May 2026, Life in the Stupid Lane

Life

Cussing at God Tonight

By AJ on Thursday, May 28, 2026

“Well, I am pretty much fucked.”

That is the opening line from The Martian after Mark Watney realizes he has been stranded alone on Mars. I was going to avoid using it because I already stole it once in an email to coworkers over a year ago, but after today, it still feels like the most accurate possible opening statement.

Because things did not go well with the doctors.

There is still cancer somewhere in me. We know that much. The problem is nobody can find it.

It does not show up on scans. It does not show up anywhere they can point at and say, “There it is.” Which sounds like good news until you realize if they could see it, they could probably attack it directly with radiation or surgery.

Instead, we are basically dealing with cancer ghost mode.

Chemo is not really an option anymore either. I already got the strongest version they had, and whatever survived it is likely resistant now. Possibly because of a mutation.

So apparently I have X-Men cancer.

Those are the fun updates.

The less fun update is that for the first time since all of this started, I am actually scared.

Not “slightly concerned.” Not “trying to stay optimistic.” I mean genuinely scared.

Scared I will not get to do all the things I thought I still had time for.

I still do not have the bespoke suit I wanted. I have not gone back to Montenegro. I have not visited Ed on the Jersey Shore. I have not finished my master’s degree. I never got the chance to work for Mike in security like I always hoped I would. There are restaurants I still want to try, books I still have stacked next to my bed, cities I still want to wander through with no plan whatsoever, and probably an irresponsible number of meals I still want to learn how to cook.

Some opportunities do not wait patiently while you spend a year trying not to die.

That realization hit harder than I expected today.

There are basically two paths forward now.

One option is to wait and see if something eventually grows enough to show up on a scan, then try to treat it once it finally reveals itself. The problem is that by then it could be in multiple places and much harder to contain.

The other option is an immunotherapy clinical trial that both my doctor and my older brother actually seem pretty hopeful about.

My brother’s words sounded optimistic anyway. His face looked like a man trying very hard not to look worried in front of his little brother.

According to the very simplified explanation I got, the cancer basically hides from my immune system. It creates some kind of defense mechanism that lets it disguise itself so my body does not recognize it as something that needs to be destroyed. The drugs in this trial are supposed to strip away that camouflage so my immune system can finally see the cancer and attack it.

I think it is called PD-L1.

Or maybe that is the protein.

Or maybe I completely misunderstood everything after the phrase “there is still cancer in you somewhere.”

Hard to say.

Apparently this type of treatment has been very successful in other cancers, which is where the optimism comes from. To me, it still sounds a little bit like a Hail Mary. A very advanced science Hail Mary, but still.

I also sincerely hope the clinical trial is not named something dramatic like Project Hail Mary because I am not emotionally prepared for irony at that level right now.

I do not know much else yet.

I know I will avoid another chemo port, which honestly feels like a decent win considering the alternatives. I know I will be driving to Houston a lot more over the next few months, which means I should probably start rationing audiobooks now.

The good news is I likely will not have many side effects from this treatment. At least not compared to chemo.

The bad news is I can no longer shave my head for summer like I normally do because people will think my health is getting worse instead of realizing I am just hot and making poor grooming choices.

I wish I could say I handled all of this calmly and heroically today.

I did not.

I spent a pretty significant amount of time mentally yelling at God.

Not metaphorically either. I mean full-volume-in-my-own-head yelling.

“Seriously God, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?”

And honestly, I think I am allowed that one today.

Because the thing I have realized about faith is that if God is actually God, then He is probably not fragile. I do not think honesty scares Him nearly as much as people pretend it does.

The frustrating part is that if He answered me directly, I already know what the answer would probably be.

“You asked for this.”

And annoyingly, He would be right.

Not cancer specifically obviously. I did not pray for mutant hidden X-Men cancer. But I have spent years asking God to let my faith actually mean something. To let me show people trust and hope and perseverance when life got difficult. I have prayed over and over to somehow be useful in whatever plan He has.

Turns out I should have been more specific.

Still, somewhere in all of this, I have found myself grateful that it is me going through it and not one of my siblings. Not because I think I am stronger than them. That is not some martyr complex thing. It is just the honest realization that if somebody in my family had to carry this, I am probably the one built to do it.

That does not mean I enjoy it.

It just means I can survive it.

At least I hope I can.

And maybe that is what faith actually looks like. Not confidence. Not pretending everything is fine. Not fake positivity stitched onto fear with Bible verses and motivational quotes.

Maybe it is just continuing forward while scared.

Maybe it is trusting God while simultaneously wanting to yell at Him.

