I’m scared of the dark.

I have been ever since I started having issues with my eyesight back in 2005. When I’m in an unfamiliar place, I tend to sleep with the lights on—like in a hotel at MD Anderson.

I’m back at MD Anderson for the second week in a row, getting ready to have a chemo port placed tomorrow. The day after that, I start an aggressive chemotherapy protocol.

By all accounts, I should be terrified. And I think, deep down, I am. But I’ve been doing a pretty good job of not letting myself feel it—not really. Not yet.

Today alone, I fielded no less than a dozen calls from nurse practitioners, clinical specialists, doctors, and other well-meaning professionals. They all walked me through what to expect in the coming days. One talked me through the port procedure—how they’ll cut me open and attach a nickel-sized device to one of my major arteries so they can run a line straight to my heart. You know, so they can pump poison into me more easily. That one will haunt my dreams for a while for sure…

She also went over all the risks, most of which sounded like plot points in a SAW movie.

Then came the chemo prep—and the complete bonkers  list of side effects.

You know those drug commercials where they casually list horrifying things like “Side effects may include…” and then list some of the crazies things you’ve ever heard in your life?  Yeah. This was like that. But worse.

After the first few—eyeballs melting, spontaneous combustion, an inability to survive without witchcraft—I just started tuning out. It was the only way I stood a chance at ever sleeping again.

If it’s not obvious by now, one of my best defense mechanisms is stupid humor. I crack jokes because it keeps me from cracking open. And writing this, it’s becoming clearer to me that I am scared. Not just about tomorrow, but about everything that comes after.

Like with the dark, it’s not what I can see that scares me—it’s the unknown.

What will life look like when this is all over?
What if it’s never over?
What if it is?

I’ve been telling myself I’m not that scared. And maybe on the surface, I’m not. But now that I’ve written it all out… I am.

So for tonight, I’ll sleep with the lights on.

My dad left me a Bible when he passed away in the mid-eighties. It’s my most prized possession by far. (Luckily, Tugboat—my judgmental little corgi—doesn’t read this blog, so he won’t be offended. First, for being referred to as a possession, and second, for not being my most prized one.)

On the inside cover of that Bible, there’s a childish doodle I made on 11/18/1984. I know the date because he wrote it in that day, for reasons I’ll never know. He died eight months later, on 7/29/1985.

The Bible is old and falling apart in places. Everything from Philippians to Revelation has come loose from the binding. I had always intended to get it rebound, but over the last few weeks, I’ve started to like its brokenness and age.

I’ve opened that Bible a lot lately, flipping through the pages at random. Yesterday, while doing it again, I came across a verse my dad underlined—Matthew 6:27. It says, “Who of you by worrying can add a single day to your life?”

I have to assume he read that at a time when he already knew he was dying and found some kind of peace in it. I did too, when I read it yesterday. It might sound campy to some, but I don’t think it was a coincidence. I doubt my dad knew I’d need that verse for a similar reason, long after he was gone. But I do believe it was put in front of me at this exact time to give me hope.

My friend Willis said something to me not long ago that really stuck. He told me that when things show up like this—when moments line up too perfectly to explain—it isn’t coincidence. It’s God. It’s His way of putting something in front of you because He knows what you need, even when you don’t. I’ve chosen to believe that, too.

Hope and optimism have always been two of my stronger traits—especially now. And why wouldn’t they be, honestly? I really only have two choices: I can either worry, or I can hope. If things go badly, at least I didn’t waste whatever time I had left being afraid of something I couldn’t control. But if things go the way I hope, it’ll be that much sweeter.

I know some people might read this and think I’m being ridiculous—or something of the sort. That’s ok, I get it. It doesn’t change how I feel. I’m still hopeful. I’m hopeful that tomorrow, when I meet my radiation oncologist and we move forward with the treatment plan, things will go okay. I’m hopeful that tomorrow is the next step in a shitty journey that ends well.

This post probably reads a little oddly, maybe a little rambling at times. But I wrote it for anyone and everyone who’s worrying. Have faith. Keep hope. Things will be okay—for me, and for you—whatever it is you’re hopeful for.

For now, its time to call it a night.  I want to watch the Last of Us so I can be reminded that no matter whatever comes next, its not likely to be zombies…

It’s 184 miles from the Intercontinental Hotel at MD Anderson, where i was staying this week, to the front door of my condo in Austin. That meant I had a little under three hours today to feel sorry for myself, driving through rural East Texas to a soundtrack mostly made up of ’90s grunge rock.

After yesterday, I was struggling to shake something Dr. Yu said: the tumor was Stage 3 but could become Stage 4 soon.

Because the original pathology report said Stage 2, then the MRI said Stage 3, and now MD Anderson was saying potentially Stage 4, the steady progression of bad news had me spiraling. So there I was, somewhere between Houston and nowhere, wrestling with this while listening to the soundtrack of my teenage years—Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and Blur, most notably. Song 2 still holds up.

There were two things I couldn’t get out of my head on my drive home.

The first was the “what now?” question.

This shouldn’t have been that hard to figure out. I like to think I’m fairly pragmatic when it comes to the important stuff in life. But this question had me more stumped than any problem I’ve run into in recent memory.

I couldn’t seem to move past it to even attempt an answer. And every time the song changed during the drive, the question looped back in my mind like a skipping record.

The second thing I kept circling around was the whole idea that cancer is a fight.

This one wasn’t upsetting—it was just confusing. I don’t know why almost everyone in medicine insists on using that language. It’s not a fight, at least not in the sense that I can physically do something to impact the outcome.

The only “fight” I can foresee in this process is the one I’ll have when some well-meaning hippy starts telling me to cure cancer with magnets, ionized water, or essential oils. That person, God help them, is going to get a Jason Statham-style dropkick to the chest like they’re a nameless henchman in one of his movies.

