Seized Mon Day

Delight in the abstract and specific joys of the world around you, for in it are hidden and revealed a constant stream of surprises that in their least provide enough energy for happiness and at their greatest allow for utter rapture.

I wrote this on Wednesday afternoon, on my phone, while sitting in the park.

It was a beautiful day.

It’s a beautiful thing to say.

I believe it.

I barely remember writing it.

I vaguely remember feeling it.

It’s easier to tell and be told to carpe your diem than it is to actually consistently do it– I’m reminded of this every day that I accomplish or feel or simply think less than I’d like to.
Which these days is pretty much every day.

Carpe‘ing all your diem depends, unfortunately, far more on brain chemistry than we’d like to admit.  Wake up adamantly enough on the wrong side of the bed and you’re unlikely to smell any goddamn roses at all, even if somebody spot-welds petals to the insides of your nostrils.

Conversely, sometimes for no good reason at all, a day just seems easier and things feel lighter.  The world, out of the blue, becomes manageable again.
Not just manageable– beautiful!  Rapturous, even.  A goddamn hootenanny!

But wait, why?  What changed?

Maybe nothing at all.

Maybe just a few stray neurons in your head that were bumping up against something ugly have now for some reason found a clear path to HappyTowne.

Maybe that happened by accident.

Maybe it happened because you took a pill, or had a drink, or met a girl.

Maybe it happened because you seized the day.

Maybe it happened to me on Monday because I seized that day.  Literally.

Which is to say: Monday, I had a seizure.  And ever since, I’ve felt a little better.  Either that or I’ve developed an emotional dependence on the 400mg of Temozolomide that I take 5 days out of each month, and am only happy when I’m feeding my chemo habit.

I doubt that.

What I don’t doubt is that ever since I seized Monday, I’ve felt a bit like somebody rebooted my brain computer.

I suspect that on some molecular level, that is exactly what happened.  Hooray for seizures!  (Un-hooray for the hole I bit in my tongue!)

Anyway, what this experience has taught me (besides the fact that I should have a mouth guard on hand when I’m feeling seize-y) is that the regulation of brain chemistry (mood, cognition) is a tricky deal, with a lot of variables.  Some of these variables are under our control.  Many of them are not.  Many of them will never be.

The best we can do is to continue to try:  to try to enjoy and to live and to love and to feel rapture.  And– this is the most important thing– to try not to beat ourselves up if we’re not feeling it on any particular day.

Because as long as we have another day, we have another day to seize.

I hope I seize today.

I hope I don’t seize, today.

I’m getting a lot of legs out of this pun, for a guy who who hates puns.

But while we’re on legs (and jeux de mots), that brings me to my final point: the “Hakuna Matata” of the early 21st century…

OFIFOTO.

One Foot In Front Of The Other.

Seize the day, if you can.  If you can’t, OFIFOTO will do.

I’m havin’ a real hard time

getting through this.

I’m having a real hard time knowing where this is going.  Figuring out how I’m gonna get there.  Trusting that even if I do get there, that there’s something waiting for me on the other side.  (And I’m not talking about death, I’m talking about life.  About being on the other side of what I’m going through right now.)

If you’ve seen me or talked to me recently and I seemed like I was doing well, that’s because I was happy to be around you.  I was happy to be talking to you, to be looking at you, to be discussing something or laughing about something.  To not be alone in my head thinking about how hard of a time I’m having.

Because most of the time, when I am alone, it’s hard, and I’m not doing well.  Even though technically, statistically, I am doing well.

For example (1):  All of my hair has grown back, and my body is as strong and healthy and functional as it was a year ago, before all these shenanigans beganigan.  I can still see and hear and smell and feel and move everything pretty much the same as I used to be able to.

“That’s great!” you say, and mean it.
“That is great.” I feel, and mean it.
It’s really, really fucking lucky.  As I said: technically, statistically, I am doing well.

For example (2): The results of my MRI on Tuesday were good enough that my doctor expressed what could fairly be classified as untempered enthusiasm.  He even said something like “We don’t see results like this very often!”  He was optimistic.  Excited, even.