Maybe it is believing there is purpose in this even when I absolutely cannot see it yet.

I do not know what happens next. That is the truth.

But I do know tomorrow morning I will still wake up, go to work, answer emails, sit in traffic, work out like a maniac in the evenings, watch Spurs basketball like the outcome somehow still matters to my emotional stability, and probably cook something unnecessarily complicated this weekend while telling myself there is no reason one person needs to make that much food.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I should probably call my mom and apologize for the amount of cussing in this post.

Life will keep moving forward.

So I guess I will too.

Life

Micah Johnson…

By AJ on Wednesday, May 27, 2026

Today was supposed to be forgettable.

Wake up. Go to the hospital. Drink the radioactive aquarium water they call CT contrast. Get scanned. Go home. Repeat the same mental cycle I’ve apparently been living in for months now.

I got to the hospital at 7:30 this morning, checked in, and started working through the required 32 ounces of watered-down contrast like it was some punishment specifically designed by people who hate joy. If you’ve never had a CT scan before, I highly recommend keeping that streak alive. The scan itself isn’t painful exactly, but the dye they inject into you feels like your body suddenly decided to preheat itself from the inside out. Every single time it happens, I briefly become convinced I’m either dying or actively peeing myself. Neither experience is ideal.

Once it was over, there wasn’t much to do besides kill time until dinner, so I found a coffee shop in Montrose called 787 Coffee and camped there for a few hours with a book. The place looked like an old house that had slowly been overtaken by graffiti artists and caffeine addicts, but they made a fantastic tiramisu latte. On a completely unrelated note, it took me six tries to spell tiramisu correctly just now, and I’m still not confident this is the winning version.

I spent most of the afternoon reading The Flamethrowers, which is a book I’ve been “currently reading” for what feels like the last presidential administration. I genuinely like it. I think. It’s mostly character development mixed with the history of an Italian motorcycle company, which sounds incredibly boring when I type it out, but somehow it works. I keep picking it up, putting it down, and then guilt-reading twenty more pages every few weeks like we’re in a toxic relationship together.

Really though, the only thing I cared about accomplishing today was finding somewhere outside to work out.

I have developed a completely unscientific belief that cancer probably struggles to survive inside a body that is actively trying to become unbearable to live in. Is there medical evidence supporting this theory? Absolutely not. Am I still treating sunlight, exercise, water, and vegetables like they’re magical anti-cancer cheat codes? Yes. Very much yes.

So I found a gym, worked out outside in the Houston heat, and according to my Whoop band, absolutely beat the hell out of myself physically for a while. Which honestly felt good. There’s something comforting about physical exhaustion right now because at least it’s understandable. Your muscles hurt because you used them. Simple. Straightforward. Not mysterious little blood markers floating around your body like unwanted plot twists.

That alone would’ve made for an incredibly boring blog post though.

But then dinner happened.

I wanted something light and healthy, and since Houston sits reasonably close to the Gulf, seafood felt like the right move. After looking around for a bit, I ended up at Navy Blue in Rice Village after seeing it recommended on Eater. That was honestly enough research for me.

I threw on jeans and a t-shirt and headed over, which weirdly felt significant because it was the first time I’d even brought jeans to Houston since all of this started.

Last year, there never really seemed to be a reason to pack them. My trips here revolved around hospitals, recovery, exhaustion, and trying to survive the Texas heat without feeling completely miserable. Gym shorts, joggers, t-shirts — that was basically the entire wardrobe. Jeans are what you wear when you’re planning to actually go somewhere. When you want to feel somewhat normal. When you think there’s a version of the night that might involve more than just getting through it.

For most of last year, normal never really felt like it was on the table.

So standing there in a pair of jeans on my way to dinner somehow felt like progress, even if it was the smallest and dumbest version of it imaginable.

I grabbed a seat at the bar near the windows so I could keep reading while I ate. I ordered the swordfish, which ended up being fantastic, but the real problem was the cheddar biscuits they brought out. They were basically elevated Red Lobster biscuits, which meant I immediately entered into negotiations with myself about how many counted as “reasonable.” I’m trying to eat mostly Paleo these days, so I stopped at two, even though deep in my soul I wanted approximately thirty-nine.

At some point while I was reading, a guy sat down nearby and started talking bourbon with the bartender. The restaurant had an impressive bourbon selection, and he was asking all the right questions, which naturally activated the part of my brain that cannot mind its own business.

So I joined in.

We started talking bourbon collections, unopened bottles, allocated releases, all the usual nonsense that men who spend too much money on brown liquid enjoy discussing. I mentioned that my collection had unfortunately crossed the line from “selection” into “problem,” which got a laugh and led to the obvious follow-up questions.

