365 Photo Project - Day 168

Taken: June 17, 2010, 1 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

Had my annual mammogram today. It wasn't much fun but they have a new digital imaging machine at the local hospital (donated by a fabulous group called Girlfriends for the Cure) and it's a lot less painful than the ones that squeeze your breasts like a orange juicer. This is an iPhone shot of the new machine. If you live in my town and you don't have health insurance, by the way, the Girlfriends for the Cure have funded a free day every month so you can get a mammogram.

Every time I go through this, I think of my Mom who at 76 is a two-time breast cancer survivor. She battled breast cancer when almost all the doctors were male and where things like reconstructive surgery were considered extras and even when they were done, weren't done with the patient in mind. My mom had two mastectomies and they tore her up pretty much. Hell, she's alive and we are thankful for that, but the advancement in medicine and in empathy and understanding of the breast cancer patient is light years better than it used to be.

Of course, the most important thing is catching it early. So do your self-examination and get that annual checkup. If you're at an age or in a group that needs to be screened, please take the time for a yearly  mammogram. You can see the guidelines and information here. Breast cancer sucks but dying of breast cancer sucks more. I know you women out there hear this a lot, but it's important. You can't afford to be complacent when it comes to shit like this. Do it. I did and  I was in and out in 15 minutes. It really was no big deal.

That's my public service announcement for the day. Be healthy y'all.

365 Photo Project - Day 92

Taken: April 2, 2010, 7 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

Twenty years ago today, April 2, I was on an operating table at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City having my right lung removed.  Now those of you who didn't under stand my blog's title can be let in on the joke.

The details of my diagnosis and surgery can be found here and here. I talked about it way back when I started this blog a couple years ago. Hard to believe it's been two decades since I became a one-lunged person. Hard to imagine what it was like to have two. Funny how that shit works.

It's strange to be marking such an event but there was a chance back then that I wouldn't be here today -- my doctors were convinced at first that I was looking down the barrel. They gave me five years to live. But a wonderful surgeon by the name of Patricia McCormack who was an ex-Jesuit nun married to an ex-priest and a Georgetown grad no less, saved my ass. Even years later, when I tracked her down in her retirement way out somewhere at the edge of Long Island, she couldn't believe I was still alive. That's one time when shocking the hell out of someone felt damn good.

I used to be sure how the whole experience changed me but somehow these days I've been rethinking all that stuff. I know it did change and I know for a solid fact it changed me for the better, but what it all means, well for the first time in a long time, I'm trying to figure that out.

For now, I'm just going to raise a glass to Dr. McCormack and just be thankful I'm still here doing what I'm doing. Whatever the hell that is.

Shot this with my K100D today and edited it in Photoshop.

RIP - Tony Snow

This is a tough one for me.

Tony Snow died today. He was 53. For those of you who don't know why he's front-and-center on the NY Times obituary page, read about him here. When Jesse Helms left us on July 4, I knew a bad man was gone and I had no qualms about feeling glad that he could no longer pimp his flaming bigotry. But this one is different.

I knew Tony. He was a mentor and a friend when I was a young journalist at the Washington Times. We sparred about politics and life and religion and sports and he was a good, sweet-hearted man who I came to admire and respect. That doesn't mean knowing him is all that takes for me to be okay with the part he played in the Bush revolution.

I mean when he left to be Bush 1's speechwriter, I wasn't surprised -- he was a Republican, after all. But when he eventually ended up at Fox News, it was a weirder, because when we were debating over lunch in the Times' cafeteria, he seemed closer to the center than the other Conservatives I knew.

I never was able to comfortably reconcile the Tony Snow I knew with the man who was a Fox commentator or later, the mouthpiece for an administration whose policies led to the death and injury of so many young Americans and countless more Iraqis.

And it's even more complicated than that. I was working for the Times when I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I think Tony had left by that time but he somehow found out and contacted me. Believe me, when you're young and you have Cancer, it's not easy for some people and I had many friends who couldn't reach out to me, for whatever reason. I've come to believe it's hard for some people to be forced to consider their own mortality. But Tony knew about Cancer and his words that day were backed up by the authenticity of having gone through the darkness and come out of it. We were connected by it and he knew this long before I did.

So, I can't say Tony was a bad guy. And yes, his support of Bush at a time when it was pretty damn apparent to even the True Believers that the war and everything that came out of it was a royal fuck up, a cost measured in blood and human lives, is going to be part of his legacy. So I can't say he was a great man, either.

That he was there for me, and others, that he loved his family and was good to them, that he was a good and decent friend to folks on both sides of the political aisle, is also part of what he leaves behind, and it's that part I'll choose to remember about him.

