Fun With Cancer

I was diagnosed with testicular cancer June 17th, 2014. Life goes on.

The Game Master.

Author: January 14, 2023 6 Comments

I have a painting that was made by three artists. All three signed it but I wish I had a fourth signature: that of the person responsible for making it happen. His name was Rembert Parker.

I’d been introduced to Dungeons & Dragons by my friend John and, early in our freshman year of high school, he invited me to go to a weekend D&D convention with him in Evansville. His father drove us and when we got to the hotel John introduced me to Rembert—an older guy who was just a little taller than me, with lanky hair, round glasses, and a friendly smile. John had met Rembert at a previous convention and they’d become friends but then, as I quickly realized, Rembert was friends with everybody. In the few minutes we chatted at least two dozen people said “Hey Rembert!” as they passed by. Rembert was also one of the organizers of the convention, so it wasn’t just because of his outgoing nature that everyone knew him.

Then John and I got invited to join a D&D game and we went off to a hotel room with a group of strangers. The game was part one of a module, called something like Road To Verangia, that would be played over the weekend. At the end of it everyone would vote for the top three players who’d then advance to part two. Those who didn’t advance could find another game.

The next morning all the attendees gathered in one of the hotel conference rooms. Those who’d advanced—including my friend John—went off to play Road To Verangia part two. Alone and unsure what to do with myself I sat down at a table and was soon joined by a friendly group of strangers. We chatted a bit and then a guy came over and said, “All right, looks like everybody’s here. I’ll be your Dungeon Master today. Let’s start the game.”

“What’s this one called?” someone asked.

“It’s called Certain Death To Your Characters” the Dungeon Master laughed.

Oh, thank goodness, I thought. For a moment I’d been afraid it was going to be a repeat of the previous night’s game.

Character sheets were passed around. I looked down at mine and realized I’d been given the same cleric I’d played the night before. I panicked and looked around, but the room was empty. Not knowing what else to do I just played dumb, and stayed dumb, not using my knowledge of what was to come to my or anyone else’s advantage.

Later that day I’d go to lunch with John and his father and they’d talk about a guy who’d been in the previous night’s game and who’d tried to sneak in to a repeat of part one and how terrible it was that some people just couldn’t obey the rules.

“I won’t be surprised if Rembert kicks him out,” said John’s father.

“And he’ll never come back to a convention where Rembert’s in charge,” added John.

I chewed my chicken sandwich glumly, certain that my own crime would be uncovered, wondering if I should throw myself on Rembert’s mercy immediately. But I decided to keep playing dumb instead. And, somehow, over the whole weekend, it went undiscovered—or no one said anything if they noticed.

I went to a lot of conventions after that, most of them organized by Rembert. He and John were still friends but I kind of avoided him. He was a good guy and fun to talk to but, silly as it seemed even at the time, I still carried a slight air of guilt. Over time I just assumed he forgot who I was. Everybody knew Rembert but he couldn’t be expected to keep track of everyone.

Every convention had an art room and on Saturday night there’d be an art auction. I liked a lot of the paintings and would usually bid on one or two. After losing a bid on one someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was Rembert.

“Hey Chris, I noticed you liked that painting. I’ll talk to the artist and see if he’ll do one for you.”

This was surprisingly generous and, because Rembert was involved, a couple of other artists got interested and all three of them collaborated on the painting. I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the names of all three artists, although they signed the back as well as putting their names on the front so I can always open the frame if I ever get it appraised.

I’ve never forgotten Rembert, though, so I was sad when John told me he’d passed away earlier this month.

I didn’t realize Rembert had a blog where he wrote mostly about old and mostly forgotten songs “that the radio seldom plays”. Here’s his last entry:

Sadly, I’ve been in the Hospital with Cancer for a few weeks.
I hope to return to daily posts within a few weeks!

Funny and optimistic to the end. When John and I talked I brought up the painting, and John, who still goes to gaming conventions regularly, said that the ones Rembert organized were small—at most there’d be about two hundred people, which made it easy for Rembert to know the artists, and everyone else, unlike modern gaming conventions that have thousands of attendees. There used to be a stereotype of D&D players as socially awkward loners, but the small conventions really showed how untrue that was. We all got to know each other, even if it was just in passing, although they were just big enough that some noob who’d never been to one before could accidentally play the same game twice and have their mistake be forgotten while they were remembered.

