Surviving the Cure Excerpt: Humor Me

Hey everyone! I'm going to be putting out excerpts for my memoir, Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard, for the next few days.
(*relatively speaking)

Today scene comes from early May 2008, when my oxygen levels were so low it was causing neurological issues, and unbeknownst to me, my doctors had given me two weeks to live. But I had enough lucidity to know I needed to find a way to stay sane and keep me spirits up. Turns out, that way was humor.

Humor Me

I pranked people during my many stays in and out of the hospitals. But by far one of my favorites was the “fake injury” gag.

One of my favorite snacks in the hospital was Jell-O. It was an all-purpose food that required absolutely no energy to eat, which was good, because I wasn’t well enough to even lift the spoon up to my mouth sometimes. Most days Mom would have to feed me. My favorite was cherry. The red mush sometimes reminded me of gore, something I was now far too familiar with, but it gave me an idea.

“Can ya call the nurse in?”

“How come?” Mom asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Jus’ call’er in.”

“And tell her what?”

“Jus’ that I need help with sumpin’. Cummon, it’ll be funny,” I giggled.

Suspicious, but with a smile at my rare laughter, she called the nurses’ station and managed to convince them to send over a nurse. “So what is it that will be so funny?” she asked.

I told her my plan. We’d make it look like I had sneezed while my mom was bringing the spoon up to my mouth and stabbed me in the eye. I would have my hand over my eye with bits of cherry Jell-O leaking out from between my fingers. I summoned up what remained of my acting prowess to sell the fake injury. Mom managed to stop laughing right before the nurse arrived.

When the nurse came in, I was groaning and holding my eye. The nurse’s face immediately drained of color and she shakily asked what was going on. “She got muh eye while she’s feedin’ me,” I moaned.

The nurse spun on her heels and muttered something about getting the doctor. She was almost out of the room by the time my frantic calls stopped her. “No, i’s okay! I’s jus’ Jell-O!”

Looking less than amused, the nurse came back. I pulled my hand away to reveal a perfectly intact eye, surrounded by a red stain, and an impish grin. “That wasn’t funny,” she puffed, but smiled with relief. Then she chuckled softly and shook her head. “You’re an odd one.”

Yes I was, and proud of it.

Sometimes the humor came from outside, such as a card I received from a class of kids taught by one of our neighbors. “I hope you get out of the hospital and Hell soon.” I laughed hard enough for it to hurt, but it was worth it. The amusement came with joy and made everything seem all right. Get out of Hell indeed. I now had a “Get Out of Hell Free” card. I know she meant “heal,” but beneath the laughter, I couldn’t shake the feeling that her card might be more accurate than she intended.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for more excerpts and updates on my memoir!

I'd appreciate it if you shared this with your friends. I'm publishing my book to share the rarely told story about what life after cancer is really like. With more awareness, more eyes (or eye, depending on if someone stabbed you with a spoon of Jell-O), on this issue, we can educate people about the difficulties facing survivors in a life after cancer, and be able to give them the support and quality of care they need to live rich, fulfilling lives.

Thank you for reading, and especially for sharing,
~Andrew Bundy

The Big Reveal: Excerpt, Donations, and Watch Me Get Slapped

So, as most of you know, I'm getting ready to publish my memoir, Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard (*relatively speaking). And now, I've set a release date: February 28, 2017. That's right, in one week, this, all of this, will be DONE and ready for YOUR consumption! My relief is indescribable. Four years of sweat, tears, and blood (mostly from paper cuts) have gone into writing this thing, plus nearly a full decade of cancer-ness, side effect-ness, and existence-ness that is the foundation of the book, and now it's about to be thrust into the world to make a difference.

If you want to learn more about my memoir and see advanced praise from doctors and survivors alike, click here for more information.

But that's not all I've been working on. I've also just opened an IndieGoGo Crowdfunding Campaign to help raise money to spread the message about the truth of life after cancer and to help with my future survivorship advocacy efforts. All donations are welcome, and there are some awesome perks for donating! Including Social Media Shout Outs and Signed Copies of Surviving the Cure! And they're even signed by ME! Le gasp!

Please share our Crowdfunding Campaign, and also our YouTube video! Want to see me get slapped? Then you'll love this video!

And because you guys are so awesome, I'm also including a sneak peek at my memoir!

Until we meet again. Well, not meet. Until you visit again? Something like that.
Ciao

Bump

In a way, it was a soothing motion—the gentle rocking back and forth as the uneven wheels rolled across the linoleum floor, surrounded by neutral white walls. 

“Watch out for the bump,” the orderly said. 

In another time, another place, to another person, it would have been hilarious. 

“Watch out!” As if I had some control over whether we would be going over the bump or not. As if anything I did could affect the oncoming obstacle. Some part of me must have laughed, but it didn’t bother sharing the joke with the rest of my numbed body. 

In terms of humor, it’s hard to beat a hefty dose of irony doing its best impersonation of a cream pie. Wham! Unavoidable, literally in your face—shocking, instantaneous. Today, that cream pie was this orderly, wheeling me to a fate I could never have even begun to imagine, warning me about this little bump when not thirty minutes earlier I’d had the mother of all bombshells dropped on my head. When my life and future vaporized so quickly and completely that all that remained were faint shadows where once they stood.