Eventually I mentioned that my surgeon had told me I needed to give up bourbon for a while.

That’s when he told me he was a colorectal surgeon.

Of course he was.

Not just a doctor. Not just a surgeon. Specifically a colorectal surgeon from another hospital system in Sugar Land. The exact kind of doctor who immediately understands the strange little world I’ve been living in lately.

The conversation shifted after that.

He asked about my surgery. The bag. The reversal. Recovery. He seemed genuinely surprised I was doing as well as I was physically, which I’m not gonna lie, felt pretty great to hear considering there was a period of time where I felt i looked rough.

Then he asked why I was back in Houston so soon.

So I told him.

The Signatera test. The lingering numbers. The fear that maybe this thing isn’t actually done with me yet.

He stopped for a second and thought about it carefully before answering. Then he said something that honestly landed harder than anything I’ve heard in weeks.

He told me those numbers were still encouraging.

That if one of his patients had results like mine after everything I’d been through, he’d feel really good about where things stood.

Not perfect. Not guaranteed. But genuinely good.

And for the first time in a little while, I felt some of the panic loosen its grip for a second.

Before he left to rejoin his wife and friends, he reached out his hand and asked my name.

I told him.

Then he introduced himself.

Micah Johnson.

My younger brother’s exact name.

Now listen, I know how that sounds. I fully understand coincidence exists. But at a certain point in life, you either start believing moments can mean something or you don’t. And sitting there in a seafood restaurant in Houston, talking to a colorectal surgeon named Micah Johnson about bourbon and cancer on the exact day my brain needed reassurance the most…it just felt like too much precision to be random.

Maybe that was God.

Maybe it wasn’t.

But it felt like someone reaching down into a pretty difficult stretch of life and reminding me that I’m probably not walking through it alone.

And honestly, I think that’s enough for today.

Life

.05

By AJ on Tuesday, May 26, 2026

I am once again sitting in a hotel room across from the MD Anderson Cancer Center campus in Houston.

Two weeks ago, after giving blood for something called a Signatera blood biopsy, I found out I still have a DNA signature of the tumor they removed floating around in my bloodstream. The first test showed .04 parts per million. Small enough that they wanted to run a second test to make sure it was not a false positive.

This morning, I got those results back.

.05 parts per million.

Tiny numbers, but not zero. Small, but there. Enough that it has to be dealt with.

I should probably be angry tonight. Honestly, I kind of want to be. I want to yell at God. I want to drop a long string of F-bombs while asking, “What the hell?”

You can insert whichever curse words you think sound most natural in my voice there. I cleaned most of them up for my mom and some of her friends who read this blog, but trust me, there would absolutely be profanity involved in that conversation tonight.

And honestly, I think most people would say I earned the right to ask that question at some point.

If you stacked up all the “what the hell?” moments in my life together, my dad dying of cancer, diabetes, going blind, family struggles, the torn Achilles, career setbacks, cancer round one, eventually it would seem reasonable to look toward the sky and yell:

“Seriously, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, GOD?”

Sorry, Mom.

But weirdly, that is not really where my head is tonight as I wait for tomorrow’s CT scan and whatever news comes after it.

And it is not because I am blindly optimistic or pretending this is fine.

It is just hard to stay angry when life keeps giving you things you once desperately prayed for.

Most afternoons last week around 5:30, I was flat on my back on the hot old AstroTurf behind my CrossFit gym, sweating out what felt like every ounce of water left in my body while my Whoop app politely informed me that my heart rate had been hovering somewhere near 180 BPM for the last twenty minutes of a fifty-minute workout.

I felt absolutely cooked.

No energy left. Legs shot. Lungs burning.

And somehow I still could not stop smiling.

Because only a couple months ago, I remember sitting in a hospital bed asking God over and over to just let me get back to that exact moment someday.

That exact miserable moment.

Laying on the ground trying not to throw up after assault bike sprints, sled pushes, ski ergs, wall balls, and dumbbell snatches sounded like the greatest privilege in the world when I was stuck in a hospital wondering what my future was going to look like.

And last week, there I was again.

Completely exhausted. Sweaty. Struggling to breathe. Whispering “get the hell up” to myself before forcing out one more rep.

Happily.

That is the weird thing cancer has done to my brain. It has made me unbelievably grateful for things that used to feel ordinary.

It is hard to stay too angry at God, or fate, or whatever it is you believe in, when you realize so many of your old prayers were quietly answered without you even noticing at the time.

Of course, I did not pray for cancer. And I have prayed alongside so many of you for this cancer to completely disappear.