Hail and farewell, Rembert. You were, as Nat King Cole sang, unforgettable in every way.

American Graffiti., Fun With Cancer, Hail & Farewell.

Two-fer Tuesday.

Author: December 20, 2022 4 Comments

The incredible quality of many YouTube videos always amazes me, especially when I reflect on how I’m old enough to have seen the internet grow from, well, nothing–I remember when home computers were still a novelty–into an indispensable tool and a tremendous waste of time and everything in between. Because it’s my birthday here’s one of my own videos I made and published exactly ten years ago today:

And here’s another one published exactly eight years ago. The internet has changed and so have we all, but the idea hasn’t. I’m still wishing tomorrow brings everyone better things.

Fun With Cancer, Happy Birthday., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault

It’s A Date.

Author: December 10, 2022 8 Comments

A friend of my wife’s sent us a platter of dried fruit which I like for being so artfully designed with the different colored fruit and the cluster of nuts in the middle. “Clusternuts” is the polite term for how many people think of all the shopping and prepping they have to do for the Christmas season, but that’s another story. And it does seem very Christmas-y. I remember as a kid wondering what sugar plums were. Then I saw a guy on one of those daytime talk shows making some out of dried fruit, nuts, and sugar. He also took some dried fruit slices and dipped them in syrup which just seemed like a waste of good dried fruit and a recipe for diabetes. I also remember reading The Velveteen Rabbit as a kid, which mentions that, in addition to the title rabbit, “nuts and oranges” were in the Christmas stocking. I’d never thought about it before but I realized that in the 1920s, when the book was published, oranges were a special treat for some people–not just a fruit you could pick up at the store any time you wanted.

The one thing I balked at in this collection of fruit is the dates. I loved dates. Note the past tense. It seemed like fresh dates would show up in the stores around me once in a while, which is odd because they’re widely cultivated and have a long shelf life, especially for fruit. So when I’d see dates I’d fill a bag and munch on them for at least a month.

The last time I did that was early June 2014. Then I was diagnosed with cancer and stress killed my appetite. I’ve avoided even thinking about this but here’s some friendly advice for anyone going through chemotherapy or any medical condition that reduces your appetite: avoid foods you love. Your doctor and other people will try to get you to eat, and you should–it’s important to keep your weight up as part of staying healthy. But if you have nausea or even a reduced appetite you may suddenly find you hate the foods you love.

Or it may just be me. Maybe it’s that I associated a big bag of dates on the kitchen counter with a very uncertain future. Note the past tense.

I pulled a date from the fruit tray. It was warm and gooey and sweet–like chewy honey. It was as good as I remember dates being before looking at them made me sick.

Eight and a half years is a lot of dates and it took all of them for me to realize I love dates again.

American Graffiti., Fun With Cancer

Comb Over.

Author: November 12, 2022 5 Comments

Source: The Guardian

It never occurred to me until recently that No-Shave November isn’t just something fun that people can choose to do, like Talk Like A Pirate Day, but an actual organization that people can join and that raises money to treat and fight cancer. I always assumed it was a voluntary activity and I discovered how serious it really is when I went to check and see if it was still something people did. Now I feel guilty for never participating, although, for me, participating would have to mean donating some money to the cause. I have never been blessed with abundant, or even reasonable facial hair. Even if I did quit shaving for thirty days my face would be punctuated with dangly patches.

I don’t mind being baby-faced, though. I had a roommate in college who could walk twenty feet to the dorm bathroom, shave his cheeks and chin completely smooth, and have a five o’clock shadow by the time he got back to the room. I guess the only reason he even bothered to shave is in two days he would have turned into Alan Moore, but that’s another story.

What set me off on this line of thought was the discovery of the world’s oldest known sentence on a comb. The inscription says, “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard,” and from the louse and egg remnants still clinging to it after almost four-thousand years apparently it worked. And we also now know that cooties weren’t just invented on the playground but have been around a really long time.