In the rare moments of lucidity during the slow walk—I guess more of a roll—I marveled at how quickly a life could come apart. How fragile and on the verge of collapse we are that the tiniest thing can be enough to topple our body. It’s like you’re a house of cards that believes it’s constructed from steel and concrete and mortar so tough that nothing short of the destruction of the Earth would topple it. That’s why it’s so shocking when you learn the truth—that under the thin veneer of confidence and surety is a wobbly framework ready to implode at the drop of a hat. 

A week. That’s all it took for my house of cards to come crashing down. From young adult on the cusp of spreading his wings and embarking on his first flight of independence to a mess of malfunctioning cells. From a bright life ahead to an imminent dark death. And all it had taken was one word. 

Leukemia.

“Watch out for the bump.” I had as much control over that bump as I did the next few months. Maybe more. I could have gotten out of the chair and stepped over this obstacle. I didn’t, but at least it was an option. My future offered no real options. Chemical warfare or certain death, take your pick. “A wise choice, sir. We have an excellent selection of noxious chemicals for you today, only the very best vintage for you, young sir!” 

For both the bump and my new life, all I could do was hold on tight and pray for the best…and hope that would be enough.

Bump-bump went the wheels. 

Bump-bump went my heart. 

Bump-bump went my life.

My 7th Birthday

Hi blog,

Apologies for the gap. I've been trying to get a handle on everything and it's been frustrating and draining to say the least. The closer the surgery gets the more things seem to pop up to deal with. I'm definitely going to be looking forward to a nice, relaxing, pain-filled break after I get my shoulder replaced in exactly two weeks, let me tell you.

I was going to put a picture of a knee with AVN, but then I
decided this was a much better option. Don't you think?

Well, I suppose you're waiting to hear about the knee. I am too, I only just had the MRI on Saturday so I won't be learning anything from that for another few days probably. However, two days before that I went in to see my knee specialist (the first guy I saw was my general practitioner, who also does sports medicine) and the x-rays looked about normal, same as before. But then he pulled up a knee MRI I had done back in May (I didn't even remember having it) and he showed me the inside of my knee. It wasn't pretty. The majority of the interior was made up of necrosed (dead) bone. To be fair, this isn't exactly news to me. I've known that there was a lot of necrosis for a while, because of my Avascular necrosis (a degenerative bone disease caused by steroids. See here for details), but as long as the dead stuff stays inside the bone and doesn't penetrate to the surface, it's not going to cause any pain. Well, there was a tiny tentacle of necrotic (just using all sorts of variations of the word today aren't I?) bone snaking down through a big patch of it and had just barely breached the surface. There was only a tiny spot exposed, and my specialist thinks that might be what's causing the knee pain.
Theory: Because the pain only really shows up when I bend my knee at certain angles, that small dead spot is rubbing against something at that certain angle and causing the pain. When I get this newest MRI back I'll learn two things. A) Whether or not the little spot has grown any, 2) What can be done about it, assuming something needs to be done about it. Obviously there's a lot of speculation here, and that in itself is driving me up the wall. As accepting as I am about the shoulder surgery, the possibility that I might need another replacement (if the necrosis is spreading in the knee and the pain continues to get worse, my specialist might recommend surgery again) after that has done nothing to improve my mood. Frankly, I'm pissed. Murphy, always Murphy.

But that's neither here or there now so I'm trying not to think about it too much (and not doing a very good job). The book editing has been coming along, not great or fast, but it is progressing at least. Unfortunately there are more pressing things to do than editing my memoir. I'm not happy about it, because this memoir is literally the most important thing to me, but what can you do?

Let's talk about something pleasant. I feel this whole post has had a somewhat sour tinge to it. But now for something uplifting and cheerful! (Kinda) Two days ago I had my 7-year rebirthday (and I think I'm having a regular one in a few days too). In some ways, I am seven years old. This me, right now, is only seven years old. It's when I got my bone marrow transplant from marrow harvested from my brother Chad's hip bone (the needles look like something out of the Spanish Inquisition).  October 12, 2007 is when I got my new life, a new chance.

Excerpt from Life Has No Title:

When you receive an infusion of bone marrow, the staff up at City of Hope calls it your “birthday,” the day where you’re given new life and, in a sense, reborn. October 12, 2007 is my oncological birthday. The doctor for the day, Dr. Pawlowska (spelled right the very first time!), came in with a nurse carrying a bag of what I at first believed was blood. I had known that my mom was organizing people to donate blood for after I had my bone marrow transplant, and thought that before I could receive it I would need to bolster my cell counts, but I was mistaken. Instead, the ruddy-colored viscous liquid was the bone marrow! This piqued my interest a great deal, insofar as someone who is hopped up on a staggering amount of dilaudid can do anything to a great deal. I had been paying as much attention as possible, learning what I could about this and that, gaining as much knowledge as a second-year med school student in the process. If I had the energy to focus, I would listen in on conversations and pick up some odd terminology or medical explanation for whatever god-forsaken side effect I had picked up that day.

“How are you today good sir?” Dr. Pawlowska asked in her thick-accented way. It was the same question every time she saw me in the morning. “How are you today good sir?”

