Monday night, I drove three hours in the dark, through rain and silence, down Interstate 10 to Houston. I was heading toward two days of tests—an MRI, a CT scan, and some other dignity-removing procedures that have become disturbingly routine. I was hopeful. Nervous. Tired. A little numb.
Tuesday morning, I caught an Uber to the radiology building at MD Anderson. The campus itself is massive—sleek towers of glass and steel, the kind of place that screams cutting-edge medicine and billions of dollars. But the radiology building? That thing looks like it was forgotten. Beige walls, bad lighting, and a vibe so heavy it feels like the paint itself has given up. You walk in and the air just says, You’re not going to like this.
The MRI wasn’t bad, physically at least. It’s just a half hour of lying perfectly still while a giant machine thumps and clanks around you like it’s building a ship inside your skull. They gave me a pill beforehand to temporarily paralyze my intestines (sure, that sounds fine), and then I laid there alone, in the dark, with nothing but my thoughts.
It’s strange where your brain goes in those moments. I wondered how many people had come into that same room, hopeful, only to get news that wrecked them. How many had their lives rerouted right there in that tube? You start thinking about that stuff when you’re left alone long enough. You can’t help it.
Next was the CT scan, in the newer building—the big, shiny one with the massive cafeteria. That’s where you’ll find the Chick-fil-A. I assume it’s mostly for the staff. Can’t imagine too many patients, in between bouts of fear and nausea, are thinking You know what sounds good right now? A spicy chicken sandwich and waffle fries.
But then again… maybe they are. Because halfway through my own scan, while they were flooding my veins with contrast dye that makes your insides feel like they’re on fire, I started craving waffle fries too.
The contrast dye hits hard. It warms you from the inside out and convinces your body that you’ve wet yourself, which they kindly warn you about ahead of time. “It’ll feel like you’ve urinated,” they say calmly, like that’s a totally normal sentence. MD Anderson uses a stronger version than most places, apparently. Fantastic.
So I laid there, half certain I was peeing, half focused on imaginary waffle fries, and somehow that was enough to get me through it.
And then came Wednesday—and the part of the story I wish I could skip.
Before I got the results, my surgeon had to perform a flexible sigmoidoscopy. If you’ve never had one, lucky you. If you have, I’m sorry. It involves lying on your side in a thin gown, your bare ass hanging out in front of three women—one of them a visiting doctor from South America—while they insert a tube with a camera, a water spout, and what I swear feels like a damn air compressor… straight into your ass.
The air inflates your colon, the water rinses it, and all of it plays out in HD on a giant monitor while they casually talk to you like it’s just another Wednesday. And maybe it is—for them. But for me? It was four solid minutes of uncontrollable farting as my body expelled the air they’d pumped in. I had zero say in the matter. Just me, wide-eyed and mortified, listening to a steady soundtrack of shame while trying to pretend like none of it was happening.
Dignity? Gone. Vaporized.
At one point, I genuinely hoped I’d either die on the table or mentally retreat back to the waffle fry fantasy that got me through the CT scan. No such luck. Just me, a sore ass, a 40-inch flatscreen showing the inside of it, and three women doing their best to pretend this wasn’t wildly uncomfortable for everyone involved.
Fuck cancer.
Now, the part you’ve probably been waiting for—the results.
They were… mixed. Not bad. Just not what I wanted. The tumor is shrinking, which is a win. The chemo is doing something. But it’s shrinking wrong. Picture a donut. I needed the hole in the center to widen—that would mean the tumor is shrinking from the inside out. But instead, it’s just getting smaller around the edges. The hole is still too tight. Still too dangerous.
So instead of moving on to radiation, I’m doing four more rounds of chemo. If the tumor keeps shrinking, the hole might widen enough. But there are no guarantees.
We can’t do radiation yet because it causes swelling. And swelling, in my case, would require an ostomy bag. And if I’m being honest, I’d rather get daily scopes broadcast on Netflix than go that route.
So yeah. Chemo restarts Saturday. And while it is good news, I’m still feeling pretty down tonight. I’m giving myself a little pity party, going to bed with a sore ass, and—eventually—I’ll get those waffle fries.
But not tonight