10 years ago this moment I was in a hospital bed awaiting brain surgery. I’d signed papers to donate my brain to science if something went wrong. I’d just gotten back from a trip to the Bahamas with my wife who was soon to be gone before I’d become a single dad.
I started the day with a dream and trying to rebuild trust to life itself. Was that 10 years ago or today? Yes. I went for an 8 mile run. I had some cereal and bananas. I’m going to be folding laundry and some house work for busted pipes. I got my second covid vaccine yesterday.
I’ve genuinely given thought in the last few days of what was it all for? But I realize that when I ask that, I’m asking the meaning of life itself. And I’m still just 40 so I have to wait till I hit 42 for that one. I am a guy who was sad about events and traveling being cancelled due to medical restrictions and financial ones and now the same is a little more quite literally global.
But here I am still standing though rarely standing still. Though there were roommates and romantic partners here upon different times, it’s just me and Kiana living in my house. I’ve got a wife and a lover but they have their own places, one literally out of state. I am still working on the most important life lesson ever, to work on the relationships I want to keep.
A massive freeze in Texas reminded me I still have solid connections and great friends all over the scale, some prebrain cancer, some post, some due to that. My life is strange but the universe is usually kind to me, perhaps a way to rebalance itself or perhaps it’s just all to wait and see if heaven or hell lets me in.
Kiana was 4 when this surgery happened. She’s now 14 applying to 4 high schools (acceptance is at 2 out of the 2 that have provided responses). I haven’t blogged since my 10th cancerversary, found other outlets I suppose and cancer has been less relevant so I try to keep those entries to that in here. I’ve kept running, in fact I am at 1018 calendar days of continuous, topping the 1000 that I hit in my early 20’s by upping it in my late 30’s early 40’s. I notice more and more gray hair and on occasion question whether or not I’m old but generally remember that it beats the alternative.
On my Christmas holiday, I kept the tradition of putting an ornament representing the most important event of the year. Usually that gets its own blog entry but 2020 was a strange year. Somehow the year I wasn’t supposed to get to, I think a whole lot of people will wish it had never been. The ornament was a clock, representing time management (stolen from a Doctor Who Time Lord Episode). Usually it’s because I have so many things going that I can’t figure out time, now it was the world shutting down and what to do with too much time on my hands. Like everything else, only time will tell if it was time well spent but I am genenerally happy with what I’ve dedicated my time to.
I’m currently serving on a diversity board of a running organization and a cancer one. I’m on a general board of Marathon kids. I am helping hopefully prompt some legislation when Texas comes into play here in a couple of weeks in regards to treatment and options for cancer patients (one of them having loose restrictions towards marijuana; an odd thing for someone whose never been high).
Years ago, in a media piece, I said that if it weren’t for having a kid, I wouldn’t care about doing the medical stuff. I’d climb in and out of the Grand Canyon and just have a seizure somewhere along the way and die when I die. There’s a news article going around about someone who seems to perhaps be doing some similar disappearing act. I’ve never gone and even though there’s been a couple of opportunities, I’d made it too big of a monster under my bed. Now, because a group of runner friends are going, I am joining them and then my loving partner in crime running and ultimate connection is also coming. It will be 50 plus miles in one day. I thought I wouldn’t make it to 40 and when my time came short I’d perhaps die in that canyon. Now I am 40 and I’m going to run in and run out, run down and up, down and up and across. How’s that for a victory? It’s about as sweet and hopeful as anything I can imagine. No ribbons, no medals, no clock but it will be I hope a good time.
When people see the scar, I joke that they should see the other guy. I’ve been listening to the Boxer to remind myself the fighter still remains but while I keep a buzz shave, I’m rarely clean cut. But I am a lover and a fighter and a dreamer and a father and a friend who tries to balance being a kid who grew up poor in a rough neighborhood and somehow went to college on a full scholarship in Napa Valley and then got slapped around by medical appointments and debt to... this. A life where even on the nights I have trouble sleeping, I am thankful to get up. A life where I have great friends even though sometimes I am very polarizing. A life where I say and hear I love you and wonder how anyone does but thankful I have it in me to return it.
I’ve long joked that me and brain cancer got into a knife fight. I like to think I brought the gun. But I didn’t bring the knife either, that was the surgeon and perhaps cancer brought the gun and I’m still just getting away with one. 10 years later, the brain, the heart, the skull, my mind and soul still carry scars but I am ALIVE.