Most days I would respond with, “Okay I guess.” Or “Not too great.” I was a master of understatement. But today, I gathered up a smile and told her, “Excited. That’s the bone marrow?”

“It is. We’ll just hook this up and you’ll be good to go.”

“Wait…how does it get into my bones then?” I asked suspiciously. As far as I could tell, there were no nanobots lurking in the substance ready to transport the bone marrow from my bloodstream into the centers of my bones, where they would thrive and drive out the remnants of my treasonous cells.

Dr. Pawlowska offered up a tentative smile. “To be honest, we’re not entirely sure. I could tell you all about the different theories and everything, but nothing has been proven definitively. They sort of magically find their way into the bones.”

Magic. One of the last words you want to hear when a doctor is explaining such an important medical procedure to you. “Magic,” I repeated slowly, not entirely sure if I had misheard her in my drug-induced haze.

“Magic,” she reaffirmed.

We looked at each other for a long moment, then I shrugged and lay back in my bed, too exhausted to argue and knowing that the good doctor knew what she was doing, even if she wasn’t sure about the exact nature of the procedure. “Good enough for me. Let’s get started.”

So there you go. Chad saved my life. I wouldn't be here if he hadn't donated his marrow. The poor kid got stabbed by a thousand saw-toothed needles, woke up so groggy he couldn't figure out how to properly use a straw and had a sore hip for several days. I have him to thank for this second chance and the ability to continue to live and enjoy life, all the things I love: writing, space, science, friends, family, space. I'll never be able to repay that, but at least I can pester him with interesting space facts the next time I see him.

PS: Comet Siding Spring will be flying past Mars on October 19 at a distance of 89,000 miles (much closer than the moon is to Earth). It'll be awesome.

Your 7-year-old Master,
Andrew Bundy

Memoir-able (Recovery Part 4)

Howdy blog,

Well there's a couple exciting bits of news I wanted to share.

The first pertains to the recovery of my shoulder. I am now 10 weeks post-op. When I saw the doctor yesterday he continued to be impressed and amazed at how much range my shoulder has. He told me (again) how tight it used to be and that I have the range of motion that I do is just astonishing. It's actually better than the left shoulder now in some regards. There's increased pain in the right shoulder since I've started doing outpatient physical therapy, but that is normal for an operation and should subside soon as long as I make sure to rest it. I have to keep reminding myself of Zen #3: The faster you hurry, the slower you go. You'd think I would have that one deeply ingrained in my recovery process after so many surgeries, but I'm impatient and this surgery has been unlike the others in both its recovery and my abilities post-surgery. It'll be about a year before the right shoulder is fully healed if things continue on the way they have been, but progress will be semi-continuous throughout so it's a promising bit of news.

The other thing discussed during my doctor's visit was the left shoulder. As some of you may or may not know, the left shoulder was nearly identically damaged to the right one, and it was only through the arbitrary filter of how much each one hurt that the right shoulder was chosen as the first to be replaced. The left shoulder is now beginning to ache more, so after I see my doctor in two months, I will likely be having another surgery shortly afterwards. I'm more excited about this than I am any other emotion. With any luck, it will be my last surgery for a while (although I said that last year after my left knee replacement so...I'm cautiously optimistic) and then I can start focusing more on everything that comes after. It'll be nice not to have to think about when I'll be cutting out my bone and replacing it next, maybe I can better focus on writing and other life events after that's dealt with.

Speaking of writing, we move onto my second (I'm including the last two paragraphs as one big semi-related news item) bit of news. I've been working on a memoir detailing my life (briefly described at the end of The Cancer and the Cure) and specifically all the crap with cancer and dealing with the side effects of treatment after the fact. For 16 months I've been doing on and off work with Nick regarding our memoirs, and after all that time...I have finished the rough draft! It's a huge deal for me, because this isn't the first intonation of this book. I tried writing it half a dozen times before and each time wound up abusing drugs or having a mental breakdown from the stress of recalling all of the traumatic experiences in my life. It took an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy to get it out there, and it wore me out to the point of exhaustion, but I finally got through the rough draft and proudly did so in one piece! (Not including all the extra pieces put into me by surgeons) I've been on a short break as school starts, but then Nick and I are going to be going into the editing process and making the books even better.

To celebrate the finishing of the rough draft, here's a small section conscripted from my book Life Has No Title. Until next time readers and blog.

Normally I encountered runners along the path, but today it was just myself and the little white dog. I looked at him, he pointedly ignored me as he usually did, and got an idea. Maybe there could be a runner. Me. I thought back to Nick, who had returned early in the summer and had been spending some time with me. There was a runner, someone who pushed his limits to insane measures and even further than that. If he could run a hundred mile race, why couldn’t I go on a short jog? He once drew inspiration from me as he made his way 3,000 miles, and now I could draw inspiration from him as I ran…a lot less than that.

“Come on Tucker! Giddy-up!” I put one foot in front of the other, picking up speed slowly but surely. The dog started to trot alongside me as I increased my pace but suddenly stopped and nearly dragged me off my feet after just a few seconds. “Okay, fine. We’ll take it slow you little prick.” I started again, making sure to stick to a light jogging pace. Every slap of my foot against the uneven surface sent a strange jarring sensation up my leg. It felt…good. I kept it up, sometimes going a bit quicker, but would soon be dragged back by a resistant dog. After about ninety seconds I gave up trying to pull the little ass along with me and settled back down to a walking pace. “Well that was fun,” I said to myself. Tucker sniffed at a bush.