“That’s great!” you say when you hear this.  And you mean it.
“Eh.”  I thought, when he told me.   And then I thought: “Wait, why am I not at all relieved right now?”
I wasn’t relieved at all.  And I’ve been thinking about that for the last two days.  Why was I not more relieved?

Because it doesn’t really change anything.

I’m still having a real hard time.

If you’ve seen me lately and you said “you I look great!”, and I laughed and rolled my eyes, or looked sad and told you that I don’t feel great– that having my hair back and being tan is no indication of what’s actually going on on the inside– then I’m sorry.  I’m sorry for not just being gracious and saying “thank you.”  I’m sorry for making you feel uncomfortable, or making you sad.  If I did that it’s because I feel sad, and sometimes I guess I just need to not be alone with that feeling.

I’m sorry for not being more grateful that at least I look healthy.  Because I know it makes it easier for everybody else that I don’t look like I’m dying.  It makes it easier for everybody else to be hopeful, and supportive.  And I should be thankful for that.  Because I want it to be easier for you.  I don’t want to be a burden.  I don’t want it to be hard for anybody but me.

But the reality is that looking and seeming alright— that actually makes it harder for me.  It leaves me feeling more isolated— even from myself.  It reminds me of this person that I want to live up to, for you and for me, but I know full well that I can’t.  At least not right now.  I just can’t.

When I look in the mirror I think what everybody else thinks: “Hey, that guy looks like he’s doing alright!  Look at that hair!”  But then that thought immediately bounces– hard –off of everything else that’s going on inside.  Which is, among other things: fear and disappointment and frustration and sadness.  And fatigue.  Oh god, the fatigue.

I’m sorry for needing to point out that I don’t feel great.  I’m just having a hard time right now.  And it’s mostly– no it’s all –in my head.

I don’t think I’m depressed– if you walked in here right now in a clown suit or a Lincoln costume, I’d laugh really hard and mean it.  The laughter would come honestly and easily.  And it would come as a great relief because laughter is one of the few things in my life that remains uncomplicated.  And it’s one of the things that always– always –makes me feel better.

I’m just tired.  Most of my energy is being spent these days just trying to think my way through these days.  Trying to out-think the worry and the fear and the frustration (above all the frustration!)  Trying to think of nice distractions that will be easy enough for me to take on, and that will offer enough honest reward that I will feel like I’m enjoying myself, that I’m getting something out of the day.  That I had a good day.  That I’m living my life.

That doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy for shopping, or cooking, or working.  Or for writing, which is all I really want to be able to do.  Which, thank god, I’m doing right now.

I’m just getting so much less out of my days than I used to be able to–than I still desperately want to be able to–that it leaves me deeply frustrated, and disappointed in myself.

Hopefully this will all change soon.  But lately, it’s just been getting worse.  And that’s why I’m having a hard time.

My brain is just tired.  It’s tired from all the fighting.  It’s tired from all the healing. It’s tired from having so much hope and then having so much of that hope torn away and thrown into a waste bin at the worst possible moment.  It’s tired of thinking about that.  It’s tired of being hurt.  It’s tired of feeling sorry for itself.

Above all else though, my brain is tired from all the shit I’ve had to put it through to keep myself from dying.  Make no mistake: I’m glad I put it through all of that shit, because it’s the main reason I’m still alive right now.

I am still alive.  And technically, statistically, I’m doing well.  I’m just having a hard time.

All I want to do is to do something meaningful– to write something meaningful –and a few months ago I was doing exactly that.  But then I was forced to stop, and all I want to do right now is to get back at it.  I’m just so tired and so afraid that I’ll never wake up fully enough again to pull it off in the way that I dreamed I could.  In the way that I still know I can, if I can just summon enough energy.

If I can just stay awake long enough.

If I can do that, then it will all have been worth it.

I feel like I should go take a nap.

I really, really don’t want to.

I want to be awake, and alive.

