What would you do on the day you found out you were going to die in two years? I would bet it’s something completely different than you would’ve thought. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should start by saying that this story has a happy ending. However, it’s difficult to know where to start.
By nature, I’m verbose. It has served me well as a software developer, but not so much in social situations. If I indulged myself, we’d start with the story of my parents, and then I’d never get to the point of this piece. But what’s a story without context? They can be very misleading. So, I guess the best place to start is to tell you why I’m writing this.
A new friend
My new friend Max and I met about a year ago at a local food bank. Max delivers the food and I unload it. He’s been doing that for quite a few years. Me? I started about a year ago. Through a series of serendipitous moments, Max and I became friends. We began to meet on the weekends for breakfast. Chatting for 10 minutes each week at the food bank wasn’t enough.
I was surprised and delighted to make a new friend. Think about this. When was the last time you made a new friend? Not an acquaintance, mind you, but a real friend. It had been many, many years for me, but I digress.
During these breakfasts, we began sharing stories of our lives. It’s amazing how well you can communicate with people by being transparent. One of my favorite song lyrics is from a 1980s synth-band from England called Blancmange: “I don’t tell lies no more. There’s nothing left to hide.” One never knows where they’ll find wisdom. So, it came up in our discussions that I was a “cancer survivor.” I don’t like that phrase much. It seems so … “heroic” to be a survivor. I sure don’t feel heroic, but again, I digress.
Max and I talk about many things, but mostly, we talk about philosophy. I don’t know this to be true, but I postulate that virtually every person who’s old enough to grasp mortality thinks about philosophy when they’re told they have cancer. I sure did. What questions would you ask yourself? What things would you think about?
When going through cancer treatment, you have a lot of time to think. That’s what Max and I talked about, all the questions that no one knows the answer to. If someone tells you they have the answers, don’t buy that bridge, but that’s just my opinion.
Delving into writing
One of the things I took to doing while I was recovering from treatment was to write a screenplay. I’m not a writer. I’m a software developer, but I had an idea to take an old Western movie and turn it into some HBO miniseries, and I’ve been enjoying my fantasy of actually having it made someday. Max, however, is a writer. I know. I’ve read one of his books and I’m in the middle of another.
Max told me about The Mindful Word. He suggested that I should write down some of what we’ve discussed. He said it would be inspirational. He’s suggested that to me on a couple of occasions. I could never have imagined that anything I’ve done or could say would be inspirational. I’m too self-centred. He recently brought it up again during our last breakfast. I don’t know why this time has moved me to try. I know that others living and dying with cancer will read my drivel and consider it self-indulgent crap. I got lucky.
So many others are not. I know. I’ve seen them. I’ve sat next to them. I’ve watched them die. It seems so braggadocious for me to share my good fortune when others are on the other side of the coin.
Then why I am I writing this? Hopefully, by the end, I’ll know why. No one wants to open themselves up to ridicule. I’m certain that I’m going to say something insulting, stupid or just plain inaccurate. But I trust Max. I’ve told him many times that he’s like my Sherpa. He’s helping guide me through my journey along the path of trying to cope with all the questions that I’d never asked myself.
I’m asking them now, solely because I had cancer. The one thing I know to be true about cancer is that it’ll change you in ways you never imagined. So, I guess that’s why I’m writing this. Maybe I’ll learn something along the way.
Transparency
One footnote here. I talk a lot about transparency. However, I’m hiding behind a pseudonym as I write this. I’m “changing the names to protect the innocent.” I’ll be transparent here and tell you that my hypocrisy knows no bounds. I’m afraid to be transparent in this regard. We’re living in a strange world.
I love the line in the movie Silverado when Kevin Kline says, “I always figure you might as well approach life like everybody’s your friend or nobody is; don’t make much difference.” I’d like to live my life that way. Like everyone is my friend. Like if I walked down the street, I could smile and wave “hi” at everyone. They’d know that I meant them no harm, and I’d know they meant me no harm. What a wonderful world that would be.
So, I’ll do my best to convey my story. And if Max is right—if someone finds something inspirational in my story—that’ll be wonderful. I’ll just chalk it up as a happy accident.
The world changes
My name is Marcel. I’m 59 years old. I was born in Santa Monica, and grew up in a few different cities in Southern California. I left in the early ’90s when I was 30, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I eventually became a software developer. I’m a late bloomer, which is another way to say I did a lot of stupid things when I was young.
One of the good things I did was learn to play the guitar when I was 28. I made friends while playing open mics at pubs like The Starry Plough and The Freight & Salvage. They eventually introduced me to my now-wife Lily. We’ve been together for 27 years. We have no children. Neither of us wanted to. If we had children, this would probably be a very different story. I guess that’s all you really need to know about me for now.