Various historians have speculated about what, exactly, allowed our first ancestors to start building civilizations. Some think it was fire, others think it was the transition from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer way of life to an agricultural one. Some have even suggested underarm deodorant.

I think tools had something to do with it. Tools require instruction, not just for their making but for their use. Imagine looking at something as mundane as a comb and having no idea what it was for. And while grooming seems like it’s partly a matter of comfort it’s still important–it’s not something I’d call entirely voluntary.

American Graffiti., Fun With Cancer

Number Eight.

Author: September 23, 2022 6 Comments

Eight years ago, on September 23rd, 2014, I had my final round of chemotherapy. Eight is a funny number: it’s two fours, which are two twos, which are two ones. Maybe that’s why a lazy eight is used as the symbol for infinity. Upright it also resembles an hourglass but, while I continue to mark time since I was cancer free, I also need to look forward. It’s time to reflect on what I miss and what I don’t miss from my bout with the crab.

Lately I’ve been noticing the moon which is currently waning down to a slim crescent. It was in the same phase in late September 2014, which seems auspicious—one phase coming to an end and another about to begin. On that afternoon in June when I was first diagnosed with cancer and my wife and I rushed to the emergency room because they thought I also had a blood clot I ended up spending the night in a room in the lowest level of the hospital, a room without windows so I couldn’t see the sky or even the light shifting from day to night. Then they kept me in the hospital another night but moved me to a room in a completely different section, high up in a corner, where I at least had a window but, thanks to the oddities of hospital architecture, the only thing I had a view of was a brick wall. But I could walk to the end of the hall where there was a big window that looked down on a gas station, restaurants, a coffee shop, stores, and I could see people walking up and down the sidewalks. I didn’t think to look up, only down, wondering what was going to happen to me.

Chemotherapy followed a rigid schedule. My oncologist even said at the outset that no matter what happened we would plow ahead with the treatment. If a meteor hit the clinic she had a backup location. If some other unforeseen disaster happened she’d still find a way to proceed. One morning while I was waiting to go in for treatment a nurse came out and told me my white blood cell count had crashed and they thought they might have to pause until it went back up. My oncologist told them to go ahead. She couldn’t think of anything that would halt, delay, or change the plans that had been made. Somewhere, off in the distance, 2020 heard that and snickered, but that’s another story.

It was just three months but it felt like forever, probably because chemotherapy was such an unusual experience. It was lonely, too. Most of the time when I see chemotherapy portrayed in TV or in movies people sit in chairs next to each other while poison slowly drips into their veins. And most cancer clinics, I think, are like that: they pack people together like they’re on an airplane. My clinic had the real estate to give every patient an individual room, which was a mixed blessing. There were days I wanted to be by myself. There were days I would have liked some company. One of those days, in my first week of chemo, a guy with a guitar came around to sing songs for the patients. He came to my room and played “Edelweiss”. I asked if he knew anything more uptempo, so he played “Surrey With The Fringe On Top”. I started to ask if he knew anything from Sweeney Todd or if I was going to have to cut my own throat but instead I just politely said, “Thank you, I think I’d like to be alone now.”

I miss chatting with the nurses each morning as they stuck needles in me. I miss the mornings when I didn’t have chemo and I would stay in bed, one of our dogs curled up next to me. I don’t miss forcing myself to get up at nine because if I didn’t I’d stay in bed all day. I don’t miss the night sweats or waking up to soaked sheets. I don’t miss the brief bouts of nausea or the medication that took away the nausea and made me so ravenous I’d cook and devour stacks of French toast with Nutella and pecans, then have a midmorning snack of cheese and crackers and a couple of hot dogs and chips for lunch and fried chicken and mashed potatoes for supper followed by a root beer float and I really don’t miss gaining more than thirty pounds in less than two months.

And I don’t miss the rigid schedule of chemo. At the end of it was uncertainty. Technically the doctors wouldn’t give me the all-clear until December when they performed surgery to remove and check several of my lymph nodes, but they didn’t find anything. I’m also the one who had cancer so I get to set the date.

Uncertainty, I realized, was a gift. It was time unbound, the hourglass that fixed the movement broken.

Source: Mind Of Frames

Fun With Cancer

Lucky.

Author: September 24, 2021 8 Comments

Last day of chemotherapy.

