Cancer, COVID-19, Game On

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The Surprise

I woke up with a big lump in my neck the Wednesday before Easter in 2018. My wife was on her way back from a business trip. That night I went to the hospital because it was getting worse. She met me at the hospital, I had emergency surgery that Friday because they didn’t know what it was. I got the call from the doctor that Tuesday. He wanted me to come in, I asked him for the news over the phone. Stage Two Hodgkins Lymphoma. It was in my neck and a node behind my heart. Close friends came over that night. I wanted a second opinion for the course of treatment, and my father who’s worked in the health care industry many years got me an appointment at City of Hope for a week later. They confirmed the diagnosis. We didn’t cancel the trip we had planned to DC. The doctor said we could take it. We went on the trip with the boys, thinking it might be our last vacation. We had a great time but my wife got upset with me when I kept stepping away from the family at times. She wanted me to be more present, didn’t know I was having my moments, passing by these monuments, looking at the three of them, feeling like a ghost.

The Journey

August 2018: With Family During Chemotherapy

We came home, I started treatment end of April, which went through Sept 2018. I started eight rounds of chemo. My wife wondered how I was going to handle it ‘cuz I hate needles. Thirty-seven pokes. I documented my journey on Facebook, calling the day we got the diagnosis Day Zero. Highs and lows. I wanted to show people that God had this under control. We were not going to be fearful. We were going to be fearless. I didn’t paint a pretty picture but a realistic one. I told people the days I felt like absolute junk. I wanted my boys, who were nine and seven at the time, to know that whatever happened to me, God had a plan and it really made an impact, I think. Their class, their school, their teachers, our Little League, my CrossFit gym, our church, my dad’s church, the whole community was behind me.

Fear

When you get cancer, it’s what everybody feels right now with COVID-19. Keep social distance. What everybody is concerned with right now is what a cancer patient deals with on a daily basis while they’re going through treatment. We’re told that if we have a common cold, a fever of 99+, we gotta go to the hospital. So I’ve lived this. My family has lived this. So what people are concerned about – welcome to the cancer world. At the same time, everybody’s cancer journey is personal. And you can’t tell a cancer patient how to act and react. But I chose to be proactive, use common sense. I never stopped working and working out. I stopped traveling because I didn’t want to get on a plane. But I still met with customers. I practiced good hygiene, washing my hands. I would still shake people’s hands when I was sick, though I would do a lot more fist-bumping. because I had a great God. I was not going to let the cancer dictate my situation. Was I scared? Yeah, but as a believer in Jesus how can I be so scared that I was gonna stay tucked away in my house? No matter what happened, God had it under control. I used the strength of the community to give me that guide. Text messaging, phone calls, video calls, what people are doing right now I did a lot. But I’d still go out in public, I’d still go to gyms and still work out, but I’d use common sense and listen to my body. I exercised, ate the right foods.

Making a Difference

We started a company called Move through Motivation with the people that actually came to my house the night I found out I had cancer. I’ve known these people for 15 years. We have a Youtube channel, a podcast about my mission and the story behind the story. The podcast shares people who’re going through struggles and what their life is looking like right now. Feel free to go on. I wanted to start a company that got people even just walking, exercising in an encouraging environment to show them how that would keep them healthy. And so Pray and Move is a small group we started in 2017 with some guys from our baseball group and friends from church, and we meet every Sunday morning at 5:15. We’re still meeting every Sunday. Because the parks are closed, we’re practicing safe social distance running on the streets in our neighborhood. This past week there were six people that came. I’m a military man, served in the US army, I deployed in 2003, was in a severe accident, landed in the hospital. I’ve been through many tragic experiences that have set me up for this and to encourage people in this current situation. But further than what’s going on with COVID-19, my goal is to help people with health. So if you’re sitting on your couch all day, I want to be the encouraging voice that says let’s get up and go for a twenty-minute walk. If you need an encouraging group, I can find people you can be accountable to and I will be that motivation, although I can’t be the driver. The drive has to come from you day in, day out. I want my company to inspire people. Before COVID-19 hit, we were about to start a Just Move campaign with our two neighboring cities to help families come out and move, provide fun activities. If I can change the mind of just one person to walk just twenty minutes everyday, to do something more than what they were doing months ago and start them on a track to health and wellness, normal and healthy people will be able to fight a pandemic like this. The cancer didn’t define me. It just motivated me to help others any way I can, whether they’re going through cancer or just struggling to move more.

What happened at the end of your treatment?

The chemo killed the cancer cells. I’m in remission. We get a five-year window. So far after a year and five months, I’m clear. I scan every six months.

What was the greatest lesson you learned?

Spread love and positivity in dark times. When you go through something trying, you have a different perspective on what life’s really about. Spread love.