Everybody Has Cancer

S.O.L. Note: Please forgive the gaps in posts but S.O.L. has been felled by a very gnarly flu virus and has been recuperating by sleeping. All the time. Not since my college days have I slept so much during the daylight hours. I wanted to shoulder on as so many interesting things caught my attention in the last week or so, but I used up all my energy thinking about them. I’m still down for the count but the cleaning woman is here today so I had to get out of bed. So here I am sitting up at my computer, I might as well make a blog appearance. This was a blog I began last week after the news on the White House Press Secretary's cancer recurrence.

There's a darkly humor ous joke one of my Cancer doctors once told me they tell at the major hospital where I was treated. It goes something like this: A man runs in to the lobby off the street yelling "Help me! My wife is sick!" A kind nurse calmly asks him what's wrong. "She has cancer," he says. The nurse hands him a clipboard, "Everybody has Cancer here," he says.

Nobody ever explained the joke to me but they don't have to. It all makes perfect sense when you're a patient there and you've been told you might very die, that if you don't you'll lose your right lung and right there in the middle of your own private pity party,  you meet your new roomie, the mother of two adorable kids under five too sweet for words whose hand-crayoned pictures are taped to her suitcase who whose husband has decided now is a good time to move out, arrives with a shaved head and a broad smile, the night before her fourth brain cancer operation in two years.

See, as bad as that word must have sounded when you first heard it, you're suddenly aware that not only aren't you a lone but chances are someone out there has it really bad. Oh, and you're in the right place because if anybody knows what to do with Cancer, it's a place where the very term has become rote.  I like the idea of demystifying the Big C. The truth is we're curing it at higher rate than ever before and that there are something like 8 million people among us who are not only Cancer survivors but are living full and thriving lives. You might think Lance Armstrong as a superhuman exception but to a Cancer survivor, he is doing what the rest of us are doing, he's just doing it at a higher level.

Cancer has been in the news a lot the last two weeks. First Elizabeth Edwards' announcement (you go, girl) and then last week's revelation that White House spokesman Tony Snow's Colon cancer has returned and spread.

This blog isn't about cancer though. It's selfishly about me.

I knew Tony Snow back when we were both working for the Washington Times. He was the Editorial Page editor and I was a lowly staff writer. I always liked Tony. Truth is I sort of had a crush on him. He was just the sort of preppy Washington guy I used to go for and he was smart and funny and despite our wide political differences, we found common ground in the lunch room about issues that interested us, music, sports, stuff like that. I found him very human and even as he rose through the ranks along with a host of other conservative pundits, I watched his career with interest and, sometimes, rooted for him. It seemed to me that while he had right wing bonafides, he often seemed rational, like he'd thought stuff through, like he wasn't about spewing Karl Rove's talking points.

I'm not sure when that all changed, but it did. It wasn't a big surprise to me then when he ended up fronting for the Bush White House. I thought he would be different than the previous mouthpiece and in many ways he is. For one, he's brilliant and he can speak eloquently and there are times when I think reading between the lines, he has been less willing to lie outright, more understanding that even our current extremely gullible press corps. aren't going to swallow just anything.

But over time, I've seen a change in his demeanor, too. He's angrier and his attitude toward the White House press corps is more dismissive, like he's the schoolmaster and they're the unruly little rich kids who won't behave. Maybe this whole press secretary thing is just too soul-crushing for him. Maybe his humanity is taking a beating. Maybe he really is a good guy who is collapsing underneath the weight of so much ... twisting of the truth. Or maybe he's just he's a true believer now. Maybe he always was.

Should it matter to me now? It does and that's my problem here.

Back when I heard he had Cancer the first time, I sent a note to him (though I've no idea if he ever got it or even remembered me). I admit to feeling ambiguous about sending a letter now. Of course it sucks he's sick -- I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I truly hope he gets better but God help me, here's the rub. There's a part of me -- a big part of me -- that thinks sending him a get well card endorses what he does for a living, which I find morally reprehensible.

Politics morally reprehensible? I get it. It's all morally repugnant. Even I think Clinton was sleazy at his worst. I have friends who argue that all politics is like this, that almost none of them have any great ideas beyond those that help their re-election campaigns. That there's not much measurable difference between a Republican and a Democrat. Maybe he's right most of the time. But I say these particularly Republicans are different. They have changed the game in a way that sets them far apart from their counterparts (who I might add, let them change the freaking game but that is for another blog post). I say there comes moments in our history, personal and societal, when you/we have to make a choice between what is right and what is wrong. We have to cross a line, take a stand, call the bad people on their shit.