I think I’ll go for a jog instead.

A One Year Brain Chanceiversary

And so it was exactly one year ago today that I was in Hong Kong.
And all I got was this lousy brain tumor.

But wait, that’s not exactly true (even though I asserted as much on a t-shirt).  No no no, I flew to Hong Kong, and I got so much more than this wonderful man-sized helping of glioblastoma multiforme!

But what else, you ask, did I get?  Well since you asked, I’ll tell you!  (You didn’t really ask, but I’ll tell you anyway.)  I also got… a whole bunch of free samples from a blow-up sex doll factory!  And and and… and a snazzy pair of swim trunks from the Kowloon H&M!  So a blow up sex sheep, and a brain tumor, and swim trunks, and… hmm… no, I think that’s all I got actually.

Oh no wait, I did get something else.  I totally also got

A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LIFE.

To be fair, it’s a completely different life that feels a lot like the old life, just way more glioblastomafied.  But what does that mean?  I don’t know, why are you asking me?  YOU’RE  the one with the brain tumor!

O.K., don’t freak out, you’re not the one with the brain tumor, I’M the one with the brain tumor.

I’m the one with the brain tumor, and on this one year anniversary of having a gentle Cantonese man saw open my skull (which, quite amazingly, was happening almost exactly one year ago to the very minute that I am writing this very sentence), I would like to share a few things that I’ve learned from my brain chance.

Things That I’ve Learned From Having a Chancey Brain

(or, What It’s Like To Get Glioblastomafied)

1. They’re pretty good at brain surgery.  I’ve done it twice, and by no means was it the scariest or hardest part of this whole ordeal.  (What was the scariest and hardest part of this whole ordeal?  Funny you should ask, see #5.)  In fact, I recently came across the blog of a woman who has been living with GBM (that’s shorthand for glioblastoma multiforme, for peeps in the know) who has had five brain surgeries.  FIVE BRAIN SURGERIES!  Her GBM comes back every three or four years (because, as we’re told, GBM always comes back), and when it does, they just crack open her nut and they take it out again.  She’s done that five times, God (or somebody) love her!  Funny enough, when I found this story it actually came with a sense of relief.  My thinking was “Well, at least there’s that option!” (Options being at a premium when you’ve been glioblasted.)
2. There are a surprising number of people out there who have brain cancer, and who have cleverly named blogs dedicated to the subject (“Glioblasted” being the cleverest).  Heck, there’s even another 36 year old guy named Chad who got the exact same type of brain cancer within a few months of me, and who is in exactly the same clinical trial as me, and who also has a cleverly named blog: “A Head of Cancer” (I’ll forgive him the pun since his name is Chad).
   Hey Chad!  We both got brain cancer in early 2012, we’re both pumped to the gills up with Temodar and ICT-107, and we’re both still alive one year later!  It’s a race to the finish!  (God, how macabre is that.  Chad-on-Chad Brain Cancer Race: GO!  Haha.)
3. Friends and family and people who love you and people who are nice to you when something like this happens are pretty much the best thing in the entire universe.  They not only make it tolerable– they make you want to do it again.  In fact I’m kind of hoping for another brain surgery, ’cause I’m starting to miss all the attention.  Lately, everybody telling me “You look great!” makes me afraid they’re going to start treating me like a regular old Chad who doesn’t have brain cancer or something.  For the love of god, don’t do that!  I still feel like shit!  I still have brain cancer!  You can still bring me dinners and keep me company!  (If that sounds like a pathetic plea for attention and sympathy, it probably is.  See #4.)
4. The Brain Cancer Card is a powerful device:  Use it well!  You can use your BCC for anything from getting better seats at a Bruce Springsteen concert, to getting out of a speeding ticket, to convincing your friends to bring you dinner, to (most importantly–and this is the only actually justifiable one) asking people for help when you need it.  Because when you get glioblasted, you definitely need it.
5. Turns out it’s much easier to accept and deal with An Incredibly Horrible Thing Happening To You when it just happens randomly, for no reason at all (i.e. GBM), as opposed to being inflicted on you by another human being who had the choice not to do that to you but did it anyway.  I bring this up because the phrase “handle me with care” has been ringing in my ears for the past two months:  it’s not only a beautiful song by the Traveling Wilburys, it’s also a good thing to remember in our dealings with everyone in our lives who puts their trust in us.  We hold small (and sometimes big) parts of the fortunes of many of the people around us in our hands, and it’s so important for us to always handle those fortunes, and those people, with care.  When I’ve been handled with care (by so, so many of you), it has made it OK to be living and struggling with brain cancer.  When I’ve not been, it has been as bad as having brain cancer.  Sometimes worse.  So let’s handle each other with care!  It makes the Random Bad Things more tolerable, and it makes the Not Random Bad Things nonexistent.  Which brings me to a final point (see #6).
6. Hope, really, is everything.  If I have something to look forward to (it could be work, something to do, someone to see), my mood immediately changes, immediately brightens.  The despair disappears, and is replaced by joy.  The acidic and weighty pangs of anxiety in my gut transform into the light, giddy, sparkling feeling of possibility and excitement.  From battery acid to champagne bubbles: it all changes in an instant.  It all changes when you have hope.
7. Love isn’t all you need:  you need love, and you need hope.
8. I’m still alive, and I hope I will be next year.