 

A big thanks to Matt for this conversation, his strength, love, and service. He roves the church (when we gather) looking for ways to lighten the load for everyone. Be sure to catch the awesome Youtube he filmed the day he got his diagnosis, and plug into his podcast and adaptable daily regimens on his Facebook page.

Please address comments to the blog host.

 

Ready for His New Wife and What Men Really Mean

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Mrs: How did you get me to marry you again?
Mr: Deception.
Mrs: Ah

***

Mr: I’m getting a dog when Tennyson goes to college.
Mrs: NO. It’s me or the dog.
Mr: (No comment)

***

Took over 10 years, friends, but I finally did it. Decoded Malespeak:

You look pretty, honey. (I want to have sex with you.)
Mmm. You smell nice, honey. (I want to have sex with you.)
That’s a nice outfit, honey. (I want to have sex with you.)
What a great dish, honey. (I want to have sex with you.)

***

Mr: Here, let me take a picture of you.
Mrs: No. I’m chunk-a–munk.
Mr: Oh, no you’re not. I want a photo for when you die.
Mrs: ?????

***

Man’s own words

***

Mom: Remember it takes a year for the Earth to revolve around the Sun?
Boy: So that means the Earth’s revolved around it ten times since I was born?
Mom: Yes. As I have around you these ten years.

***

Mrs: It kills me that one day he will grow up and know heartache, that he’ll suffer at the hands of a girl. Pause. Women are powerful.
Mr: Yeah. It sucks. They take your HEART, they take your MONEY, your self-ESTEEM. They take EvErything.

***

[Speaking of postpartum depression]
Mrs: Actually, I haven’t been depressed since I met you. Pause. I’ve been pissed off like hell, but not depressed.
Mr: You’ve been too pissed to be depressed, ha ha ha.

***

On her last birthday:
*Taking wife’s hand, sentimental* Oh honey, when you were born, the angels…
the angels…laughed. Detour. They laughed…at me.

***

9 Years Old, bedtime:
Boy: Can you see me?
Mom: Yes.
Boy: Even in the dark?
Mom: Always. Even in the dark.

When Life Doesn’t Cooperate

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JK,

I wish I had the words and muscle to help bear your load. You have borne your distresses with such amazing grace. Caring for the elderly becomes much like the labor over young children and you are pressed on all fronts with little margin to tend to your own needs.

Ariel Levy, staff writer at The New Yorker, recounts in her memoir her traumatic miscarriage out in Mongolia at five months. She speaks of grief, loss, growing up, thinking she had been getting somewhere with her career, love, playing house, motherhood, when it all came crashing on her head and she realized she’d just been driving around. She longs for her lost child in the crushed dream of motherhood, and confesses the fear of being without a companion. I thought of you but also of us all.

She quotes a famed writer, a woman in her ritzy apartment late in life who, when asked about her unfulfilled desire for children, answered simply that everybody cannot have everything. Ariel came to see – slowly – that we can have some things. I would add that every gift, every station in life, comes with a dark side we don’t think too much about in eyeing what we don’t have. This side of heaven, as you know, life is a burden, the burden of our humanity. T’s hobble from a judo injury has tapered to a limp. But I am reminded that we all limp. And joy can be found in all things.

Life here has been too full. I don’t have hands enough for all that needs doing, putting one fire out after another. Preoccupied as I had been with T, it took 36 hours for me to look down and understand that my thumb was (very) mad at me and was shouting up through my shoulder. I had forgotten the freak wrench off the joint after that first scream. In the resentment at being stretched like taffy, at being kept from the writing in life’s madness and the home school, it hit me last night that I have one shot at this. No matter how hard I try in the future, I will not be able to do this day over with T, resurrect his childhood and do motherhood more patiently and sweetly. I will not be able to care for him as I would want to. In a blink these years evaporated, leaving me with the freedom I gasp for some days and the house quiet. What lessons in character that he has learned from me (by watching) will he take into the world, into his own life and family? Faced, in the past, with the choice of alter egos for a life I could relive, I would’ve – so satisfied with my person – chosen my present self. Now, I would jump at the chance to be anyone else. Someone better at happiness, someone who knows worrying saves no one. In all that selflessness of yours, be selfish with the joy, JK. I don’t envy you your sorrows but no need to look this way through frosted windows.

Love always,
D.

Dear God, yes, I’ll take Combo #4. The family free of injuries (could we throw in my parents?), obedient child, antiaging powers, and that book deal we’ve talked about. But on the days that a smile is a workout, I’ll take it à la carte, the grace just to get through and to know You’ve got this.

War and Peace

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I can barely open the door before it throws itself in my face, rattling against its frame. I rein in my voice like I’m working a pulley, and talk to the door.

