Thursday, January 29, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Resolution 9
I must begin this entry with a big shout-out to my two grandmothers. My grandma Lois came to visit me for Thanksgiving and stayed into early December, and my Grandma Marcia came shortly thereafter. At the time Grandma Lois came, most of my symptoms had all but vanished after my first chemotherapy treatment so I felt much better, but I was still struggling hard to maintain a healthy weight. After the cancer had spent months trying to destroy my appetite, I was down to 165 pounds, my lowest weight since early high school. Perhaps the best part of any family crisis, though, is watching your loved ones respond. The way my family works in such situations, there is almost certainly some time to grieve when the news arrives, but soon enough everyone springs to action, ready to do their jobs as the best parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin they can be to the person in need. My situation in late November was clear: I needed to eat. Who better to answer that call than two first-ballot members of the Grandmothers’ Hall of Fame?
This morning I went in for my fourth chemo treatment and during the preliminary tests and measurements, I tipped the scales at just over 190 pounds. I swear, one helping of my grandmothers’ cooking could find Gandhi’s appetite for him. I spent most of December happily devouring any and everything they put in front of me, and the results have been swift and obvious. In one recent entry, I paid tribute to my grandfathers for strengthening my heart and mind with their wisdom, insight, and courage. This is my tribute to my grandmothers for strengthening my body with their skill, care, and love. Their boy began a fight in 2008 that will throw its hardest, most devastating punches in 2009. Thanks to them, though, he’s ready.
***
It is officially winter, and it came a week early this year. You see, normally at this time I’m just getting back to Chicago, preparing to go back to work (or school, in earlier years) after spending Christmas and New Year’s with my family in LA. This year, though, of course, I am unable to travel (for those who don’t know, chemotherapy drastically reduces a person’s white blood cell count, making them very susceptible to disease and infection. That’s why doctors typically advise against long-distance travel, if they don’t prohibit it entirely).
This has not been easy to deal with. I love Christmas and, to me, Christmas has always meant sun and palm trees; not gray skies, freezing winds, bare branches, and snow. I need a trip back home in December to recharge my psyche before facing the dreary Midwestern months of January and February. And that’s to say nothing of how much I love being around my family during the holidays.
This year, I barely noticed Christmas. It was not the typical montage of parties, laughs, hugs, food, drinks, and gifts. This year, it was a single pleasant-though-largely-uneventful day.
Now, it’s the year 2009, and before I go on I must send an emphatic farewell and “Fuck You” to 2008. I don’t have nearly enough time, energy, or creativity to adequately express how bitterly I recall this past year. Time will almost certainly alter that perception, but for now, it’s hard for me to think of 2008 as anything but my most challenging, unmerciful year ever.
It is 2009, though, and I’m still here. I believe everything happens for a reason, so that means I’ve got things to do. What, exactly? The first one is obvious: I need to beat Hodgkin’s disease. Call this my New Year’s Resolution, if you will; the first one I’ve made since I was a little kid. I’m now a third of the way there and, by all of my doctors’ indications, everything is going according to plan. So they’ll keep doing their thing, I’ll maintain my end of the bargain, and we should have this bitch beat entirely by late April.
After that…who knows? And I shouldn’t be worrying about that, really, but I can’t help it. My life began long before cancer found me, and when this is all said and done, I want it to be little more than an unexpected detour in the early part of my journey.
What still keeps me going are my dreams. I’ve always been a dreamer, but that has often worked against me, largely because I tend to start on the wrong end of the spectrum of ambitions. Take my dreams in music, for example. Before I could play my first full song, I began with the biggest dreams: sold-out stadium crowds singing my songs; records that not only sold well but, more importantly, changed the world the way Jimi Hendrix’s, John Lennons, and Bob Marley’s did; the glory; the decadence; the highs; the lows; and, eventually, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The problem, of course, was that while I fumbled along trying to learn how to play “Under the Bridge” and “Stairway to Heaven,” those dreams – as splendid as they appeared – seemed so impossible to attain, I became too scared to play my guitar outside of my bedroom until I was almost 23 years old.
Now, I find that my courage and drive has increased as my dreams have diminished in scale. I haven’t abandoned my old dreams. Refreshingly, they remain as strong as ever. But it does me no good to shoot for any of them immediately, and right now nothing would make me happier than playing to fifteen people in any one of my favorite dive bars or clubs here in town. I don’t need to party to the rock star extremes, I just can’t wait to have a beer again at the L&L Tavern or with my grandpas or my uncles. I’ll probably never know what it’s like to hold a major championship belt, but the next time I step in the boxing ring will mean as much to me as if I were standing opposite Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Robinson.
One of my biggest problems is that I’m not content to live in the present; I spend far too much time pondering either the past or future. That is quite the case right now. My thoughts are sifting through a pile of images, words, people, places, and events from the past year. Everything happens for a reason, there is always a lesson to be learned, so what’s behind each of these things? Against my better logic, I need to know now. Some of that is due to my natural impatience; the rest is because I’m sick of recalling each thing painfully. If I can find the sense in it all, then I can see why it was all worth going through, thus rendering the pain inconsequential. Or, at least, that’s my theory.