I wasn’t content with such a paltry result though. During that jog I felt as though I had untapped energy that I could have unleashed had I not had a leashed mutt at my side. I would have to try again.

That’s exactly what I did too. My mom and I were walking the dog this time, so I didn’t have to hold the leash. As we walked, I told her about my jogging experience a few days before and she seemed impressed. “I think I could do better though,” I said, channeling my inner Nick. “Watch this.”

If she protested, I didn’t hear her, because I was off without another word. Uncertain of how fast to go to start with, and not even sure if I remembered how to run properly after five years, I could hear Nick whispering in my ear. “Open it up Bundy!” I’m pretty sure he’s never said that to me in my life, but that’s what I did. I sped away at full-blast and nearly lost my footing in the surprise at how quickly I was going. For a few precarious steps, I was running to avoid faceplanting, but I caught up with myself and sprinted away. I could feel the years melting away as everything around me became irrelevant. None of the pain to remind me of surgery after surgery, none of the aches to remind me of the atrophied muscles and hospital stays. None of the mental anguish harassing me those last couple months as I further slipped into becoming an anxious wreck. It was just me and the path. Everything else was in another world.

The wind rushed by, my legs pounding into hard earth, and on and on I ran, laughing silently and grinning ear to ear by the time I came to a halt as my burning legs asked politely to quit. Besides, I was almost out of bridle path and I would have to make the trek back to my mom. I honestly felt as though I could keep going if I wanted to, the rush was exquisite! I felt, for the first time in years, like a normal human being. It was such an alien feeling I wasn’t sure what to do with it. At least now I knew that my body wasn’t totally trashed, and I knew Nick would be pretty pleased when I told him about this the next time I saw him.

Your one and a half armed overlord,
Andrew

What the Book is Going On?

Hi blog,

I know I said I would update you on Friday, but I didn't. I promise not to tell the readers if you don't, okay?

I had some CT (or CAT) scans done on Saturday of both my shoulders so the doctor could more accurate determine the amount of damage and what surgical possibilities are open to me. Unlike x-rays, CT scans get a 3-D image and shores the target in much finer details and with the extra dimension of depth. This allows for a much better understanding of the issues that may be present in the target. The technician who did the images said I should probably find out on Wednesday or thereabouts.

Anyways, I promised an update on the book, so let's get to it.

The last time I mentioned my book, I talked about finally getting out of the horrible year of 2008 and how great it felt to be free of that part of my life (in the sense of the book, obviously it's still going to impact me). In the three weeks following that post I've made it another three years to March of 2011. The rate of progress increased enormously once I was out of what I felt was the worst of it. I thought that it would get easier to write after all the nasty things in 2008, and it did, but not nearly as much as I figured it would. Things are still difficult, probably because I remember them better and more vividly than I had when I was writing about being drugged up and in the hospital. Those memories from back then were blocked out, but the more recent ones are not. The closer I get to the present, the better I remember and the more emotion is connected to them. For the most part, I've just pushed through it. In fact, I managed to write 30,000 words in the course of a week after really just going into hyperdrive. Those are the kind of levels of writing I achieved when working on my (fictional) novel (which was a lot easier to write due to the fact that it didn't bring up excruciating memories for me, being as it was fictional).

This is my greatest fear about the book...

I've been saying to myself "Oh I'll be done soon. I'm just about ready to finish up and this last bit won't take too long." I'm talking about my autobiography, just to be clear. Well, I seem to have a knack for making things pretty long (still the book), and the 100,000 word book I intended to write became 125,000 word book that I intended to write and is now just a smidge under 150,000 words long and I still have three more years to write about. Fortunately, one of those years is this year, so that might make it easier. I have a feeling I'll get about another month before I'm done and hopefully it'll stay under 200,000. I think that once I get to editing I can remove large chunks of it. The problem is, it's hard to cut out parts of your life that you think are important. It's difficult to tell the difference between what should be in the story and what shouldn't be. This is where other people come in. They can be more objective about it than I can and once I finish the rough draft I can start getting good insight as to what is important and what isn't. Now I just have to finish it...

Unfortunately, I need to take a break from writing for a couple weeks (insert sound of me screaming in frustration here). I have a final for my sociology class on Thursday and the final project the Thursday after that. The final project is some kind of scrapbook where you find 15 objects from your life and attach sociological terms to them, write a paragraph about why you picked that object and how it fits in with sociology, and then also write a two-page essay on why sociology matters or something like that. To be honest, I haven't really looked too much into any of it yet (although I have read through the prompt a couple times), so in order to make sure I put enough effort into this project to get a good grade, I need to set aside my writing until I can finish the project. The writing will be there when I get back (you have no idea how hard it is for me to say that. Writing is, and always will be, my deepest love [except maybe space]), but in order to do well in this class, I need to make that sacrifice. Also, writing about my past is stressful as all get out (which makes sense). So this might help some of the rising stress levels I've been facing lately between the writing and school and all the medical crap that's been going on. Look for the silver lining, right?