On March 14th, 2020, four days before California instituted the COVID lockdown, I was told I had cancer. And I was relieved. I was glad it was over. I was 5’10” (about 178 centimetres) and I weighed more than 300 pounds (or 136 kilograms). I took cholesterol medication. I took blood pressure medication. I took little bitty aspirin pills so my heart wouldn’t explode. In my senior year of high school, I wrestled at 157 and I didn’t have to cut weight (If you’ve wrestled, you know what that means).
I guess you can say the world wore me down. A more accurate statement would be that I let the world wear me down. I was tired of going to work every day, to a job I used to love but now hated. I had a harder and harder time finding joy in life. And I was alone.
Temporary separations
My wife had been living in St. Louis for the previous 18 months. In September 2018, her 90-year-old mother fell down in the home where she lived by herself. My wife left the next day to take care of her, and didn’t come back to our home in California until April 2020, just before I began receiving treatment. That day in September, when I drove her to the airport, our world changed.
My wife had to care for her mother 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I visited a few times for two or three weeks, but back then, there was a push for developers to be in-house. I was afraid I’d lose my job if I spent more time there. I didn’t realize, at the time, just how much fear was within me. The days rolled by one by one, in the blink of an eye, and suddenly it was a year later. We both seemed to fall into ourselves. We’d go a week and not talk to each other. We were just going through the motions.
A diagnosis
In September of 2019, I flew back to St. Louis and we moved her mother into assisted living. It’s expensive. Lily stayed behind to clean out the house. There was a lot to go through. Her parents had lived there for 30 years. Not long after I got home, I felt a lump on my neck. I knew immediately what it was, but I told myself it wasn’t that. I lied to myself a lot. I still do, but I’m working on it. Both my father and my mother died of throat cancer.
I finally went to see someone in October. I’d been having issues with something called tonsilloliths. No. Not tonsilitis. Tonsilloliths. I thought maybe I had an infection. So did the first ENT guy I saw. It dragged out through the holidays and into the new year, and it took five months until I was diagnosed. During this time, I was feeling the physical effects, and I began feeling sorry for myself. Or, more accurately, began feeling more sorry for myself. I’d been feeling sorry for myself for years. So that’s why, on March 14th, 2020, I was relieved.
I got to the end of the previous paragraph and reread what I’d written in this chapter. I then thought to myself, “What a pathetic place to be.” And it was. I try to forgive myself, but it can be hard sometimes, when I get a close-up look at others who’ve worked so much harder, have struggled so much longer, and have suffered so much more than me. That perspective sometimes makes me ashamed. But that perspective also gave me an opportunity. Once again, I get ahead of myself.
I’ll stop here to remind everyone that this story has a happy ending. It really does. Please don’t think I have any answers, though. I don’t. There’s no mystery, no magic here. It’s just a story of a proverbial fool stumbling through life and getting lucky every step of the way, even when he never knew just how lucky he was. Why I get the happy ending is beyond me.
So, after I got my diagnosis, my wife flew home and we waited. COVID has changed so much in this world. My doctor sent the referral to the board at UCSF Hospital in San Francisco, but the hospitals were kind of busy. We sat by the phone and waited. That following Friday, I got a call. I was going to get a Zoom appointment to talk to a doctor.
I was lucky
Forgive me if I get the details wrong here, but I’d tested positive for squamous cell carcinoma. I was on the Zoom call when I asked the Doctor how bad it was. He stated that he was waiting for a test. He started talking about a test for some 16 or 18 something. He said it would indicate if the cancer was from HPV. Human papillomavirus. You know those TV commercials? He said if it was HPV, it was treatable.
“And if it wasn’t?” I asked.
“Well”, he said, “It’ll be rough.”
I didn’t have to wait long, as he got the report during our meeting. I had HPV cancer. I was lucky.
I didn’t realize it at the time. I didn’t realize all the lucky breaks we’d been getting along the way. Starting with work. After 15 years of stagnation, I’d finally gotten to move into another area of software development. I moved into that group on my birthday, in January 2020. I didn’t realize how lucky that was until a year later. The facility where Lily’s mother lives is amazing. We’ve all heard the horror stories, but we got lucky. And now I was told I had HPV cancer, and once again, I was lucky.
I look back now at all the lucky breaks I’ve had in my life, never knowing and/or appreciating them when they showed up. And when I was told I had HPV cancer, I didn’t feel lucky. It all felt like an end to a bad dream. I was glad it was over.
I was wrong, though. It wasn’t over.
This is the first in a series of monthly installments about the author’s journey through illness, so check back in October for Part Two.
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image 1: Pixabay; image 2: Wikimedia Commons; image 3: Pexels
