Life in the Stupid Lane

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.

This week, I should be getting some news about what comes next.

I know I have a PET scan, which seems to be way easier than a CT scan from everything I have read. So of course that probably means it will be anything but easy. That’s generally how these things work.

After that, on Wednesday, I talk to the doctor about the clinical trial. There was one spot left in this trial, and it sounds like it may have been held for me for a while. I’m not sure whether I should be flattered by that or pissed off.

For now, I’m going to assume it’s God’s hand at work and that this is all going to go well.

I did get some paperwork the other day explaining the drugs I’ll be on. Most of it read like Greek. The part about side effects, however, was pretty interesting.

Compared to everything else I’ve been through, this sounds like it won’t be too hard on me, which is encouraging.

Of course, since it’s a drug trial, the pharmaceutical company listed every possible side effect known to mankind. The list seemed to range from fatigue all the way to your eyeballs melting out of your skull like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

So there’s that to look forward to.

I realized after getting some thoughtful messages from friends that my last couple of posts may have given off the impression that I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, one inconvenience away from completely imploding.

That’s not really the case.

I did have a pity party for about a day. That’s usually my M.O.

After that, I got over it and went back to normal.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, and that isn’t ideal. But I can control how I handle today and however many todays I get after that.

So life has largely returned to normal.

I’m still working, although I’ve been thinking about whether I should move into a different role so the team that depends on me gets the support they need and deserve this year. Last year, I had a lot of great people step in and help carry the load. This year, some of those people have moved on, so I’m looking at what makes the most sense.

Beyond that, I leave work around 4:30 most afternoons, drag some form of exercise equipment out into the Texas sun and humidity, and do my very best to nearly kill myself with a CrossFit-style workout.

There are a couple reasons for that.

The first is that I want my fitness as high as possible for whatever comes next. I know exercise and sunshine can’t kill cancer, but if I can get my cardiovascular fitness up, my VO2 max up, my heart rate variability up, my strength up, my body fat down, and my overall health moving in the right direction, it stands to reason that I’ll be better prepared for whatever fight is ahead.

At least that’s what I tell myself every time I’m lying on the ground in the middle of a workout, questioning my life choices while a little voice in my head screams, “Get up. Do another rep.”

So far, so good.

We’ll see.

The other thing exercise does is flood the brain with enough endorphins to make it really difficult to throw yourself a pity party for very long.

The workouts have been difficult, but I find myself grateful to God that I can still do them reasonably well.

There’s also something oddly satisfying about choosing to suffer on purpose for an hour. Cancer may get a vote in what happens next, but every afternoon I still get to choose to walk out into that heat and do something hard.

Regardless of what my Whoop app thinks about the situation.

For now, there isn’t much more to talk about.

I’m eating well. I avoid Diet Coke and processed foods most of the time. Tugboat still wants very little to do with me unless I am actively providing him with something of value.

Otherwise, I’m pretty sure he’d lock me in a closet with the vacuum cleaner.

If he weren’t terrified of the vacuum cleaner himself.

They say dogs can smell illness in the body. Since he doesn’t seem to be acting any more concerned than usual—and by “concerned” I mean being his normal level of jerk—maybe things are trending in the right direction.

If he could talk, I wonder what he’d tell me.

Actually, that’s not true.

I know exactly what he’d tell me.

“GIVE ME A DAMN PUP CUP AND GO AWAY.”

Oh well.

For now, it’s off to bed.

Tomorrow will get here whether I’m ready for it or not.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of this, it’s that worrying about tomorrow has never once made tomorrow easier.

So I’ll deal with it when it gets here.

Tonight, sleep sounds like a much better plan.

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.