But somewhere in all of this, I have also learned that God works on a timeline I do not fully understand and probably never will while I am here.

Maybe years from now I will be old, unable to work out anymore, laughing while telling somebody this exact story.

Maybe life goes differently than I hope.

But I honestly believe that someday all of this will make sense in a way I cannot see right now.

So no, I am not screaming “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?” tonight, even if things are continuing in directions I wish they would not.

Because I still have hope.

I still have faith.

And I still believe there is a very good chance I will spend years laying on that AstroTurf, sweaty, exhausted, smiling, and cancer free.

And if life turns out differently than I want, I think I am okay with that too.

So for now, I will see what tomorrow brings.

One more time.

Life

Sympathy, a Starving Tugboat, and a Good Distraction

By AJ on Tuesday, May 19, 2026

I think this week is going to be a test of the thing I do worst of all: patience.

I’ve been an instant gratification person my entire life, which probably speaks to some other issues I should unpack once I get past this damn cancer. But that feels like a problem for Future Me. Current Me is busy obsessively checking Natera’s website for blood test results like I’m waiting for Grand Theft Auto 6 to finally release.

They conveniently gave me a tracking number for the blood they took last weekend, which I’m sure has to weird out at least a few people at FedEx. Somewhere out there is a guy scanning a box labeled with biological material while I’m at home refreshing tracking updates like it’s Christmas morning.

Still, I’m weirdly grateful for both the tracking number and the people moving my blood around the country because at least it feels like progress. According to the shipping updates and my own completely unqualified detective work, Wednesday seems like a realistic timeline for news.

Until then, I’ve been trying to distract myself.

Much to the frustration of Tugboat.

Man’s best friend is apparently supposed to comfort you during difficult times. They lay beside you on the couch, rest their head on your lap, and provide unconditional love and emotional support.

Not Tugboat.

Nope.

Tugboat’s version of support is trying every morning to slip out of his collar, sprint downstairs to the coffee shop at the base of my building, and convince complete strangers that he is both starving and horribly mistreated. It’s honestly impressive how committed he is to the performance. He wanders around looking like a Victorian orphan asking for scraps while I’m upstairs paying an embarrassing amount of money for prescription dog food he refuses to appreciate.

Once he exhausts the coffee shop crowd and squeezes out enough sympathy belly rubs, he usually starts trying to visit other residents in the building. On most days, he successfully finds someone willing to let him hang out for hours. If Tugboat could speak, he would probably say these people aren’t suckers at all, but generous benefactors honored to have him serve as their emotional support muse while they work from home.

He has an ego nobody really gets to see in public, but it is massive.

There are moments where he pretends to show me affection, but I see through the scam pretty easily. He becomes very loving around 7 AM and 5 PM, which just so happen to align perfectly with meal times. Even then, his affection is conditional upon whether I’m serving portions he finds acceptable, despite the fact that he is objectively fat and currently on a diet he deeply resents.

The low-calorie food has apparently ruined his life.

He voices this opinion often.

Meanwhile, when he visits other people, I get routine updates about how amazing he is. How they took a long nap together. How he stayed close to them all day. How comforting and sweet he was.

With me? He goes into the other room, attempts to claim the entire bed, and gives me judgmental looks when I have the audacity to try and sleep in my own apartment. He’ll move just far enough away to avoid accidental touching, but the second I get up in the middle of the night — which still happens regularly while I figure out how all my new plumbing works — he opportunistically reclaims every square inch of mattress space before I can get back.

He doesn’t care why I’m awake at 2 AM.

He doesn’t care that cancer is the reason he gets sent off to extended sleepovers full of treats and attention.

And honestly, I didn’t think he cared much about what I needed at all.

At least not until last night.

My brain would not shut off. I could feel the anxiety creeping in while I waited for news about whatever comes next with all of this. The blood test. The remaining cancer questions. More treatment. No treatment. All the stuff your brain likes to weaponize against you when the lights go out and things get quiet.

And then, completely unprompted, Tugboat came over and laid down close enough to snuggle.

Which genuinely made all the difference in the world.

Right up until I realized he was farting directly on me.

I turned on the light and I swear I could actually see him smiling in his sleep while he did it.

But honestly, it made me laugh. It broke the spiral in my head. For a little while, I stopped caring about blood tests and timelines and cancer.

And it reminded me that even though Tugboat is absolutely a little jerk sometimes… he’s still a good boy who cares in his own weird way.

Life

I Guess Its Not Over Yet

By AJ on Sunday, May 17, 2026

This blog was supposed to be over already.

That was the plan anyway.