Happy anniversary, brain chance.  I can’t say I love you, but I’ve sure gotten a lot of love out of you.  And for that, I do thank you.

Possibilities / Poshopeilities

The most exciting thing about life to me has always been its endless possibilities: I saw the future as some kind of great wide open, like a Montana sky (which I’ve never actually seen in person, but which itself frequently registered amongst those happy swirling possibilities in my mind).

I was fed by, and led by these possibilities.  They allowed me, and gave me reason, to breath.

But in the last few days I found myself reduced to a state of stuffy claustrophobia brought on by the harrowing narrowing down of all those limitless outcomes into one single option:   You Are Going To Die Of Brain Cancer.

Of course I know that this is not an inevitability, and even if it is inevitable I know it’s not the one single truth of my life that now exists to the utter exclusion of all others.

But it is ({very} probably) true.

And it is (very definitely) a difficult obstacle to look around.  To say the least.

Oddly enough I did find myself somewhat recently able to not just look around this infinitely opaque Wall of BrainChance, but to actually stand on top of it and look over it, past it, again out into that Great Wide Open I’ve always loved so much.  That thing, whatever it is, that exists or will exist beyond: I could see it again.  Suddenly I didn’t care that the dark wall was there– it certainly shaped and colored the paths that led out from beneath my feet, and had some serious say in how I would walk them, but somehow I’d made it so that it no more blocked my way.  Rather than an obstacle, it had become like my shoes or the paths themselves: something that could lead me.  Something I could stand on.  Walk on.  Move on from.

And then the wall suddenly and very unexpectedly retracted into the ground, quietly and ominously slid a few paces forward, and rocketed up out of the earth in front of me to block my way once again.  Hard and fast.  It happened so fast it almost shaved off the front of my nose.

And it occurred to me that the thing that had changed, the thing I had lost, was the thing that draws life from possibility.  The thing that transforms possibility in to life.  It is the thing that I have spent the last three months thinking about and building and fostering and keeping lit and carrying on.

It is hope.

And I’d lost sight of it.

It had been taken away from me.  But I’m taking it back.

The power of hope to create life, real life –life worth living and laughing and sharing– in the face of certain impending doom– it’s one of the most remarkable and powerful things I’ve ever experienced.  Hope not only makes the difference between giving up and going on; it makes going on fun.  It makes those possibilities sparkle with potential again, where before there was only the grey haze of fear.

But it’s not always easy to maintain your grip on hope, and this is one way– one concrete way– where we can help each other.

Where hope is lacking, give it.  Where it is fading, foster it.  Where it has disappeared, rekindle it and watch as the smiles reemerge, warmed by a feeling they’ve known before, a feeling they know how to hold onto if the wind doesn’t blow too hard.

