‘CANCER LOVE’ FROM DAN PATRICK ON TARGET?

Cancer love came the day after Dan Patrick explained his chemo brain and fielded calls from the sports world.

One famous caller got this from Dan: “Yeah, I remember a few years back when you got all of the cancer love. I wanted some of that.”

If it isn’t a perfect quote, call it a quote unquote, but cancer love?

One part of me gets it. Cancer and chemo seem to go hand in hand, but cancer love?

Seriously Dan, let explain a few things here for you to pass along:

The only people who love cancer also hate it more than anything. These are the folks we meet in cancer treatment facilities. They are the front desk people, the back office people, the schedulers, nurses, doctors, AND the techs.

All of them hate cancer enough to share their cancer love when one of us comes in for the business.

This is a scene from my memoir in progress:

Licking Cancer In Oregon, The Beaver State:

I showed up on time for my first chemo appointment at an infusion clinic in Tualatin. It was part of the Knight Cancer Institute of Oregon Health Science University.

Neck cancer brought me there with specific guidelines to follow, which I did. The biggest rule? Eat a lot, as much as possible to pack on extra pounds.

Since I was a fat gym rat, eating more fit right in. I rolled into chemo big.

6′ 3″, 270+.

Ring me up, Dan

I lifted heavy and hogged down knowing things were about to change. Another beer? Better make it two. I hit 225 x 5 on my last gym day for an NFL feeling.

Before chemo I followed the guideline to have an appliance installed in my bench press toned pec, otherwise known as a moob in the over sixty set.

With my shirt off, the nurse poked and flushed and hooked a hose to what’s called a chemo port lump under my skin. The port connected to another tube burrowed through my chest muscle to a bigger vein to avoid the arm fry.

After the prep work I looked like Iron Man when he got a new battery. Part of cancer love is killing cancer, and part of killing cancer dying a little along the way. That’s a big thing to remember.

My nurse said, “Follow me,” after she was done.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you have gowns in here?”

“We don’t use gowns,” she said.

She opened the door and walked down the hall toward the ten chair infusion clinic, leaving me standing with my shirt in my hand.

‘No gowns?’ I thought. I wanted a gown because I didn’t want my shirt touching the mess of hoses taped to my chest. There was probably one hose, but that’s like saying there’s only one snake on Medusa’s head.

No shirt? No problem since I’d been to clothing optional places at my wife’s insistence. I knew how to walk the walk in shirt and pants, just pants, and nothing.

I still had my pants and shoes on when I caught up with my nurse. I stayed behind her when we passed the nurses station, sucking in my gut and flexing a little, which was my max flex to anyone looking.

“What’s going on up front?” a staff nurse asked my nurse.

“I don’t know, but it looks like something we need to check out,” another one said.

I smiled at them and pretended to scratch my chin to show my recent lat work.

My nurse turned and saw me in the context of ten others in chemo recliners hooked to IV trees.

“Oh,” she said, “you can put your shirt on.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled, wishing I’d done more lower ab work, hoping to show a high two pack.

“No thanks, this feels juuuust right,” I said, scanning the room like Tarzan in a new jungle.

Cancer Love Ends Cancer

Here’s the thing, Dan. I’ve heard and and watched you long enough to form an opinion, which is you’re a good guy.

Part of it’s based on how you treat the guys on staff. It feels real and authentic when the five of you talk an idea out further than planned.

You’ve pulled a heavy load for seven years by yourself. You could have kept it to yourself, but showed my opinion is correct when you took time to explain how it’s been.

That said, I can tell you from experience that you don’t want anything to do with cancer love. Why? Because it means you’ve got cancer. And cancer love comes with its opposite, cancer fear, like it’s contagious.

You touched a deep nerve, Dan, and I hope you continue doing the same, just remember what real cancer love is all about. For future reference it’s about killing cancer, every nasty, dirty, conniving, hiding, chameleon changing cell of cancer that ever existed.

When it gets more personal, cancer love means holding it together enough to go through the process and come out stronger in some way.

Two years later I’m 6’3″, 215.

Ring me out, Dan.