HARD WORDS HEARD, GOOD ADVICE TAKEN

Hard words came on Jan. 21, 2017.

I was fitted for a custom mask used to immobilize heads on a cancer radiation treatment table.

“It may be warm.”

“It’s hot.”

“It won’t burn your skin.”

“It’s pretty hot.”

7 weeks and 35 jolts later I got off the hot table to bubbles and the graduation march. I asked for a tissue.

“What makes radiation work?”

“Science, it’s science that makes it work.”

“I like science.”

“That’s a big step.”

After the last chemo the nurses called me over to their station. Three of them sang “Hit The Road Jack.” In harmony, like they practiced. I asked for a tissue and sang along.

“We don’t sing this so much anymore. Too many people come back.”

“Can I come back and say hello?”

The first time I filled a prescription for anti-nausea, the pharmacist lady who knew me from picking up meds for my aged in-laws, came around the counter.

“This for you,” she said with a hug in the Safeway grocery store. The hug worked better than the meds.

Hpv neck cancer is curable; the challenge is not missing a treatment day. I eventually wanted to quit, to give up. It felt like the right time to roll over and call it a day.

My race was run and I had broken before the finish line.

But I’m a writer, a blogger, not a quitter

I’m also a wrestling champion, a high school all-American, but it’s not the lead on my bio.

I still hear Coach Abraham’s voice in difficult times.

“Get off your back.”

My status as an army veteran isn’t on my bio, though I still hear Sgt. Easterling.

“That’s not how we do things in this man’s Army.”

Two decades of museum conservation work taught me the value of the ordinary, and extraordinary.

“We freeze infested material twice; once for live bugs, the second time for eggs.”

Most of all I’m a husband and father with a wife and kids who had other plans for me. They didn’t call it an intervention, but the three of them surrounded me near the end of treatment and started accusing and yelling and reminding me of the story they’d tell of a self-centered, quitter-man they called a father and husband.

My story

They said I lied about what I was drinking for food since I couldn’t eat with a scorched raw neck. In some worlds being called a liar and a quitter are fightin’ words.

They knew where my buttons were and leaned on them.

Quitter isn’t on my bio either.

One of them showed me a picture of my dad taken about a week before he died from a series of strokes and said, “Isn’t it amazing how much you two look alike.”

I sat with my dad before he died.

He had shrunken away from who he’d been. I did look like him, shrinking before my own eyes. I could flex my once muscled arms as hard as I could and still squeeze it to the bone.

I couldn’t go out in such a disappointing way.

Wife capped it all with, “If you don’t find a way to get through this, I’m calling a nursing home and admitting you.”

Hard words from hard people

I gathered myself, re-gathered after the cancer treatment ended. Once the radiation and chemo stopped, there’s something called ‘the nadir’ where all the killer stuff keeps cooking.

It was a cruel irony considering the cancer death fear, treatment death fear, and the final “this must be what it feels like to die” fear.

I stacked those fears up, stood on them, and pledged to do better by those who cared enough to kick my butt and started kicking my own butt.

Since engaging with people on cancer twitter I’m reading more bios and see the importance of them identifying as cancer survivors, referring to their cancer as ‘my cancer’ in tweets, and it helps.

I don’t identify as my cancer, or their cancer, or a two-time cancer survivor. It’s not a competition.

It’s just cancer, horrible and nasty words to hear

In real life, people who know me ask for advice since I’ve rebounded so well.

One said, “I had an affair and now I’ve got a lump on my neck. What do I do?”

I told him what to do.

A woman said, “My husband just got diagnosed, could you talk to him?”

I talked to them both.

I rebounded so well that when a friend of my wife asked her, “How’s your husband doing” in a serious tone, she said, “He’s fine. Why do you ask?”

“Didn’t he have cancer?”

I got lucky. That’s it, lucky

Lucky to know that no one fights cancer the same way.

Lucky to know to fight the fear, the doubts, the insecurities, while the docs and staff showed up every day to face cancer doomed patients and fight for them.

I’m writing this during cervical cancer awareness month. I feel a kinship since Hpv and cervical cancer are as linked as hpv and tongue cancer.

Listen to your body, watch for lumps, get screened, and remember to fight the fear. You’ve heard this before: When you’re afraid to do something, don’t walk away. Be afraid, but still do what you need to do, just do it afraid. Hard words to heed.

What can we say to people with cancer?

“We know what we know and not anymore, and I know you will wring cancer out. Believe me, you’ve got the grip.”

It’s not easy, but that’s the big truth. Get a fix on the hard words and start wringing.