And if it does, help them shelter the ember until the storm has passed.

For if we have hope, we have possibility.  And if we have these two things, we have everything.

A lot of people have given me hope.  And it’s keeping me alive.

The Brainchanceification Proclamation

If anything should ever happen to me (in an untimely fashion that is, where “timely” is defined as, I don’t know, 77 years old?)  I’d like somebody to deliver the following address at my funeral.

Dressed in an Abraham Lincoln costume.

With the beard and the hat.

No, I’m not kidding.

And don’t worry, I’m not writing this because I have any reason to believe I’m about to be de-fashioned in an untimely way.  (Although I do have an MRI on Thursday.  Crossing fingers, toes, and all other swinging appendages.)

I’m writing this because I wrote it, on my cell phone, in the dark of a movie theater after I watched “Lincoln.”

I was inspired by the soaring oratory of Spielberg-Kushner-Daniel-Day-Lincoln.  And was wondering why no one ever talks like that in normal everyday life.   Wondering why you’re expected to not be extremely articulate or particularly moving unless you’re on a podium or in front of a casket.  Or staring down the barrel of a gun.

I guess I am, in a sense, staring down the barrel of a gun.  Lucky for me that I have this blog to serve as an e-podium, otherwise I’d sound like a weirdo just walking down the street with a friend and offhandedly saying the following in a high-register Lincoln voice:

We work to conquer or circumvent these moments of fear, these times of terror and despair and lack of hope, so that we may enjoy each other and this thing called “life” in all its wonder and its glory… and not in its pain.

What else can we do or should we do but work to facilitate love, and smiling and laughing and joy.  Because the way to conquer fear and sadness is to replace them with hope, and with happiness; and while we wish this would happen freely and come to us like a gust of grace in the wind, sometimes it takes work.

The good news, friend, is that this is not something that is out of our control– in fact it is completely and very much up to us whether we choose to look forward, or to look down, or to turn away in fear.

For just as we can make the decision to stop and appreciate the smell of a flower or the beauty of a newborn baby, so can we choose to look fear in the eyes and say:

“This is not your time.  You will not hold sway over me now.”

And we can do this with the confidence that comes from knowing one thing: that the world will always be filled with beauty and wonder and hope, so long as we are willing to find it, to let it find us, and to accept it, always, with open arms.

Charles Phillip Peacock Jr.

(For the record, I would not be against having Daniel Day Lewis there to read this in the Lincoln costume.)

Positive Side Effects

It’s occurred to me more than once since the advent of this brainy chance that it’s actually kind of odd (and possibly even illogical, based purely on the laws of chance) that all the medications and chemotions and invisible death rays I’ve been subjected to don’t have any positive side effects.  I mean, why not?  If side effects are for all intents and purposes random (i.e. not planned by the makers of aforementioned brain-additives), then wouldn’t it make just as much sense for radiation to cause the growth of flowing golden Disney princess locks as it would for it to make your hair fall out?

On some alternate planet, purple human beings (green and blue being spoken for by cliché and Avatar, respectively) gather around to celebrate when somebody gets cancer, because “Oh hooray!  Wait’ll you see all the awesome fireworks that are gonna start shooting out of your ears when you ingest those glowing cancer curing horse pills!”

But here on planet This One, you never see this fine print…

Side effects may include:

• A constant and overwhelmingly pleasant sense of well-being;
• $452,000 being deposited into your checking account;
• The ability to speak passable 17th century French, Portuguese and Russian;
• An erection lasting more than 4 hours

Oh wait, that last one is negative.  And apparently real.

But anyway, this whole idea keeps popping up in my head because I could swear–I COULD SWEAR–that every time I take my anti-seizure medication, I’m suddenly in a good mood about 20 minutes later.  Not in a crazy holy-shit-I’m-on-ecstasy-your-hair-feels-so-amazing good mood, just a regular old fashioned, extremely natural-feeling good mood.  Like, ”Hey, shit’s alright… I’m havin’ a good day!”