“I said hurry and eat, brush, and go to bed. I’m leaving the house.” I can’t help flipping the pitch at the tail: “You happy?!” Sharon Olds can keep me company over fish tacos. I make a note to grab my beloved copy, as my head makes it into his room on the last try.

He releases his weight on the other side and flops on the bed. “You wanna leave? FINE!”

“I’ve done nothing wrong. I just pointed out that you need to be more responsible when I’m not here. You can’t not eat all evening and then stuff your head in the fridge just before bed. You don’t want indigestion again. But you need something to be able to sleep now.”

The words walk out of his mouth almost staccato, measured. The boy who still feeds and cuddles with his stuffed tiger cub suddenly sounds sixteen. “Mom, I didn’t have an appetite. I don’t need to eat now. It’s no big deal.”

“Do you know why I’m going?” The words are rocks, breaking apart. The tears burn. “I’m leaving because you hate me. I love you and you don’t want to be near me and I don’t want you to go to bed hungry.” Anger, love. They are one and the same passion. I storm down the stairs and he is above me, hands on the banister.

“I don’t hate you!” he yells.

“Of course you do. Your actions say you do. You said I make you sick.”

Somebody come collect the boy’s jaw off the floor. His brows furrow, furious with indignation. “I never said that!”

“Yes, you did. And you blame me for everything.” For the backpack that throws up its contents on the floor, for the headphones you can’t find. For being your mother. “I’m going,” I turn, desperate for tissue, and he calls out, “Wait…I have to give you something.” He disappears into his room and as I blow my nose in the kitchen, I feel something hard being closed into my free hand. A ruby out of his treasure box, plastic and pretty the way it gleams, his most prized keepsake. It looks like the rock candy I licked down to a mound at his age. Something to remember him by.

He thought I was leaving for the long haul.

He’s gone upstairs. And my stomach is arguing and turning. It won’t survive a wait for tacos, so I scout the fridge when I realize he’s back, pausing behind me a moment like a long comma. He drops a piece of paper to the floor and finally goes to bed.

My eyes are sore and tender as the tears swell. Isn’t this the home we seek of our journey? We roll the dice, kick it up on the boardwalk and go back three spaces – even go bankrupt. We hope we don’t perish in jail. We make our way along the edge of our wins and the losses, biding our autonomy. But at striving’s end, all we want is to lay it down, to say and hear I want you. I need you. Please stay.

Men and Women: Oh, the Flu

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She gargles the fire in her throat (upstairs),
makes lunch (downstairs),
dusts (both floors),
washes the sheets (downstairs),
reviews geography with her son (upstairs),
heats the castor pack (downstairs)
hacks into the waste bin,
does her saline wash (upstairs),
empties the trash bin (downstairs),
gets her boy more blankets (upstairs),
checks the soup (downstairs),
does the dishes,
runs over to the library (outside),
makes bone broth (downstairs)

 

He….well, he…pulls down the covers and does the hard work
of opening his mouth for the nice hot water and pills.

 

Thirty Years Later

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I don’t know why people seek out fortune tellers. Why would you want to know the heartaches that lie ahead, the assurance that life will take your spouse and body and dreams?

He will be with his family tonight, Doctor, when he goes home, the deathless man says. Why should I tell him that tomorrow he is going to die? So that, on his last night with his family, he will mourn himself?…Suddenness. His life, as he is living it – well, and with love, with friends – and then suddenness. Believe me, Doctor, if your life ends in suddenness you will be glad it did, and if it does not you will wish it had.

Not me, I say. I do not do things, as you say, suddenly. I prepare, I think, I explain.
~ The one quotable text from Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife I can’t recommend

We hope, with foreknowledge, to hedge our bets, if only mentally. We like to imagine that we can avert, if not preempt, the undesirable – in the least, prepare ourselves and explain it. But the suffering is bad enough. Do we really need to expect it, too? And the glad blessings? Will their surety really help us live differently? Halfway up the California mountain thirty years later, I look down at the girl I left behind on the other side of the country. I wish I could promise her the thousand joys she dare not believe, the love in unexpected places, friends and a mess of food around her table. I wish I could teach her to nurture herself, admonish her from her follies. But far and past, she is out of my hands. And she is so frustratingly, so helplessly her. She won’t do it any other way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Life hangs by a prayer but you take so much for granted in your unhappiness. You have community and, for all their sins, parents who cherish you.

Stupid girl. You don’t listen. You need to take better care of yourself. You eat too much ice cream. You can fool others and even yourself, but not your body. One day you will have to learn to eat, sleep, live all over again. These brick apartments suffocate you but one day you’ll mark your own path. You always do. You will drive through a painting of Montana mountain and sky, and survey the gleaming Pacific. There are many, many good people ready at the crossroads of your life to look out for you. I am sorry that life will become so unyielding you will stop singing for 10 years.

