3 Stories From My Chemo Phase
Three years without cancer, so I wrote three essays reflecting on the process so far, and tried to find some room to laugh about having cancer. Even when you feel like puking.
Call it Writer Brain, Journalist Brain or Content Brain — whatever it is to you, it’s a disease. Not like cancer, but a disease nonetheless. Maybe more of an infection.
That time I got diagnosed with cancer, which I obviously wrote about not too long after, all of the usual things ran through my head: “Is this real?” “Am I going to die?” “How much is this going to cost?” “How much is this going to suck?” “No, really, how much is this going to cost? Should I strategically die before the bills come?” But present throughout all of that was the understanding that, eventually, this was going to make for a good story.
It had to, right? Serious illness, namely cancer, has been the focal point of so many great works of art, be it written or on canvas or film or on a screen.
When one commits to a life of journalism and creative writing, something monumental like cancer coming along is a cure for writer’s block. A lightning bolt of inspiration.
It feels crazy to call it a gift, but in some ways it was for me.
Do I wish I never had cancer? Yeah, obviously, cancer sucks. They make T-shirts that say so. But, I’m happy with the person I am now — physically and emotionally scarred but with a wealth of life experience packed into a relatively small period of time and with what I think is some greater perspective that otherwise might’ve taken years or decades to find.
I’m also quite proud of the stuff it has inspired me to write, but at the same time I sort of wish I never had to write it. Duck/rabbit, etc.
Before I had even started treatment, I told some friends that I already had a name for my cancer memoir. How’s that for putting the cart before the horse and focusing on things that mattered? I still think it’s a funny name, and maybe some day I’ll get to write it and have it published and it’ll grace the front of a real, bona fide book and it’ll be in a bookstore, and people will see it and go, “Wow, they really let him write a book called [REDACTED].”
I even mocked up a cover when I was bored one day.
But for now, we’re just doing things in batches online.
May 9 is the anniversary of my surgery where they cut the remaining bits of cancer out of my body (and the parts of my body that it was clinging to). It came at the end of a few rounds of chemo and a couple months of radiation, and left me with a temporary ileostomy bag and some scars.
It left me without some mileage of large intestine, but with plenty of stories over that period.
That was 2022. To celebrate three years of good health, I’ve decided to publish a sort of triple-blog of sorts. Three essays, looking back on my experience having, fighting and then no longer having cancer, hopefully through a funny lens. Because what they don’t tell you about cancer is that a lot of it can be pretty funny.
I’m calling this “Stories From My Chemo Phase,” but that is not the title I really want to use. I hope you enjoy it.
To make things a little less daunting, I’ve published each one as a stand-alone, and you can click the images below to read them if you want.
I Know Why It Happened
When I was 9 or 10, my friend got a kidney transplant. Once the new kidney settled into its new environs, he (my friend, not the kidney) got to go to a Harrisburg Senators game with a group of other kids who had also received organ transplants through Gift of Life, and asked me if I wanted to be his plus-one for the game.
The Problem With Cancer Movies
If you’re lucky, everything you know about cancer comes from movies. This means that you have never had cancer, nor has anyone close to you, so your understanding of cancer comes from movies where a character has or had cancer. If you’re in this camp, congratulations and I hope you stay there forever.
Closing Chapters, But Not the Book
I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you something deeply uncool about me. When I go on work trips, I listen to Interpol every morning because I think it helps me project a cooler and more relaxed vibe into the world.
I think I’m gonna limit myself to cancer content on an annual basis — maybe even less — especially as I put some distance between me and it. If you’re sick of hearing about my cancer, here’s some stuff I wrote about the Tony Hawk Games, and another about a mysterious container of goo.
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Iggy Pop.