KEPPRA {levetiracetam} Side effects may include:

• mild dizziness or drowsiness;
• loss of appetite
• Havin’ a good day!

Wouldn’t that be nice?  Why isn’t the world like THAT?

Well maybe it is actually.  Speaking of loss of appetite, another of the awesome (possible) side effects I’ve been experiencing is “Less of a desire to be a great big fat person who injects chocolate cake into his mouth with a compression hose 24 hours a day.”  In other words, I don’t eat as much anymore.  I eat when I’m hungry, and that’s about it.  And since I’ve been exercising, as a result my weight is right where I like it to be and I feel (in that respect at least) totally good.

So that’s worth writin’ home about!  (“So that’s worth postin’ to my blog about!”)

Oh and yeah, while we’re on the subject, there are a few other positive side effects that I should probably inject here.  Right at the end.  The fine print.  (Please read the following in that very light, breathy announcer guy’s voice they use at the end of all the pharmaceutical commercials:)

BRAIN CANCER (glioblastoma} Side effects may include:

• A heightened awareness of the value and indispensability of friendship;
• A strong desire to live every fucking day to its fullest;
• The ability to one-up any story ever;
• Better, richer relationships with your relatives and loved ones;
• An even greater appetite for smelling roses;
• Some of your life goals and greatest dreams coming true.

I mean it ain’t ALL wine and roses, this BrainChance thing, but it has its upside(s).

And that’s something.

Made It!

Birthday!  Touchdown!  Peacock 37, Brain Chance 1.

Ever since I was a kid, I always defaulted to the number 37 when I needed a random number for something.  It just always seemed to clearly be the weirdest, most random number you could come up with.

I still think it’s a pretty weird, random number, but now I have to hope that it stays that way.  I was joking with a friend the other day that there would be some very intense personal twilight zone irony involved if 37 wound up being My Last Number.  (Although I think the 12 year old version of me would get a laugh out of that… and honestly in a way I think I would too.)

But that’s not to say we’re reaching the end of any sort of road here in downtown Brainchancington!  In fact there have been all sorts of lovely new beginnings happening lately.  2013, for example.

And so a Happy New Year to all of you!  I hope your poop today is as sparkly as mine.

(Note to self: Next time you’re grinning stupidly at a chorus line of dancers who appear to be exploding into bursts of glitter, confetti and balloons at midnight on New Year’s Eve, try to keep your mouth closed.  Unless you want sparkly poop, that is.  Oh and also cover the top of your champagne glass.  And your beer.  Hey, why are you double fisting it?  Because it’s New Years, why aren’t you?)

Since it is the time of year for celebration and rumination, here’s something I was ruminating on last night:  2012 was a pretty great year, all things considered.

First of all, it wasn’t boring.  Man was it not boring!

I can’t think of another year when I’ve experienced so much love, so much intense and beautifully overwhelming emotion, and so much growth (of both the tumorous and non-tumorous kind).

It’s 2013, and I’m still here.  (Sing to the tune of “Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don’t Care”)

On that note, I resolve on this first day of 2013 to be here in 2014.

And if this year is anything like the last one, I’m going to be a happy, happy man 365 days from now.  (With glitterless poop, if I’m any good at learning from experience.)  And I owe pretty much all of that to you.

Oh and one final note!  I forgot to update after my last brain-test, so I’ll do it super quick right now:  Brain Chance is relatively stable at the moment, so we keep on keepin’ on, one foot in front of the other like they teach us, like we teach us, and after all what feels better than moving forward, rounding corners, jumping over cracks, being not boring?  In the very least, it reminds us that we’re alive.

Terry Fox reminded me of that.

So What Happens Now?

The original purpose of this blog was to keep everybody up to date and informed about my surgeries and treatments (voodoo and otherwise), but I’m afraid the length-density of my posts and all the crappy jokes have tended to bury the pertinent information.  Sorry about that.