There’s a man waiting to find you. He wants to build you a new life and provide all you need. You don’t know the cost and gift of marriage. The walk down the aisle is just expensive trimming. Though he’ll disappoint you many times over, it’s that he chooses you everyday. You will squeeze and crush the heart he left in your hand. And in his eyes you will still be enough.

You will experience the power and genius of God. Feel fingers and toes in your womb, touching you from the inside. Those hands and feet will one day refresh your grave, mark the place of your memory. She was here. You will put your baby to your breast in the rocking chair, seat of the highest office in the world. You will sing again. Sacrifice is a privilege, because it means a purpose greater than yourself. But you will embitter your child too, as your parents did you. The love of parents, our broken inheritance.

One day the lights will go out in your home and you will read to your men by candlelight. They will love the inflections of your voice.

I didn’t think people could change but you are proof. I’m proud of you! You will grow less rigid, softer with others, having learned how foolish you can be. Wisdom works backward. Your life will be a desert’s bloom, well tolerant of drought. And before the sun has set on your dreams, right here on the edge of this switchback, you will learn it is safe to stop hurting. Learn that you are more than your fears, more than your boy, more than your most unworthy moments, more than your achievements.

The loyalty of friends, the forgiveness of family, You will be wanted and needed – your gifts of grace. And the words. You will claim your place in a virtual world, a very real world, and somehow in all your struggles and humanness, make many people laugh and think. You will matter. Will it take 30 years for you to know it is All Right to breathe, to smile, to trust that life is worth it?

You’ve done well, my dear. Closing the wrong doors to love, choosing the right one. You will bring a beautiful, thoughtful boy into this world. And though life has knocked you flat beyond counting, you keep climbing. We will look each other in the eyes and I will tell you everything when you reach me.

 

Where Beauty Dare Thrive

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His scream punched the room where I was hiding for my life and sucked me cold out of sleep. It had just turned midnight and as the dream evaporated, I did not know I would rest again only after dawn. My son had woken – yet again – to spit thick, cloudy coughs into the waiting mountain of Kleenex. Tennyson cried, holding the ice pack down on his head, wiping at watery eyes. How much can a kid take? How much could I? Unrelenting 16-hour shifts nursing him hand and foot and chasing down every possible remedy, days of aborted sleep. I was now battling the flu.

The Money Tree uk.pinterest.com

This thing that’s mowed him down unflinching in the face of the best practitioners and products turned out to be a seasonal pollen allergy. Which is why it stealthily flared all last month as the pollen count here rose, and let up the two days it fell. Spring comes early in Southern California. On the way home with the diagnosis the other day,  I decided some plants would filter the air in Tennyson’s room. We picked out a big, tall palm and a cute little guy that made us smile, a Money Tree. Ten minutes later on our driveway, Tennyson was clutching his throat, hands wet with desperate tears. His throat tightened and hurt.  The plants! How sad is that, being allergic to the Money Tree! And a virus came along to kick him while he was down, sending him flying off a cliff, making sure not to neglect his parents. I didn’t remember my boy being so sick. But reserves are not bottomless. It’s incredible what life asks of us sometimes.

Where’ve I been? I’ve been stressed, if that isn’t obvious. We’re behind in school. Testing for Memory Master lies around the corner. The TV network PBS is also doing a feature on our music school and Tennyson was to be at the drums filming next week. The best laid plans of mice and moms, see them wheel away like chaff in the wind. It will be hard to swallow those events passing us by. The little mister has missed every baseball practice and Saturday’s opening game. We’ve been so disappointed, but the email from the coach touched me deeply.

Hi Diana,
No worries. I hope he is feeling better. His health comes before baseball. We are praying for him.

I wish this man knew the gift he gave me. I’m sure he inspires kids to love baseball and teamwork, but his humanity and ministry to me meant everything. He’s played professionally, but didn’t forget it was about people, not the game. It takes so little to help someone up. You persevere in hope but how long? And how, in the teeth of it going from bad to worse? Answers can come from the most unexpected places.

Flowers don’t like me. I can’t seem to coax them to life. I’m sure they sense the Tiger Mom, accordingly suffer performance anxiety. Or maybe they become passive aggressive and decide to just wilt on me. It also doesn’t help that I forget to care for them. And so looking up from the dishes, I was stunned at the sight of the bold blossom on my windowsill. I had given up on the orchid that dropped all its petals some six months ago, even though it was said to be only going dormant. How foregone it’d looked, stripped of promise. But here was a triumphant awakening, the white silk so fragile, so strong. My eyes smarted. How…under my watch? In the midst of this despair? The tenacity not only of life, but of beauty. The insistence of hope.

***************

Goodness, is it only March? I can do this. Nine more months and I get to reset and wish myself another happy, hard year.

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