But cancer? It’s not a fight. It’s a process. A step-by-step ordeal. And right about the time I came to that conclusion, I figured out how to answer the “what now?” question.

This is going to suck. That part’s guaranteed. But we have a plan. And all I can—and will—do is follow that plan:

See a doctor.
Get scoped.
See another doctor.
Get a chemo port.
Get chemo (yay!).
Get radiation.
Practice drop kick technique.
Drop kick advocate for essential oils as a cure for cancer.
Get more chemo.
Drop kick idiot telling me magnets will cure cancer.
Get surgery.
Don’t die.

I’m not sure why it took the better part of 100 miles for that to finally settle into place. But there it was. Pity party over—just in time to stop at Buc-ee’s in Bastrop for all the junk food my doctors now say I shouldn’t eat… FML.

By the time I pulled back into Austin, I’d also realized that not much is actually going to change right now.

I’m still going to CrossFit—had to include this just to make Ed roll his eyes while reading from vacation.  I’m still going to work and see through the big project we’ve got coming up, because I like my team.  I’m still going to walk Tugboat and get ignored by women who only want to talk to him.  I’ll still play video games with my brothers, read the 12 books stacked on my nightstand, keep grinding through grad school, and talk shit—no colon pun intended—to Dean and Mike over Saturday coffee at Nate’s Baked Goods.

Most interesting of all: I’m going to work on a solution to help fix a gap I’ve seen in healthcare education—especially in oncology offices—with the help of some great friends. That feels like something worth doing.

I guess the point of this rambling post is that I’m going to be okay, regardless of what happens with the cancer. Life’s challenging for all of us. This just happens to be my very public challenge…mostly of my own doing, I know.

And I’ll face it with the same lack of dignity and seriousness I tend to apply to most things in life—and we’ll see what happens.

Stay tuned for the rest, if you’d like.

If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to see how many people I end up drop-kicking in the next few months.

My dad died in 1985 from a glioblastoma—a brain tumor that spread into his spine. I only have pieces of memories from that time. I was six years old.

One sliver I do remember is sitting in a hospital, looking through the porthole of a hyperbaric chamber as he sat in a metal room with other sickly-looking people receiving treatment. I remember how fragile he looked.

This morning, while I sat in a waiting room in the main building of MD Anderson watching people walk past, that memory was at the forefront of my mind—but maybe not for the reason you’d expect.

I found myself smiling, thinking about all the times my dad might have sat in the same kind of rooms, waiting for news on his prognosis. In that moment, I felt connected to my dad in a way that brought me peace—comfort I haven’t often felt in my life.

I’ve said I believe in God, and I choose to believe that this wasn’t just a random childhood memory rushing back from some subconscious trigger. Maybe it was something more. Either way, it was the comfort I didn’t know I needed—and I found myself sitting there smiling like an idiot.

I don’t know if it’s just my nature or something else, but as depressing as a cancer hospital can be, I kept catching myself smiling at people, saying hello, trying to make conversation—just being upbeat.

Partially for my own sanity, but mostly for those around me. I don’t know if it made a difference to anyone specifically, but I figure it didn’t hurt. It’s like a prayer. It costs nothing to give, and it might change everything for someone—even if you never know.

One lesson I did learn today: never ask someone, “What type of cancer do you have?” Because if it turns into a competition, nobody wants to win that game. The trophy sucks ass—pun fully intended.

I met with a colorectal specialist named Dr. Yu. She came highly recommended by medical professionals who are much smarter than I’ll ever be.

I had a sense of what to expect, thanks to the prep work my nurse advocate walked me through. So when I found myself on an exam table in the fetal position with a camera “in me,” watching my own tumor on a screen while Dr. Yu explained what was good and what was bad, I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Then she started taking biopsies—live, on screen, while I felt it happening in real time. It was the worst interactive movie ever made. Zero stars.

Once I recovered—I’ll spare you those details, though I will say I’m glad I never put much stock in dignity—Dr. Yu told me the cancer was Stage 3 and could be progressing to Stage 4.

That hit harder than any procedure so far. What ran screaming through my brain was the drop in five-year survival rates from Stage 3 to Stage 4—about a 70% difference.

I tried to stay focused. We laid out a treatment plan that’s aggressive but feels hopeful: two months of intravenous chemo, followed by radiation, more chemo (I think), and then surgery.

There were other options, but they involved colostomy bags or experimental treatments that had a zero percent chance of granting superpowers. So, I chose the reasonable path, all things considered.

I took a free shuttle from MD Anderson back to the hotel. During the 10-minute ride—I would’ve walked if I hadn’t just been anally probed for the better part of an hour—while I stared out the window at the passing medical center and talked to God. Mostly about all the things I still want to do before my time’s up.

This evening, back at the hotel, still looking out the same hotel window at that hospital that’s now going to have to save my life soon, I ran back through that list—and I smiled again.

Here’s that list:

1. I really want to go to F1 with Dave and his son in October.
2. I want to take Dean’s Cobra from Antwerp down to Tivat with Mike and Dean next year.
3. I really want to see the last Fast & Furious movie with my brothers and Zac.
4. I’d like to finish my master’s and spend a summer weekend at Ed Skoudis’s beach house talking theology and books.
5. I’d like to work for Mike Hanley at some point.
6. I’d like to take Tugboat on a road trip where he doesn’t freak out the entire time—which I assume is an indictment of my driving, according to him.
7. I really want to take my mom back to Berlin with my siblings before time runs out.
8. I’d like to play the new Borderlands with my brothers.
9. I want to see all my nieces and nephews grow into adults.
10. And while some will roll their eyes at this—I want to see my dev team get through 2025 with the same success we had in 2024.