Why is seven a lucky number? There are seven days in a week, and while that’s got a long history it’s also pretty arbitrary—if we were smart we’d always have December 31st on Thursday so we’d have the weekend to recover. There are seven continents although that’s also pretty arbitrary because Europe and Asia are connected and so are North and South America, and the central part is pretty important too. There are supposedly seven stars in the Pleiades but look through a telescope and you’ll see a lot more than that. Supposedly there are seven colors in the rainbow but when was the last time you looked at a rainbow and really saw indigo? There’s the old dad joke that six is afraid of seven because seven eight nine, but that’s the kind of joke that’s only lucky if people are still willing to talk to you after you tell it. Maybe it’s something in the number itself. Seven is the largest single digit prime number, and it’s an odd number so you can separate it into two even groups of three with one standing in the middle alone, and it’s there saying, “Hey, do you know why six is afraid of seven?”

In games with two six-sided dice there’s a special significance to seven because it’s the number that has the most combinations so it’s the number you’re most likely to roll.

It’s also been seven years since I finished chemotherapy, which has me thinking a lot about how much happened in those first seven days.

My first day I went in not knowing what chemotherapy even meant, which sounds stupid now, but all I’d heard about chemotherapy was the side-effects: hair loss, weight loss, sickness. What would the procedure be? And I was afraid to ask which may sound even more stupid but I figured I’d find out soon enough, and it’s not as though I could negotiate or improvise something other than what was in the script.

With that first day, a Monday, I learned that chemo mostly involved sitting around letting IV bags of fluid drip into my veins. I expected it to be like a root canal but it was more like study hall in school, although less painful because I didn’t have a test on economics afterward.

Later in the week I’d develop severe swelling in my right leg from all the extra fluid, I was so exhausted from stress I fell asleep during an MRI, I got lost going to the bathroom and a nurse had to show me the way back to my room.

I had bouts of nausea and wondered if that was as bad as it would get, then it got worse: a guy with a guitar came around and sang “Edelweiss” to me.

I think it was during that first week that I had the minor surgery to have a chest port installed so I wouldn’t end up with arms like a heroin addict’s. I fell asleep during that too and woke up singing “Comfortably Numb” which everyone in the operating room found hilarious.

I wondered if I’d see any other side effects and, in fact, the following Monday when I went in I leaned my head back on a pillow while a nurse gave me a single shot. When I lifted my head up there was a clump of my hair on the pillow. The rest of it would fall out later.

Those first seven days didn’t so much establish a routine as get the worst of what I’d go through out of the way with things gradually getting better from there.

Six times now I’ve celebrated successfully finishing chemotherapy. It wasn’t the end of my cancer treatment—there was still recovery and surgeries that followed, but, as the one who had cancer, I get to choose, and I’ve arbitrarily picked this date as the one to celebrate. And six times it’s not really been something I’ve celebrated; it hasn’t been fun reflecting on what cancer meant to me, what it did to me. I’m glad to be here but six times I thought I’d be happier to be here if my body hadn’t turned on me, if I hadn’t lost so much to a cluster of runaway cluster of cells.

This time feels different. It’s lighter. It’s better. This time I just feel glad. I don’t know what comes next, but I’m ready to roll the dice.

 

Fun With Cancer, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Plus One.

Author: September 18, 2020 8 Comments

September 2014 feels like a long time ago, probably because it was a long time ago.

The conventional wisdom regarding cancer, if there is such a thing as conventional wisdom with a subject so broad and diverse, is that the five year mark is a big one. Some say five years cancer-free is as good as cured. So what am I supposed to think now that I’m about to reach year six?

Technically, the doctors will say, I wasn’t really confirmed as cancer-free until December 2014 when I had surgery to remove all lymph nodes that might have been harboring aberrant cells but which turned out to be completely clear. And technically, I’ll say, when I finished chemotherapy in late September 2014 I started my recovery, and I get to have some say in this because whose cancer is it anyway?