But like most of the stupid plans I’ve made throughout my life, this one also fell apart almost immediately. I don’t know if “fell apart” counts as a colon joke anymore or if my brain is just permanently broken now. Either way, I think I’m running out of energy for cancer humor.

Although apparently not completely.

Because even now, I still can’t stop myself from making shit jokes.

The reason I thought this blog was ending was because I thought cancer was behind me. I thought I had done the hard part already. Surgery was over. Chemo was over. I had mentally started putting this entire chapter of my life into storage somewhere.

Then Tuesday happened.

On Tuesday, I got the results from a Signatera blood test showing trace amounts of metastatic cancer cells still in my bloodstream.

Last year, my first test came back at 1.98 parts per million.

In January, it dropped to .05.

This week it came back at .04.

Which, to me, sounded good. Lower seemed good. Lower is the direction numbers are supposed to go when you’re trying very hard not to die.

Apparently not low enough.

Doctors wanted zero.

So now this story keeps going whether I want it to or not.

The strange part is that the results are simultaneously scary and almost encouraging at the same time. The amount they found is so incredibly small that there’s a good chance it wouldn’t even show up on a CT scan yet. It likely hasn’t spread anywhere visible. There’s even a possibility the result was a false positive because the level detected was basically the lowest measurable amount the test can find.

So right now I exist somewhere in the middle of all of it. Not healthy enough to fully celebrate. Not sick enough to fully panic. Just sort of stuck in this weird emotional waiting room where nobody really knows what comes next yet.

Tuesday hit me harder than I expected.

Not because I thought I was dying immediately, but because I had already emotionally moved on from this version of my life. I had already started relearning how to exist without cancer sitting in the middle of every thought I had.

And now suddenly it’s back.

Or maybe it never really left.

I left work early Tuesday and did the only thing that made sense to me at the time. I went to the CrossFit gym, got on an assault bike outside in the Texas heat, and worked until I could barely stand anymore.

At some point between nearly throwing up and questioning every life decision that led me to voluntarily exercising in 100 degree weather, the pity party ended. The frustration disappeared too. And for the first time since getting the news, my brain got quiet again.

I think part of what scares me most is chemotherapy.

I made it through chemo fairly well the first time compared to what a lot of people experience. But “fairly well” is still relative because chemo still sucked in ways that are hard to explain to people who haven’t done it.

Driving to Houston before sunrise on Fridays. Getting accessed through a chest port that hurt for nearly a year. Sitting there while poison got pumped directly into my bloodstream knowing the next several days were already gone before they even started.

Then driving myself home alone down I-10 with a chemo pump attached to me, listening to podcasts because silence gave me too much time to think about what was happening.

That part was hard.

Really hard.

And if I have to do it again, I honestly don’t know yet how I feel about that.

If this ends up being oral medication or something smaller and manageable, then fine. I can do that. Hell, after the last year, I can probably do more than I think I can.

But I also know enough now to understand what the harder version of this looks like too.

That’s difficult knowledge to carry around once you have it.

What’s also been strange is telling people.

People want this story to be over almost as badly as I do. They want to celebrate. They want the happy ending. And honestly, for a while there, I thought we had one.

So telling people this might not be over creates these awkward little pauses where nobody really knows the correct thing to say next.

Some people just say, “Cancer sucks.”

And honestly, I appreciate that response more than most.

Because it does suck.

There’s really no smarter or deeper way to say it than that.

But I also don’t think that’s the full story anymore either.

Because somehow, in a very strange way, cancer also created space for optimism and hope that I don’t think existed in me before all this started. And over the last year, I’ve had people reach out to me saying that the hope they saw in me helped them somehow during their own difficult situations.

I still don’t fully understand that.

But if the way I’ve handled this helps somebody else carry their own heavy thing a little easier, then maybe there’s value in that somewhere.

Maybe that matters.

And maybe that means this entire experience becomes something bigger than just fear and hospitals and chemotherapy and bad scan results.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I still have hope. Maybe stubbornly so.

And I still don’t believe this is where my story ends.

But tonight, I’m done thinking about all of it.

It’s Saturday night. Tugboat is asleep at the foot of the bed dreaming about food he can’t eat because he’s fat and currently on a diet. His entire world right now is basically just hunger and inconvenience, and honestly, that seems peaceful compared to whatever is happening in my brain.

So tonight I’m going to be more like Tugboat.

I’m going to enjoy the evening.

And I’ll worry about tomorrow when, or if, it comes.

Good night.

Month: May 2026

Cussing at God Tonight

Micah Johnson…

.05

Sympathy, a Starving Tugboat, and a Good Distraction

I Guess Its Not Over Yet