And let's be very clear here. This Administration is the most cynical of our generation. Whenever they got a chance to play dirty, reward a friend or punish an enemy, help a business crony or cover up the truth, the Bushies didn't hesitate. And think about this: if this is, as many experts claim, the most secretive administration in the history of this nation, then there's gotta be a whole lotta shit we haven't even heard about yet. That ought to help you sleep at night.

So I can feel bad about Tony Snow's Cancer and I can wish him well in my heart. But I'm not going to acknowledge it, I think. I don't know if I'm being rude or ridiculous or righteous but Snow made his choice and I'm making mine.

S.O.L. Enters World, Part II

Near Mammoth Mountain, 1999

As we return again to that fateful day in February 1990...

Right after the docs at the hospital decided to admit me, the ER nurse came in to take some information. One thing she wanted to know: why’d I wait so long to come in and see someone? I’d been sick, she figured, for weeks. She wasn’t judging me – she was just curious. Hell, she has no idea that S.O.L, is a glutton for pain and agony but still, it was an excellent question.

I explained that I had been to see a doctor at this very hospital, twice and he sent me home both times. Her look said everything.

I like doctors. I have to like doctors. My brother is a doctor. Without them, I wouldn’t be here today. But I continue to be astounded at how many times I have been shrugged off in ERs. I have heard similar stories from other people -- 100 percent of them women. Its a small sample yes, but I believe many doctors (particularly men) have a bias towards women. They think we’re making more of something then we should or we’re bring overly sensitive or my all-time favorite – it’s a “female” problem that’s no big deal. Again, it’s not every doctor (my brother sure isn’t like that) but my advise to my sisters” If you don’t feel well, and they keep telling you you’re fine, find a doctor who will listen to you. It may save your life.

Back to me in the ER. Would you believe it but as the nurse is taking my 411, the lights suddenly go out. I should say here that this was a small hospital near Fairfax, Virginia, a satellite to a larger facility. The big stuff goes to the main hospital down the road.

On that night, the weather was up, we were having a wind and rain storm and apparently it had knocked out the power all over the area. But was I thinking that? No way.

Its my fault, I said, starting to cry. Its my bad luck.

That nurse, whose name I’ve carelessly lost to time and distance, was such a comfort to me at that moment that even describing it warms my heart. While I can’t remember her name, I’ll never forget what she did for me.

The lights did go back on and I got sent up to a room and had a fitful, nervous sleep, happy at least to know what was ailing me. I figured the worst was over. Little did I know.

The first thing I did that morning was call my parents. Only a year earlier, they had sold our house in New York and retired to Florida. My Mother didn’t wait for the details, “Were coming to get you,” she said. And they did. Left within an hour of that call, which was a good thing I guess, cause the bad news hadn’t come yet and wondering if your child is going to die is not a good kind of companion on a 14-hour drive.

What we didn’t know (and for which I’ll always be eternally grateful for) was that they’re snap decision was incredibly prescient (to be fair, though, they’d been thinking of coming up in the two weeks I was sick). They left Sarasota for that 1,000-mile trip – and they only stopped for gas and the bathroom. Straight through. That’s my parents.

Seriously, how can you not love them?

Somewhere as they were driving north, a doctor who I didn’t know, came in to my room and started asking me a bunch of questions. Questions that raised my journalist’s antennae to a point where I had to stop him and ask why he cared whether I was having emotional problems, was short of breath or if my heart raced.

Big breath here, like he’s deciding how to word his next thought. And really, it doesn’t matter because whatever he’s about to say is bad. I can see it in his face, scribbled across it like a neon sign.

“There’s a shadow on your x-ray,” he says, finally, as matter-of-fact as if he was telling me there was a zit on my face.

Me processing: shadow on my x-ray. What does that mean?

He answers: Shadow that’s probably a tumor, he says. Its in my right lung. Yes, I have lung (can we even think the word?) CANCER. Whoa. What the fuck?

You can’t imagine what this moment is like unless you’ve gone through it yourself but its akin to talking to someone underwater, next to a waterfall. The world around you slows down to a crawl and there’s this rushing sound in your ears, your own personal white noise. And your life sort of passes before your eyes, everything you’ve done, every bad thing you’ve ever done and everything you wished you’d done but didn’t. Of course when you’re 26 years old, when you’ve just turned 26, its a pretty short film, your life.

And then you remember to breathe. And you form the words, which you never remember exactly, but which go something like, Will I survive? or How long do I have? or What the fuck did you just say?

