Yesterday morning, I got a text at 6:32. Usually, a text that early means it’s a family member or friend on the East Coast who still doesn’t understand how time zones work, so I ignored it for a few minutes while I tried to convince myself I was awake. Tugboat was already staring at me. He was waiting patiently, or at least as patiently as Tugboat is capable of waiting, for one of two things: breakfast or a trip outside to greet all the early morning runners who he remains convinced are outside specifically to see him. Eventually, I picked up my phone. “You have a new test result from MD Anderson waiting for you in MyChart.” Well, shit. I knew exactly what it was.

This was the Signatera test I’d been waiting for. It’s the same blood test that first told me there was still cancer somewhere in my body when every scan said otherwise. It looks for tiny amounts of DNA in my bloodstream matching my tumor. I’ve spent the last couple of months waiting for this particular result because, for the first time since starting the clinical trial, it might actually tell us whether all these pills, infusions, blood draws, and 184-mile drives to Houston are doing anything.

Suddenly I was very awake. I’m not an especially patient person, but I still sat there for a few seconds before opening the app. I took a breath, sat up in bed, and prepared myself for whatever number was waiting on the other side. Then I opened it. The number had gone down. Not dramatically. Not to zero. But down. I stared at it for a few seconds because apparently my brain needed some time to catch up.

It was good news. Really good news. For the first time since starting this trial, I have an actual data point suggesting the treatment may be doing exactly what we hoped it would do. That’s all it is for now. One data point. It doesn’t tell me that the tumors are shrinking. It doesn’t tell me the cancer is gone. There are still scans and blood tests and plenty of opportunities for MD Anderson to poke holes in me before we know any of that. But after months of watching that number go in the wrong direction, it finally went in the right one. I’ll take that.

Naturally, my first thought was that I should celebrate. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even 7:00 in the morning. Nothing was open, and even if I still drank bourbon with any regularity, which I really don’t, 6:45 on a Friday morning seemed a little aggressive. So I sent a few texts instead. Some went to the people I knew were already awake. Others went to the people I knew had been anxiously waiting for this result but inexplicably refuse to read the blog I created specifically so I wouldn’t have to send everyone individual cancer updates.

Then I took Tugboat outside. He peed. We walked over to the Carpenter Hotel and I got coffee. Then I dropped him off at daycare and went about my Friday. That was it. And somewhere during all of that, I realized how perfect that morning actually was.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about wanting more Tuesdays. More boring mornings. More normal workouts. More days that are just days. Friday morning was one of those. I got good news about cancer, took my fat little corgi outside, bought a cup of coffee, dropped him off at daycare, and moved on with my life.

There were no fireworks. No giant celebration. No movie soundtrack playing in the background. Just a normal Friday morning. And after everything that’s happened over the last couple of years, normal feels pretty fucking great.

So now I stay the course. I keep taking the pills. I keep showing up for the infusions. I keep working hard, eating well, going to the gym, trying to stay positive, and making that 184-mile drive back and forth to Houston. The number is .011. I want .000. Hopefully I’ll get there.

But yesterday, once again, it felt like I’m headed in the right direction. For now, that’s enough. I’ve got a life to go enjoy.

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…