Anyways, that's about it with the writing. I'll include a sample of my work below once I figure out what to include. Not that you'll know how long it took me, because it'll just be a quick scroll for you. But for me, it'll take some figuring out. All you have to do is read.

Once I get an update about the shoulders I'll put together another blog post. I'm trying to be more regular about this while still providing actual information of interest. I know how much you like real information blog. Kinda.

Your creator and general kerfuffler,
Andrew

Book Excerpt:

Just as I was finishing up my semester, I got a message from my high school AP Biology teacher. He asked if I wanted to give a talk to some of his AP Bio students about my experience, since they were going over cancer in class at the time. Plus, after the AP tests the next week, his students wouldn’t have as much to do as a normal class. I told him sure, that would be fine.

Now what the hell do you say to a bunch of sixteen and seventeen-year-old kids who probably don’t want to hear about some former student talk about the horrific world of cancer? Jokes. You tell them jokes.

Although I’d just given a talk at the Relay for Life less than a month before, I was still nervous about doing this one. After all, that had been a two-minute deal, and this would last nearly an hour. A slight difference between the two I think. And this would be in front of fewer people, so I couldn’t just look out above the crowd or at my notes like before, I would have to make…eye contact! (Dun dun dunnnnnnnn)

Anxious as I was about public speaking, I started to come up with some ideas. I could just give a prepared speech, but I knew I would just end up reading from the piece of paper I brought from me and wouldn’t seem at all genuine. I could bring pictures too. Yes, pictures. A note card full of boring facts to present as punctuations of my narrative would be helpful as well. It was really a patchwork job, I always hated preparing for speeches. It seemed Improv Club would come in handy after all.

I showed up early with my cane and a small packet of pictures to pass around once I got started. “Hey Mr. Chrispeels,” I said as I met my teacher and shook his hand.

“Thanks for coming. You’re looking good.”

“Not even, but thank you.”

“Well you look better then.”

I laughed. “Yea that’s true I guess. So do they actually know what’s going on?”

“They do. I’ll get them settled in and you can start as soon as they’re ready. Have a seat.”

I sat down on a swivel stool and spun myself around while frantically constructing a timeline of the last two and a half years in my head. The students filed in as only exhausted teenagers at 7:30 in the morning can do, grumbling and mumbling and looking ready to collapse. Me, I was bubbling with nervous energy, despite a horrible night’s sleep and a persistent pain in my ankle. “Good morning,” Chrispeels said to the weary-looking class. A smattering of hellos echoed weakly back. “Our speaker is here today. One of my former students. He’s going to talk about, well he can tell you that for himself, can’t he?”

“That’s the plan,” I said, swinging forward and trying not to have a panic attack as I looked at the curious and tired faces of nearly forty students.

“You’re ready then?” I nodded. “Okay. I’ll turn class over to Mr. Bundy. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be in the back, watching you.”

“Gee thanks,” I tittered nervously as I got up and stood in front of the class. Standing hurt. I sat down on the edge of Chrispeels’ desk. “Hey kids. I’m Andrew Bundy…”

As I started to talk about myself and my experience, I could see the mostly shut eyes of the students start to widen and their slouching posture improve dramatically. Okay, this is good, just keep it up, I told myself. Almost every other sentence became some type of joke, more for my own sanity and to keep from collapsing into the fetal position than to entertain the class. I didn’t realize how difficult just talking about it would be (writing it seems to be even worse, hell if I know why), and the humor helped to dampen the blow of reliving it. When I joked, the severity of the whole debacle lost its edge and the emotional torture of remembering dulled significantly.

I lost track of time, and it was only when Chrispeels mentioned that I only had ten minutes left and that it might be a good time to wrap up and answer questions that I blinked and realized I’d been talking for forty-five minutes to a rapt audience.

“…and now I’m here, waiting to get my ankles replaced. Any questions?”

A young-looking (they all looked young to me, a whole four years their senior). “I never realized it got like that after cancer. I always thought it was just cancer and then you were done.”

“That isn’t a question but I’ll answer it anyways.” I smiled at the series of chuckles. “It is a good point though. I never knew about it, not even when I was in chemotherapy. Nobody really talks about it. Probably just easier that way. They don’t want you to worry about all the problems that come after. Their main goal is to keep you alive. Maybe that’s why the public doesn’t know about it either,” I mused. “Sorry I’m tangenting. Next question?”

There’s something here, I told myself after they left. You were going to write a book. You gave up on that to save yourself the pain. But why not? It’s a story that needs telling. How many people know about just how bad things get after the cancer? Hardly any. Why not? That’s a good question. They should know though. They need to know. Who better to tell them than me? Probably lots of people, but maybe not. I didn’t know why I got sick, but I could give this horrible chapter of my life a purpose if I wanted to. Maybe it was time to do that.

“That was really great. You need to work on your projection a bit, but otherwise, really good.” Chrispeels wrote my name up on the whiteboard and stood against his desk. “I didn’t realize it got so bad.”

“I don’t think that many people do. My family and I tried to keep a positive face on it. It was actually worse than what I said. I didn’t want to freak them out too badly. Just a little bit.”

“Well you certain did that. Welcome, sit down,” he said to the incoming class. “This is my normal biology class. We’re going to do a lesson so you can wander around or hang out here if you want. Up to you.”