Anyway, for one thing I can’t say it’s completely behind me. Yes, I had a form of cancer that was easily treatable, and literally within a day of my diagnosis at least one doctor was telling me I had a good chance of being cured. If I hadn’t been so careless in the months leading up to that diagnosis, if I’d been paying attention to the obvious signs, “being cured” could have meant one surgery instead of three and I could have skipped chemotherapy. I made things worse by being lackadaisical about my health when I should have had a daisical, but that’s another story. Sure, there were some fun parts of chemotherapy, like the guy who came around every day with a cart full of candy bars and chocolate milk, and then there was the guy with a guitar who came to my room and sang “Edelweiss” and I asked him if he could play something a little more upbeat and he played “Surrey With The Fringe On Top”, and the best part of that is that he only came by once. Still I’d prefer to have skipped all of it.

The idea of being cured is also misleading. Even after five years cancer can come back. Or it can pop up somewhere else. When I wasn’t getting chemotherapy I sometimes went to the local Gilda’s Club, a place for people who’ve had cancer, who have cancer, or who know someone with cancer—in short, for everyone. I met people there who’d been cancer free for decades. Like them I’ll be a cancer survivor for the rest of my life. It helps keep things in perspective. There was a time when a little thing, like the grocery store being out of that coffee I like, could ruin my day, but now I can say, “But at least I don’t have cancer!” and I feel better, and as an added bonus when I yell about cancer in the middle of the grocery store people clear the aisle and no one comes around singing Rodgers and Hammerstein songs to me.

Sometimes I do wish I could go back and do it all again, although differently. I’d be more aware, I’d be more organized, I’d ask, “Hey, do you know any Sondheim?” I’ve even thought about how I would handle it if I have cancer again. That may sound like a morbid thought but the universe is a morbid place. Everything that lives eventually dies. That’s why we’re lucky to be alive, and if you don’t feel lucky to be alive try yelling, “I’m lucky to be alive!” Even if it doesn’t make you feel better it’ll clear the coffee aisle.

What cancer did for me was leave me with a deeper understanding of how the future matters. The past matters too, and so does the present—they’re all part of the same thing—because everything builds on what came before it. Every decision is a plus one.

 

Fun With Cancer, Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault, The Weekly Essay

Public And Private.

Author: September 5, 2020 6 Comments

Source: Boston Globe

Public tributes to Chadwick Boseman, like the one in Graffiti Alley in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are a reminder that he was a public and very prominent figure. And yet he kept his cancer diagnosis private so that many of us who are fans were shocked by his death. I know some have criticized him for not speaking up, saying he missed an opportunity to educate the public about colorectal cancer and its changing demographics. It’s rising among younger people and Black people. I won’t repeat or even link to the critics but at the same time I will acknowledge them. He didn’t choose to get cancer, but he could choose how he responded to it. I don’t know why he chose not to talk about it but I know when I was diagnosed with cancer I didn’t want to talk about it, and didn’t tell anyone outside of a few people for three weeks. And when I did talk about it I joked about it because it was hard for me to admit even to myself, even after I’d started chemotherapy, that it was really happening.

There are a lot of reasons my own fight with cancer is different: I had a different, and much more treatable, cancer, and my own treatment was probably a lot easier than his. And yet I remember days when I didn’t even feel like getting out of bed. I was out of work for six months because my immune system crashed. He kept working, filming and co-producing Marshall, Black Panther, and two Avengers films. He was even confident he could finish Black Panther 2.

Also consider four major roles that help define his career, a career that was cut too short: Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and T’Challa, the Black Panther. There was some luck involved—in art and in life none of us can control everything—but he chose to portray four people, three real and one fictional, who are all legendary. He chose roles that contributed to discussions about race in the United States.

Respect his choices.

Hail and farewell Chadwick Boseman.

 

American Graffiti., Fun With Cancer, Hail & Farewell.

Know What You Need To Know.

Author: June 12, 2020 10 Comments

Before your next doctor’s visit we would like you to take the following steps or be prepared for some new measures:

Please have a mask and wear it when you come to the doctor’s office.

If you have prescriptions please call ahead to make sure they’re refilled before your visit.

We have hand sanitizer available and ask that you please use it regularly, including

when you enter and exit the building.

Please use the automatic doors when entering and exiting the building.

Wear gloves or use your elbow when pressing elevator buttons.

Your temperature will be taken upon entering the building with a no touch thermometer.

