me a whole new level of respect for people who live this way permanently.

My heart breaks for them.

I’ve been proud of how I’ve handled this past year. And I should be. It’s been brutal. But standing in that shower, on my worst days, I realize how small my struggle is compared to people who don’t get an end date. Who don’t get a reversal. Who don’t get “temporary.”

Their strength is staggering.

So I do what I can.

I endure.

I laugh when possible.

I marvel at the absurdity of my life.

And I focus very carefully on not getting shit on my toes.

Five more weeks of this.

I think.

I can do that.

It’s been five days since I last wrote. Healing seems to be going well—especially after The Great Sneezing Incident of 2026, which thankfully did not result in anything dramatic popping open inside my body. Apparently things can just… move around in there post-surgery without immediately killing you. Good to know.

I’m still not sure if that means I’m lucky, or if I’m slowly deteriorating into some kind of polite, articulate zombie and just haven’t noticed yet. Since I’m still cognitive enough to type full sentences, I’m choosing to believe it’s luck.

The biggest improvement over the last few days is mobility. A week ago, getting out of bed or off the couch was an Olympic event. My surgeon did, after all, cut through most of my abdominal wall, so that tracks. But still—every time I needed to get up, it involved rolling onto my side, propping myself on one elbow, sliding my feet out, and performing what can only be described as a slow-motion Turkish get-up. (You might have to Google that. It’s a CrossFit thing. This one’s for you, Ed.)

And since I had to get up roughly twice an hour—to get water, get food, or empty this brand-new level of ostomy-bag hell—I was basically running that event nonstop. It was exhausting. And painful. And humbling.

Thankfully, that part is mostly behind me now. Getting up isn’t easy, but it’s no longer a full production.

What I do have is a spectacular bruise line across my waist, right below my belly button, like I’ve been wearing an invisible championship belt. There’s also a weird bulge that looks and feels… unsettling. I’m choosing to believe it’s just leftover swelling from a 13-hour surgery. If it’s something else, I am in absolutely no hurry to find out.

A lot has changed since surgery. Most notably: no colon, and by extension, no cancer. Hard to beat that.

But one thing remains: the bag.

Well. Technically, a new bag.

They closed the original location and relocated it to the other side of my body. The section of intestine it was attached to got removed, and in order to let everything heal where they reconnected things to my “exit hole,” they had to reroute traffic. So now it’s connected to my small intestine instead.

Enter: the ileostomy.

Going into this, I expected exactly one thing: a literal shit bag attached to my stomach. (Not a metaphor. Just… facts.)

What I did not expect is that it fills completely differently. The contents are more like applesauce, have almost no odor, and somehow manage to be both deeply gross and strangely better than before.

Still: I hate it.

I am counting down the days until it gets reversed and I can regain some semblance of my old life. I would’ve said “normal life,” but I think normal is gone. And honestly, “normal” doesn’t mean much anyway.

I don’t know what my new normal will look like.

I do know I’ll eventually be able to wear something other than black and navy. Light colors show the outline of the bag way too clearly, and my emotional stability can’t handle that yet. So for now, I’m dressed like a depressed minimalist.

Beyond that? It’ll be trial and error. How to eat. How to use the bathroom. How to manage the exciting new anxiety of possibly defecating in my pants as a grown adult.

Yet another square on my 2026 Life Bingo card.

And somehow, it’s only January.

At this point, I’m not even sure what other squares could possibly top the ones I’ve already filled.

But—because this is me, and because every one of these posts eventually turns this way—there is good stuff too.

I’ve been smiling more. Like, genuinely. I’ve been enjoying small things with a level of happiness I don’t remember having as an adult. I feel curious again. About what’s coming. About what’s possible. About what might be waiting just outside my field of view.

I’m already more careful with my time. I don’t want to spend it on things I won’t be able to explain to my future self. “Why did you do that?” is becoming a real filter.

I’m looking forward to opportunities at work to say, “I don’t know,” and then figure it out alongside new friends and colleagues.

I’m looking forward to taking Dean’s Shelby to Antwerp and driving down to Tivat, like Mike, Dov, Dean, and I talked about last year.

That three-piece bespoke suit is getting closer to being real too—though given how much weight I’ve lost, my measurements are now a complete mystery. So that should be an exciting adventure in itself.

All in all, yeah, I’ve still got challenges ahead with this stupid cancer story. Recovery isn’t over. The bag isn’t gone. There’s more work to do.

But I also have more opportunities than I’ve ever felt before.

And I don’t plan to waste them.

It should be a good year.

If nothing else, it’s already started better than last year.

On this exact day last year, I was sitting at the Grey Ghost in Detroit, staring at my favorite burger on the planet, unable to eat more than two bites without getting sick. That was the first real sign that something was wrong.

I’m going back there soon.

I’m finishing that burger.

I’ve been craving it for far too long.

I thought the last post could have been the ending to this story.  

If this whole thing were a Netflix series, we’d have wrapped it up neatly—soft music, hopeful resolution, me walking into the sunset feeling lighter than I had in months. Instead, it turns out I’d just stumbled into the literary equivalent of a false ending. I learned that term this week. Thanks, Google.

The physical recovery was the part I expected. Pain, logistics, healing tissue, awkward medical accessories I’ll explain later. What I didn’t anticipate was the mental hangover—the way fear sneaks back in after you’ve convinced yourself the danger has passed.

I’ve been sleeping on the couch since I got home. Not out of drama, but practicality. It’s easier to roll off, get upright, deal with the new realities of post-surgery life, and take Tugboat outside. Also, the TV is bigger. Let’s not pretend that didn’t factor in.

After three nights, I decided to graduate back to the bedroom. Tugboat disagreed. He was stretched across the bed horizontally, somehow occupying more space than physics allows. A thirty-inch corgi with king-size confidence. He relocated with protest.

I climbed in, settled down, and sneezed.

Then came the pop.

If you’ve ever been given a post-surgical briefing, you know there are words you don’t want to hear used casually. Leakage. Tearing. Those words immediately reintroduced themselves to my imagination. I spent the rest of the night conducting a silent internal investigation: pain levels, bleeding, differences, hypotheticals. My brain went full incident-response mode.

Logic held for a while. Fatigue eventually won. Sleep arrived—and brought its own brand of chaos. Dreams strip away reason. I woke up more than once convinced something was terribly wrong when it wasn’t.

The doctor has been called. My older brother—who has the calm, rational brain I borrow when mine goes rogue—talked me down. Healing tissue does strange things. The critical areas are reinforced. Low-grade fever is common. A sneeze is dramatic, not catastrophic.

And just like that, the hysteria loosened its grip.

No one really warns you that the last stretch is as mental as it is physical. Endurance sounds heroic until you’re alone, exhausted, and bargaining with God at 2 a.m. I’ve had those moments quietly, privately. God has absorbed more than His share of frustration. Thankfully, He’s sturdy like that.

What’s carried me through hasn’t been grit. It’s been people.

I don’t accept help easily. I hate inconvenience. But the steady drip of kindness—the texts, the dumb GIFs, the check-ins, the visits, the Slack jokes—has been the scaffolding holding my brain upright. It’s hard to spiral when you’re being held up from every direction.

So yes, yesterday rattled me. Today steadied me. And the trajectory still points forward.

Tonight I’ll sleep in the bed again. Tugboat will be displeased by the loss of his territorial rights. The couch has served its purpose, but it’s been officially demoted.

The credits haven’t rolled yet.
But the story is still moving the right way.