“I think I’ll go see who else is around. Thanks Chrispy. See you in a bit.”

With each class presentation, I got a little better, remembered a little more, and told slightly better jokes. By the time I was finished with the last class, I was tired and very satisfied with myself. Some of the pain experienced in the first class wasn’t present during the last. By repeatedly exposing myself to the painful memories, they got slightly easier to talk about. Maybe one day it wouldn't be so bad.

A Murphaic Victory

Hello blog,

I know I neglected you all last week, but I was busy doing stuff and needed to rethink my direction with you. Still thinking, but I don't think it's fair that you should suffer because of my reassessment. So, until then, you shall continue to develop a use for one thing or another.

VICTORY! After a couple months of writing about all of 2008 (easily the worst year of my life) I am finally finished! I was extremely stressed the entire time and was nearly convinced that I would either relapse and ruin over four years of sobriety or end up in a mental institution. I am happy to report that neither of these occurred! Honestly, I'm kind of shocked. In fact, I was so shocked and happy that I actually wrote about the whole thing at the end of the chapter. Here's an excerpt from that:

Secondly, I’m telling you this because I…am…DONE! 2008. No more! I am free from the hellish quagmire of pain and misery that nearly killed me multiple times, that destroyed my body and put me through the whole new hell of recovery that you will read about through the rest of this book. If any part of my life was bound to totally undo me and send me to a mental institution with a very clean, snug jacket clasped around me, 2008 was it. But it hasn’t. I’ve come very close to relapsing (in a drug sense, you’ll read about that too in a bit), to crying and never stopping, to slamming my head against a wall until my brains resemble scrambled eggs, to curling up in a ball and never coming undone, to never speaking again, to losing my very essence to complete madness. I’ve been assaulted by memories rising out of the dark crypts where I buried them so long ago, I’ve yelled at myself both in my head and out loud, I’ve told myself to shut up, to stop writing, to give up and give in. But I DID NOT!

Whenever people tell me I’m strong and they could never go through what I’ve been through, I tell them the same thing: “I’m not really any stronger than you are. You really only have two choices. Be strong or die. Most people’s self-preservation instincts can pull them through some of the craziest stuff. I hope you never have to find out though. I hope you’re allowed to keep on believing that you could never make it through what I’ve made it through. I don’t want you to go through what I went through.” I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Still, I always diminish my strength because I believe that people are far stronger than they think. If you had asked me if I was strong enough to survive even half of what I’ve been through in the last seven years, I would have laughed and said “No way!” But I have. We underestimate ourselves. There is so much potential strength lurking in every single one of us. You, yes you, can almost certainly make it through what I did. I hope you never have to find out. But I believe in the power of the human mind and its astonishing ability to guide us through times of intense trouble. Sure, we have little hiccups along the way, like my panic attacks or nervous breakdowns, but those occurred after the main body of the danger. In the midst of it, you lose sight of almost everything except one: survival.

That being said, I’m a lot stronger than I would have guessed. When I started writing about my diagnosis, I told myself that if I made it through 2008 without relapsing or ending up in a mental hospital, I would be some kind of uber Superman. I’ve tried half a dozen times before and never made it into the year 2008, the year of hell. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how I did it. Baby steps I guess. I didn’t look too far ahead, I just focused on one problem at a time. That’s what it takes sometimes. Baby steps.

Of course, my life seems to be watched over like a hawk by Murphy's law. Murphy doesn't like me very much. A couple weeks ago I started having shoulder pain shortly after getting a vaccine and having the nurse hit a nerve bundle. That pain dissipated, but I realized that a much deeper, sharper pain was emerging in my right shoulder. Then it became mirror (with a lesser intensity) on the left side. I have severe bone degeneration in my shoulders, have for years now. And although my range of motion is pathetic at best, pain has never really been an issue, so I haven't seen any reason to get them replaced. But now, I fear that might be my course of action. I saw my general practitioner today and got some x-rays. He looked at them and told me he hasn't seen any joint look that bad from degeneration ever. I told him I would probably make a good case study then. "It looks like it's melted," he told me. This is the image that popped up into my dismayed head:

Yes, my shoulder resembles a melting clock from Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory." The socket is intact, but the head (the "ball" of the ball-and-socket joint) of the shoulder is just a total mess. There's bone spurs and collapse and cracks and fractures running through both shoulders. The right one looks only marginally better than the left. My doctor recommended we try a couple different type of shots, but if the pain persists, I'll have to get one or both of my shoulders replaced. Needless to say, I'm rather upset about this. About a year ago I had my left knee partially replaced (transplanted technically) and I very foolishly made the declaration that "this is probably going to be my last surgery for a while." Murphy must have heard me, because it's not even a year later and now my shoulders are going. The only good thing I can think of is that at least this will complete the set. Eight major joints and none of them mine. There's a lot of words going through my head now, and hardly any of them are printable.

A totally normal left shoulder x-ray

My left shoulder x-ray as of April 11, 2014. Where the arrow is pointing, you can just make out a
thin crescent shape going from the bottom left of the ball to the top middle of it. Everything inside
of that has collapsed. The digital picture looked about twice as bad as this one. There are also a number
of cracks in the bone that can be made out in addition to decreased bone density (more transparent)
compared to the normal x-ray seen above. 