I once told a good friend of mine that, even if you feel lonely and out-of-place, if you let it, this world can be a pretty beautiful place with some wonderful things to teach you. I never told her, though, that I was saying that as much to myself as to her. Now I’m telling myself to remember that. Perhaps I should make a joint-resolution for 2009, since beating Hodgkin’s will only take me to April. After that, I’ll be back on my way. I’m interested to know, for the first time ever, what it’s like to focus on my immediate surrounding rather than constantly surveying the horizon.
This morning I went in for my fourth chemo treatment and during the preliminary tests and measurements, I tipped the scales at just over 190 pounds. I swear, one helping of my grandmothers’ cooking could find Gandhi’s appetite for him. I spent most of December happily devouring any and everything they put in front of me, and the results have been swift and obvious. In one recent entry, I paid tribute to my grandfathers for strengthening my heart and mind with their wisdom, insight, and courage. This is my tribute to my grandmothers for strengthening my body with their skill, care, and love. Their boy began a fight in 2008 that will throw its hardest, most devastating punches in 2009. Thanks to them, though, he’s ready.
***
It is officially winter, and it came a week early this year. You see, normally at this time I’m just getting back to Chicago, preparing to go back to work (or school, in earlier years) after spending Christmas and New Year’s with my family in LA. This year, though, of course, I am unable to travel (for those who don’t know, chemotherapy drastically reduces a person’s white blood cell count, making them very susceptible to disease and infection. That’s why doctors typically advise against long-distance travel, if they don’t prohibit it entirely).
This has not been easy to deal with. I love Christmas and, to me, Christmas has always meant sun and palm trees; not gray skies, freezing winds, bare branches, and snow. I need a trip back home in December to recharge my psyche before facing the dreary Midwestern months of January and February. And that’s to say nothing of how much I love being around my family during the holidays.
This year, I barely noticed Christmas. It was not the typical montage of parties, laughs, hugs, food, drinks, and gifts. This year, it was a single pleasant-though-largely-uneventful day.
Now, it’s the year 2009, and before I go on I must send an emphatic farewell and “Fuck You” to 2008. I don’t have nearly enough time, energy, or creativity to adequately express how bitterly I recall this past year. Time will almost certainly alter that perception, but for now, it’s hard for me to think of 2008 as anything but my most challenging, unmerciful year ever.
It is 2009, though, and I’m still here. I believe everything happens for a reason, so that means I’ve got things to do. What, exactly? The first one is obvious: I need to beat Hodgkin’s disease. Call this my New Year’s Resolution, if you will; the first one I’ve made since I was a little kid. I’m now a third of the way there and, by all of my doctors’ indications, everything is going according to plan. So they’ll keep doing their thing, I’ll maintain my end of the bargain, and we should have this bitch beat entirely by late April.
After that…who knows? And I shouldn’t be worrying about that, really, but I can’t help it. My life began long before cancer found me, and when this is all said and done, I want it to be little more than an unexpected detour in the early part of my journey.
What still keeps me going are my dreams. I’ve always been a dreamer, but that has often worked against me, largely because I tend to start on the wrong end of the spectrum of ambitions. Take my dreams in music, for example. Before I could play my first full song, I began with the biggest dreams: sold-out stadium crowds singing my songs; records that not only sold well but, more importantly, changed the world the way Jimi Hendrix’s, John Lennons, and Bob Marley’s did; the glory; the decadence; the highs; the lows; and, eventually, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The problem, of course, was that while I fumbled along trying to learn how to play “Under the Bridge” and “Stairway to Heaven,” those dreams – as splendid as they appeared – seemed so impossible to attain, I became too scared to play my guitar outside of my bedroom until I was almost 23 years old.
Now, I find that my courage and drive has increased as my dreams have diminished in scale. I haven’t abandoned my old dreams. Refreshingly, they remain as strong as ever. But it does me no good to shoot for any of them immediately, and right now nothing would make me happier than playing to fifteen people in any one of my favorite dive bars or clubs here in town. I don’t need to party to the rock star extremes, I just can’t wait to have a beer again at the L&L Tavern or with my grandpas or my uncles. I’ll probably never know what it’s like to hold a major championship belt, but the next time I step in the boxing ring will mean as much to me as if I were standing opposite Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Robinson.
One of my biggest problems is that I’m not content to live in the present; I spend far too much time pondering either the past or future. That is quite the case right now. My thoughts are sifting through a pile of images, words, people, places, and events from the past year. Everything happens for a reason, there is always a lesson to be learned, so what’s behind each of these things? Against my better logic, I need to know now. Some of that is due to my natural impatience; the rest is because I’m sick of recalling each thing painfully. If I can find the sense in it all, then I can see why it was all worth going through, thus rendering the pain inconsequential. Or, at least, that’s my theory.
I once told a good friend of mine that, even if you feel lonely and out-of-place, if you let it, this world can be a pretty beautiful place with some wonderful things to teach you. I never told her, though, that I was saying that as much to myself as to her. Now I’m telling myself to remember that. Perhaps I should make a joint-resolution for 2009, since beating Hodgkin’s will only take me to April. After that, I’ll be back on my way. I’m interested to know, for the first time ever, what it’s like to focus on my immediate surrounding rather than constantly surveying the horizon.
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