Maintain a safe social distance of at least six feet or, in Montana, two shovelnose sturgeon.

If your doctor’s office is in Montana shovelnose sturgeon will be provided.

Please let staff know or consider rescheduling if you have experienced any of the following recently: coughing, fever, excessive sweating, shortness of breath, fatigue, loss of taste or smell,  an irrational fear of cotton balls.

Arrows have been placed on the floor to show walking directions. Please follow the arrows as they are there to help maintain social distance.

The shovelnose sturgeon are stuffed and lacquered. Please do not try to eat them.

Your privacy is very important to us. When it’s time for your appointment please don’t make the receptionist yell your first and last name more than twice.

You will have exactly one hour to solve all the puzzles and escape from The Mystery Mansion Vault. You can ask your guide, Jeff, for up to three free clues. Additional clues, however, will cost your team time and your chance at a free t-shirt.

If you feel feverish in the hallway between rooms C3 and C5 it may not be a fever. It may be the 6000 degree lava pit in the middle of the hallway.

Please follow the arrows around the lava pit. This will help you maintain proper social distance.

Personal items thrown into the lava pit cannot be retrieved by staff.

Tenemos que mover estos refrigeradores, tenemos que mover estos televisores a color.

Watch out for that bald guy wandering around with his mask on top of his head like a weird toupee. This isn’t an item of concern but, really, what is his deal?

We don’t need to tell you to maintain proper social distance from the guy wearing his mask on top of his head. You can figure that one out for yourself.

We are aware there are teeth marks on the shovelnose sturgeon.

If your doctor attempts to shake hands with you run away.

Telemedicine options are available.

Fun With Cancer, Not Non-Fiction, The Weekly Essay

Art Therapy.

Author: September 21, 2019 6 Comments

It’s fun for me to take some graffiti and relate it to some aspect of art history even if, and sometimes especially if, any connection between the two is a real stretch or simply nonexistent since most, or even all, art comes from a mental leap. This time, though, I want to get more personal. I’m still contemplating my five-year cancerversary—and I know that’s a word I just made up, and I know that since “annus” is the Latin for “year” and “versus” is the Latin for “turn” and that therefore “anniversary” means “turning of the year” and cogito ergo something or other the word should be “annicancer” but that doesn’t roll off the tongue like “cancerversary” and this entire paragraph has gotten away from me and I should start over.

Back in June 2014 when I got the cancer diagnosis I spent two nights in the hospital. The second night I was taken up to a private room, and while the window basically looked out at a brick wall because it was in a wing that was a fairly recent addition I could walk down the hall to a window that looked down at a stretch of 21st Avenue I knew well. I sat at that window for a long time wondering what was ahead of me, looking down at places that held so many happy memories for me, and wished I could be down there. Really I wished I could be anywhere other than a hospital room, but there was something especially frustrating about being so close to places I’d not only much rather be but that I could imagine so clearly.

One of those places was the Sportsman’s Grille where I’d had a few beers. Really I’d had more than a few beers there–in college I did this Dylan Thomas impersonation. I’d imitate his voice and recite “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and guzzle an entire pitcher of Gerst beer in between lines and sometimes, in another imitation of Dylan Thomas, do that three or four times in one night, which would amuse my English major friends and horrify my pre-med friends, but that’s another story.

The Sportsman’s Grille also had an upstairs pool room and it was the only place I knew–and still know–in Nashville that had a snooker table, which is larger than the standard table used for 8 and 9-ball. And I love snooker. It’s so unbelievably complicated it’s best played sober, although I think the reason it’s unbelievably complicated is because whoever wrote the rules had to be drunk at the time.

Anyway the Sportsman’s Grille was brightly lit that night and as I sat at the window, almost certain I could hear the click of billiard balls and maybe even a voice slurring, “Though wise men at their end know dark is right…”

The Sportsman’s Grille in that location is closed now, and the building is currently empty. There’s a billboard over it and someone, or, from the look of it, a couple of someones, added their own tags to the back of the billboard. They’re stark and simple although really well done, and I can’t explain why but it makes me happy to see them up there. I’m sure there’s a reason but I can’t quite make the leap.

 

American Graffiti., Fun With Cancer

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