Your relieved, concerned, and irritated master,
Andrew

Nick Hollon: Tracking Success

Hi blog,

You may have noticed a couple changes in your look, I may have done a slight makeover and then had your name changed. Originally, you were named after my book, but that seems like a bit too much like shameless self-promotion, so after some brainstorming with Nick (details to follow shortly), I came up with your NEW title! "Surviving the Cure." Since this is a blog from a cancer survivor who has dealt with numerous issues stemming from his treatments that saved his life, it seemed very appropriate to come up with a title that related to that in some way. Several bad ideas later, I came up with this name and Nick immediately latched onto the idea. So this is your new name (until I think of something better, if I ever do), I hope you like it! Because there isn't a damn thing you can do to change it!

Okay, now I said "details to follow" earlier, so I'll get into that. Nick and I met yesterday for our weekly book-related meeting. I had tasked him with rewriting some of his rough draft and giving me ten pages of his best ever work for me to edit, and I would give him ten pages of my more recent stuff for him to edit. Both of us handed the other our ten pages (Nick gave me fifteen pages, but I only got through about ten of them for the sake of time) and I busted out my Red Pen of Death (people who have suffered my editing know to fear the RPD) and got to work. He finished in about twenty minutes, both of us very quiet as we marked and remarked and scribbled out and circled things on the other's paper. Although he had finished, I was only about halfway through his section, being the horrifically meticulous editor that I am, so he spent the remaining time of my editing working on his book some more. 

He started with my work, pointing out some issues I had using a passive voice at times and correcting me on a few facts when it came to writing about him. The section I had given him consisted of a gruesome story about my neck and then another section talking about Nick's 100-mile run around the high school track to raise money for cancer research. Once he finished, I went and pointed out the single most confusing metaphor I have ever come across in my entire life. I was so confused that I went and showed it to my dad, thinking that I perhaps didn't understand it for one reason or another and that was a personal failing on my part rather than a rambling monstrosity that Nick put in. After a couple minutes, my dad looked to us and said, "Is this supposed to be a metaphor for something?" I busted out laughing, feeling vindicated. Nick had a hard time explaining it himself, so I told him to get rid of it. 

The last thing we did was talk about blog management (hence the name change). We went over some ideas for putting stuff up on our blogs, which I shall begin instituting next week, so stay tuned to find some amusing and possibly interesting facts and posts. The session ended with my idea of posting up part of our memoirs that we've been working on so you get a sense of what we've been doing. I'll be putting up my section about Nick doing his 100-mile run around the track. Here's an article written about Nick's monster run: Nick Hollon piles up miles to buoy leukemia-stricken pal

Nick is at the front of the pack, my dad center frame

Enjoy this little blurb from the book! Your (mostly) benevolent overlord, Andrew

Excerpt from Life Has No Title (working title):

Nick and I were both running our own races. I was fighting for my life, and he was running to live his. Our starting lines were separated by time and distance, but at some point our routes merged and led us to the same path. We ran together, sometimes one of us a little ahead of the other, sometimes a little farther behind, but we were on the same track, always ready to rejoin with the other when they needed it. And while time is the great separator and destroyer of connections, and while there were many different routes for either of us to take that would split us asunder, we never ventured onto them. When you find someone like Nick, the last thing you want to do is diverge from their path, you want to run with them as long as your legs can carry you. A guy like Nick is one in fifty million, nay, fifty billion. In all of human history there may have been only one other like him, and I think I know who: the Greek soldier who ran from Athens to Sparta before the Battle of Marathon to ask for the help of the Spartans. The man ran 140 miles straight and arrived the day after he set off. That man's name? Nickademus Hollon the Elder. And it would be two and a half thousand years before Nickademus Hollon the Younger would walk this Earth, only to outdo his valiant predecessor in spectacular fashion.

I mentioned early on in this book that at our school we have a thing called the Senior Project, which involves a bunch of work that causes a great deal of resentment amongst the senior class, since we’re really the only school in the area that does it. For mine, I wrote a play. Nick decided he had to do one better than me, because he’s a competitive son of a bitch if nothing else.

When I was first diagnosed, Nick hadn’t yet decided on a project. He racked his brain, thinking, thinking, but nothing happened. After he came to visit me he felt like he needed to do something more. Like me, he sought purpose. It took him a little while before an idea planted itself in his mind and took hold like a beautiful weed, tenacious but wonderful, striking but stubborn. His love of running had been growing over the last few years, and the advice given to everyone on what to do for their Senior Projects was always: “Pick something you love.” Well, Nick loved running, so why not do something with that?

From there, it took him no time at all to work through the ideas. A 10k? For him, that was just an appetizer, a snack on the way to a larger goal. It wasn’t in his DNA to do something so insubstantial. We both liked acting, he thought about my own senior project and wondered if he could do a student written play and raise money that way. But his heart was leaving drama and shifting more and more into this primal desire to run and push himself. He had to do something with that.

What distance to do though? His original thought was 5000 miles, but breaking that up into a ten month period gave him an average of eighteen miles a day. He just had too much going on to do something so insane. After a bit of brainstorming with his mom, he came upon the magic number 3000. Nick liked that, he even came up with a name for himself. “Mr. 3000.” Catchy, clever, it might just work. With his running goal set, he now needed a monetary goal to aspire to. $10,000. Yes, that would do.