And, if you’re like me and certain that the night earlier you caused the hospital’s power to go out, then before he gives any answers, your doctor’s beeper goes off and he excuses himself.

He leaves the room.

Let me repeat: The biggest moment in your life to that point and the fucker leaves the room.

I’m am so not lying. The guy left me hanging with “you have a cancer” and ... nothing. Dude wasn’t my doctor for very long.

But he finally does return and tells me I have a good chance of surviving this. That’s the thing about getting Cancer. The first conversation is always about the probabilities of it not killing you.

He says they can’t know for sure until they find out if its malignant, how big it is and all sorts of medical shit you don’t want to know about. Or you don’t hear. You’re having trouble getting past the part where you’re being told you might have only five years to live. Holy fucking shit, you think, is this it? Twenty-six is the end of the road? In the history of cosmic jokes, this one takes the cake.

Believe it or not, hearing this is not the worst moment of my life. That was telling my parents I had Cancer. Don’t believe me – you try it.

They arrived in Virginia late that afternoon pretty much record time. I remember my mother, especially, how she was standing when I calmly said the words. I’m in the hospital bed, worn down by the mono, feeling it’s the end of the world and I’m concentrating on not crying. Even voice, I’m telling myself. Don’t upset them. Weird what you think of in times like that. My dad sort of looked stunned there for a second but my mom, she literally lost her legs. She sank back into the only chair in the room, one arm lashing out for some purchase and her mouth parted in an O. It was hard, the hardest thing I’ve done my whole life, but I didn’t cry when I told them. I’ve held onto that for years and I’m not sure why, but whenever I think about that moment, I feel good about myself.

There was a lot of waiting and hoping and fear the next month and a half starting with the biopsy (by the way the surgeon who did it and who said that he’d make the cut right on the bikini line, was full of shit. Its the worst scar from the four I have from the operations).

It was malignant, a slow-growing, Carcinoid tumor and it wasn’t the primary (there was another mass near my bronchial tube). We eventually left podunk for New York City and Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital.

The doctor there, the wonderful Dr. Patricia McCormack, did the surgery. Dr. McCormack was a force, not only one of the country’s finest surgeons, but she’s like six-feet with legs like a tree trunk and absolutely no sense of humor (she did laugh at my jokes though). A trained Jesuit nun who left the order to marry a Jesuit priest, she graduated from Georgetown Medical School. And oh yeah, if you needed major chest surgery back then, she was one of only a handful of doctors to go to. Thanks to my bro for finding her.

I owe my life to this woman, who has since retired and lives way out at the end of Long Island near the water, a nice place for a saint to live out her days. Listen, even she’s impressed I’m still around. I tracked her down a couple years ago because I needed some medical information. She came to the phone and I explained to her who I was and there was this pregnant pause on the other end of the phone. Later she told me she doesn’t get many calls from former lung cancer patients, not 15 years after the diagnosis. I’m glad I found her because I dedicated my first novel to her and wanted her to see it. I sent both of them to her and she read them and sent me the kindest note – I felt like school kid looking for approval from the toughest teacher in the room. I was beaming for a week after that note.

She’s the one who brought home the seriousness of my condition. “You may have only five years to live,” she said. “I want you to be prepared.”

I didn’t take it as badly as I thought I would, not as well either but shit, that’s not something I dwell on anymore. It was a long month of tests and more tests of poking and prodding and giving enough blood to start my own Red Cross, but you know how it ended up if you’re reading this.

On April 2, 1990, right around the time Duke was getting pounded into submission by UNLV’s Runnin’ Rebels in the National Championship game, I came out of surgery, minus my right lung.

The recovery wasn’t a cakewalk but it could have been a lot worse. No radiation treatments and I was back on my feet in less than a week and within two months, started exercising again. I had a set back two years later that required another operation, but Big Bad C didn’t return. Still hasn’t. Knock on wood.

I was lucky. I know I was lucky. Fuck yeah. Once in my life, too. I’ll take it.

A lot of people ask me how it changed me, having Cancer, facing the prospect dying before my 30th birthday. It did change me, but how is still sort of unclear to me, or at best, changes from year-to-year, even sometimes week-to-week.

It’s sobering to be let into “you’re really going to die some day” club when you’re too young to have those kind of thoughts. Motivation? Sure, but something more, something I’m not quite sure I can articulate. I try but it never, ever comes out right.

I’ll say this, you walk through the world differently. You get that veil of confidence that you’ve gone through the fire, to paraphrase Bukowski. Not everyone takes it, and many don’t make it. Whatever got you through, even if you’re sure it’s just luck, it’s something to hold on to. And you do, you hold on tight and you never let go.