So here, for clarification purposes, is what is happening right now, and what will continue (hopefully) to happen.  With bullets and boldface type!

• I take 4 chemo pills 5 days out of each month to (hopefully) arrest the growth of whatever cancer is still in my brain.  The chemo is called Temodar.  It doesn’t make me barf.   (Except that one time last week when due to some remarkable coincidence I got food poisoning the day before I started my chemo.  Then it makes me barf.  Real bad.  Even worse than the food poisoning did.  Thanks Hamburger Hamlet XP!)
• So it’s like I’m on the pill.  Except instead of birth control pills, I’m taking pills designed to prevent the undoing of my own birth.  Is it working?  Only chance knows.  (Most likely and terrifying scenario is it’ll work for awhile, until it doesn’t anymore.  Then we either find something new that works, or the chance wins.)
• The chemo also can make me a bit tired and/or spaced out.  But really, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have a crappy week once a month. Hence me calling it “my period.”   (While I like this joke, I actually feel like it’s insulting to women who go through much worse than I do every month.  God bless you ladies, I feel for you.)
• In addition to the chemo, I get a couple of shots in my armpit every month or two.  This is the clinical trial vaccine (I posted a video about it that gets into more detail).  This thing is really exciting.  It’s state of the art anti-chance medicine.  But…
• I may or may not be getting a placebo instead of the real vaccine.  Thems the breaks.
• I get an MRI every two months to see if the cancer is spreading or staying put.  Spreading = bad.  Staying put = good.  My next MRI is December 4th.   There will be one every 2 months after that.  Which means every 60 days.   Which means every 8 weeks.   (If I’ve asked you not to keep asking me when my next MRI is, I’m sorry– it’s just one thing that I try really really really hard not to be thinking and worrying about every single moment of every single day.  It’s like a weird trial date,  when what is on trial is whether you get to keep living or not.  Best not to worry about it since the outcome is not really under your control.)
• Speaking of living though, I’m doing it and it’s going great!  Working again, enjoying my days, and trying not to just have cancer on the brain 24 hours a day.  (Which can be exceedingly difficult though, seeing as I literally have actual cancer on my actual brain.)
• But hopefully not for long!

On that final note, this is how weird my life has become:  the best news I heard last week was that a guy died of heart failure.

How could that possibly be good news?

I’ll tell you!  You see, said guy was diagnosed with brain cancer some time back in the early 1980s.  Which no matter how you bend it, was at least 30 years ago.  30 years ago!?  He died of heart failure at 70 something years old?!  Hooray!

Dying of heart failure sounds like pretty much the best thing in the world to me right now.  I’m totally goddamn sure that my heart will last at least another 30 years, so if that’s what takes me out I will be a happy, happy man.

Gotta run, I’m going to the flower district.  This time I’ll keep my phone in my pants pocket.

Every New Post Means I’m Not Dead Yet!

Unless I hired a ghost writer, of course.  Or became a Ghost-Writer (which is not as cool as being a Ghost Rider, but since I have a motorcycle I could potentially become both in the afterlife).  Or unless I turned my laptop over to Dutch the Dog and instructed her to continue this blog in my honor (after teaching her the difference between “your” and “you’re” and counseling her with one last wagging finger not to use the word “literally” unless you really mean it…  literally).

Oh but I digress, I’m not dead, I’m right here typing and drinking a Leffe and smoking an e-cigar while listening to a decidedly alive creature scurry around inside the walls and ceiling of my house and debating whether his shockingly presumptuous intrusion means he deserves to be terminated, but feeling like the answer is probably no, even though I’d really rather him go the way of those car-alarming mockingbirds who after a few well-aimed slingshotted palm nuts whizzing by their beaks decided to move a few blocks over into Koreatown.  Good riddance to all these attention-starved nocturnal creatures, I say!  The sleeping is much better without them.