So while I was going through treatment and fighting to stay awake while bobbing along on the gentle waves of hardcore narcotics, Nick was pushing his body every day while riding a wave of endorphins, his own version of a high. Personally, I like his better. However, both of them are addicting in their own way. I tried to keep apprised of his situation, find out how he was doing, but I had become absorbed in my own issues and lost tabs on just about everyone around me, including the kid putting his body through hellish extremes on my account. He still came to visit, and I would ask him how the running was going and he would smile awkwardly and say it was fine. But as he left I always noticed that little limp, a stiff walk, a wince, something to belie the true pain he was enduring.

As great a kid as he was, as mature as he was, he was still a kid. Like just about everyone else who came to visit, he was uncomfortable with my situation. Who could blame him? It’s such an expected thing to be struck down out of nowhere, even worse when it’s somebody you know. I’d dealt with it a couple times in my short life already and it’s never easy. Yet despite his obvious discomfort, he would stay for hours at a time and talk and laugh and I could forget for a while just how shitty life truly was. Nick wasn’t ever one for letting people down, never has been, never will be.

I didn’t find out until the day of the event, May 17^th, what Nick had planned to do. I had been a bet preoccupied with my own situation, the outside world didn’t exist too much except where it affected me. I had given up trying to make an effort to think about others, I just didn’t have the strength anymore. Hell, I barely had the strength to think about myself at that point. But Nick…man, I talk about him like he’s a saint, and in some ways he is. It may look like I’m playing up his good qualities, but in truth there’s no way to quantify someone like him, he’s above words, descriptions, metaphors, all of it. All you need to know about Nick is that he’s a runner second and a good person first.

It turned out that Nick had been struggling with his fundraising goal. It was hard for him to balance out everything and also talk to a hundred different people to get small donations that would take him a thousand years and change to hit his goal. He would need to do something big and brash, something to really grip everyone’s attention and draw them in to raise more money. A big run would do it. How big though? A marathon’s worth? Naw, not Nick. Twice that? Nope. A nice, even number to really blow people’s minds. A hundred miles around the school’s track would do it. It would be easy to watch, people could run with him, and the news would eat it up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I had no idea what Nick would be doing that, day, I was just going about my life as usual, being miserable and trying not to think about it, being drugged up, not breathing very well, all those fun things I’d come to completely despise with a hateful passion in the hospital. Then, that afternoon, my mom asked me if I wanted to talk to Nick. I was confused, why would I want to talk to Nick? It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to him, but my mom had never really asked me if I wanted to talk to someone before, normally either that person called or I did. She explained to me what Nick was doing, a hundred mile run around the Poway High track. I was stunned, that seemed freakishly long, almost the distance from Poway to City of Hope. In my mind, I imagined Nick running all the way here to visit me, and a little smile played upon my lips.

“Sure. I’d love to talk to him.” I figured that she would hand me my phone, but instead she grabbed my computer and opened up a video call to Nick. My dad was holding up his computer and running beside Nick when he answered.

“Hey man,” Nick said breathlessly, his eyes only occasionally darting toward the screen. He was in the zone, breaking his concentration just long enough to come up with a response. “How ya doin?”

“Oh you know,” I said vaguely. I had swapped out my full face mask for a nasal cannula, which consists of a thin hose and two hollow prongs that sit in your nostrils to deliver oxygen in that way. It seemed better that way, I didn’t want Nick to see me with the full setup. I didn’t want to depress him at all, he had more important things to focus on. It was ironic to think that, because here he was, running to raise money for leukemia research, and I didn’t want him to see how bad it could truly get. We’re funny creatures. “I’m all right,” I lied. “How are you doing?”

“Good,” he said, a little exhale puffing out with each step. “It’s damn hot out though.”

“How hot is it?” I asked.

“Over 100. Hot.”

“Hell that’s pretty hot. You holding up all right?”

“Yea fine. I’m at mile…” He stopped talking for a minute until he passed some off-screen marker. “Just got to mile 80. Need to go. Gotta focus. Take care.” His last jumbled words to me faded away as my dad came to a stop and walked off the side of the track to catch his breath.

I waited for dad to hold up the screen again and he showed me what Nick was doing. I couldn’t actually make him out, there was a large group of people running with him. “Looks like he’s doing pretty well,” I mentioned.

My dad turned the computer back around and nodded. “Yep. He’s really kicking ass. I’m going to try and run some more with him. Love you buddy. Love you sweetie pie,” he said to my mom, and hung up.

“Well that was nice to get to see him run,” mom said.

I was tired just from watching Nick run, I had no idea how he could still be on two feet, or even alive. 100 degree weather? The kid was nuts, and he was only eighteen. There was someone going onto much bigger and better things, a flair for the dramatic, enraptured with the grandiose, never willing to give in and always willing to give something a try. “Yea it was.”

Nick ran through the day, well past nightfall before he finally completed his 100 miles. He could barely walk the next day, his legs were jelly, his body aching almost as bad as mine, but he felt an immense pride and self-satisfaction at completing his almost insurmountable goal. I was proud of him, he had fought his fight and won it. I still wasn’t through mine though, and my opponent still had one trick left up his nasty sleeve.