Speaking of which, there’s been a lot less sleeping of late, or more accurately a lot less sleepiness– a fact which comes with a level of relief and satisfaction that I can’t even begin to express.  The Velvet Fog has lifted, perhaps for good, and I am very happy to report that I am left sitting here feeling pretty much like a Normal Human Being again!  I dare say I even feel like a Normal Human Being Who Hasn’t Been Through Two Brain Surgeries And A Serious Dance With A Serious Brain Chance!

But I am a human being who has been through those things, and who continues to dance with such a Chance; the point is just that I feel pretty normal again.  And feeling pretty normal again feels pretty fucking amazing.

Sure I’m left with a weird scar under my swiftly regrowing hair (take that, Ben Kingsley-like maternal Grandfather!) and a terrific new capacity for anxiety that wakes me more often at night than those mockingbirds ever did, but all in all I’m doing pretty damn well.  I’m alive and I’m not blind and I’m not paralyzed (and I’m not dead), and I can run 5 miles again without missing a step, and when I’m not utterly terrified or paralyzed with worry I’m pretty damn happy to be around and feeling good again.  Which I can happily and honestly report is more than half the time.  So that’s good.  That’s great, in fact.  When you add it all up, that’s not a bad deal at all.

In fact it’s a great deal!  It’s a great, big deal that I’m still here, that I get to live my life again as I was before– which is to say, fully.  And pardon me if it seems like I’m gloating, but I find that it’s essential and helpful to remind myself that these facts are more important (and more worthy of spending thought-time on) than the ominous and ever-present ticking Chance inside my skull.  Let the Chance think about itself– I’d rather the rest of my brain concentrate on Living.

And speaking of living, and life, today mine just changed completely.  And for the better, I’m happy to report.  Thanks to some very wonderful people who have given me a very wonderful totally different kind of Chance, I’m writing a movie.  A movie about Terry Fox.  A movie about cancer.  And most importantly a movie about Life.  That may sound pretentious, but it doesn’t feel so pretentious when that word — Life — is pretty much all you’re thinking about 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Miraculously, I’ve been given the chance to turn all that thinking into something positive, and something potentially wonderful.  Something that very well might wind up saving people’s lives.  Something that very possibly could wind up saving my own.  Literally.

For this, I go to sleep on November 9th, 2012 (Happy Birthday my beautiful sister Jen!) a happy man, happy to be alive, and running, and thinking.

I’ve got to get some rest, I’m training for a marathon.

More on this to come.

I’m Definitely Turning 37

A fact which, a year ago today, I would have been surprised to learn is coming as a bit of a relief.

One thing this whole experience has taught me is why people celebrate birthdays in the first place: what the cake and ice cream really means is “Holy shit, you’ve been around for ____ years and you’re still freakin’ alive!  Let’s drink and/or eat something!”

Never again will I dread the annual age uptick… for me from here on out December 28th is definitely always going to be a “whew!” moment, and not an “ugh.” moment.  (And all it took to learn that lesson was getting brain cancer!  One of the many wonderful benefits– I highly recommend it.)

The reason for my certainty that I will definitely soon transform into a 37 year-old is the result of my latest MRI, which looked a whole lot like the MRI I had a month before.  Stasis, you see, in the world of brain cancer, is a good thing.  A very very good thing.  When you’ve got a Free Wheelin’ Fast Actin’ Brain Chance swirlin’ around in your noggin, what you want it to do is not a goddamn thing.  You want it stay damn put.  Which mine, for the time being, seems to be doing.

What that means is either the treatment I’m doing right now is working, or that (however unlikely, or in fact impossibly) my two brain surgeries removed every single itty bitty trace of cancer, so there’s nothing to grow back.  Realistically this latter scenario probably isn’t the case, since I read somewhere (one of the best of the Horrible Internet Facts about Glioblastoma That You Really Shouldn’t Look Up) that this particular type of brain chance has a 100% recurrence rate.  How d’ya like them odds!

So yeah sure it might come back, but the good news for now is that ol’ Brain Chance ain’t doin’ much at the moment but lettin’ me be!

So, whew, yeah, that’s a relief.

Bring on the big 37!  Definitely my new favorite number.