It's not a tumor! Oh shit it's a tumor.

Wednesday, July 21
I knew it was bad. Or at least not good. My left arm had been sore for a couple hours, but I didn't think anything of it. I was much more concerned about Contracts or Property or whatever bar exam subject I happened to be studying at the time. I was trying to get to bed relatively early since I wanted to take a practice exam the next morning. I went to throw on a t-shirt before bed, and that's when I found it. A lump, chilling under my left armpit, of the "I'm really big and you think you would have noticed me earlier" variety.

My mind was racing. Not this, I thought. Not now. I quickly hopped on the internet. Forty-five minutes later I had determined that men were not supposed to have giant lumps on their upper body. The internet - the least effective tool for self-diagnosis, by the way - told me the lump could be caused by anything, from cancer to cats. This wasn't helping. I really hate cats.

I decided I would be making a trip to UHS - Michigan's campus health clinic - the next day. There was nothing more I could do that night. I tried to sleep. It's probably nothing serious, I thought. But the thought wasn't very comforting. What if it wasn't?

I don't know what time I fell asleep, but it wasn't very long before most people were getting up.

Thursday, July 22
The practice exam went well. I think this was the high point of my last three weeks. And when a practice bar exam is the high point of anything, something has gone terribly wrong.

Anybody who has attended Michigan knows about UHS. I respect them, and bless them for getting my treatment started on the right path less than 14 hours after I discovered the lump. But walking into UHS with what could be a very serious medical issue did not fill me with confidence. There are traditionally only two diagnoses given by UHS doctors: Mono and pregnant. I had neither.

The first doctor poked and prodded the lump. This was the same doctor who, when I went to UHS with pain in my ribcage after a flag football game in the fall, quasi-punched me in the sternum before declaring "Yup. Seems like a cracked rib." He peppered me with questions before sending me upstairs for a chest x-ray.

The x-ray was negative. More doctors were called in. By the end of my examination at UHS, three doctors were telling me they had never seen anything like my lump. Great. I was a medical novelty. This wasn't exactly comforting.

The next step was an ultrasound at U-M hospital. I called my father on the way to the hospital and told him about the lump. This is when I started to become unhinged. Here I was, five days before the bar exam, sitting in a waiting room in a hospital to get pictures taken of my lump. Secured transactions would have been an upgrade at that point.

The ultrasound revealed that the lump was a "solid mass" (I'm not sure what else it could have been, but presumably it could have been "not a solid mass"). The next step was to perform a biopsy.

Friday, July 23
The biopsy was performed by a Dr. Herman Houin, a family friend, down at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. While everyone else was studying, I was lying in a hospital bed getting prodded by med students and having bits of my armpit snipped out.

Saturday, July 24 - Thursday, July 29
I blacked out for a good six days. No idea what happened.

Friday, July 30
Up until this point, I could never point to a particular day and say, "That was the worst day of my life." But I think July 30th took the cake.

The day would have been bad enough. After seven years in Ann Arbor, I was moving out. And not only moving out, but moving home. Which was fine...I would be moving to DC soon enough. But I was a 25-year-old with two degrees who was leaving the place I've spent my entire adult life to move back in with my parents. They're great people and all. But I can no longer walk home from the Jug. It's difficult leaving the place you have called home for seven years knowing that the next time you return, you'll be a visitor.

But then I got home. There was a message on the answering machine from my doctor. He had the results of the biopsy, and he wanted me to give him a call. I called him back. "Nick," he said, "I'm afraid I have some bad news..."

***

I'm not sure exactly what came next. A lot of medical terms were flying around. I wasn't visibly emotional, I don't think. But I was numb. Life-changing moments are rare. Sometimes you don't know a moment is life-changing until well after the fact. Sometimes you can prepare for such a moment. And then, sometimes, you get blindsided. Just absolutely stomach-punched by something you had no idea was coming but you know will change your life forever the moment it happens. That was this phone call. In a second I went from being a healthy, relatively fit 25-year-old who was ready to start a new chapter of my life in a new city with a new job to a cancer patient. Everything I was, everything I had worked for, and everything I had planned evaporated in an instant. I am 25. The last time I had been sick was a Panchero's-induced bout of food poisoning a year and a half ago. I play about 50 IM and beer league hockey, football, and broomball games a year. What. The. Hell.

I called Emily. I don't even remember what I said, but I know I've gotten much better at the whole "I have cancer" phone call since then. Emily's brother, Adam, and his wife, Nadine, had just had a baby girl, Addison. She was on her way to the hospital and she suggested I join her. "Addy can make anyone smile," she said.

So I went. I needed to do something; needed to get out of my house. I walked into the room in the maternity ward and was handed little Addy. I am just inexplicably awful at holding babies. But the little girl did put a smile on my face. Until I started to wonder if I would ever be able to hold my own child like that. For the first time in my life, I wasn't sure.

***

I woke up early the next morning. It was the first day of my new life. For about 30 seconds immediately after I woke up, I forgot I had cancer. I haven't forgotten since.

I did it

I did it.

I didn't want to. My advisers and handlers rolled their eyes at the idea. I mocked the idea myself for a solid week. But then I decided to just do it. I created a cancer blog.

But I won't be a Cancer Blogger. I wandered into the abyss of online cancer blogs for approximately three minutes after my diagnosis. That's all it took for me to turn and run like hell. I don't begrudge anybody the opportunity to handle a terrible disease in their own unique way, but I just can't bring myself to write lines like "A tumor just ate through my esophagus. I AM SO BLESSED!!!" I admire these people, I really do. Now more than ever. But that's not me. Unbridled optimism has never been my forte. You'll get from me here what you've been getting for the better part of two decades. If you know me at all, you already know what that is. If you don't, you'll find out soon enough.

I always wanted a blog too. Although I always thought it would be about politics and sports and culture and the other things I've already had a chance to write about. But I got a cancer blog, so I might as well make the most of it. Which is fine. Everybody has an opinion on sports and politics; at least I'll have some unique insight on this particular experience. Plus I couldn't pass up a chance to name my blog in homage to a fine line one of the best television shows in recent memory whilst working in some double meaning at the same time.

So, please, feel free to share this site with others, friends, family, coworkers, or anybody facing a similar struggle. I'll use this space to keep everybody updated and informed, but I'll also do my best to entertain, if only because that's what I want to do and that's how I plan to deal with this here 'phoma. So come here to be informed and entertained. I'll do my best to oblige.

And I'll also do my best to get rid of the seaward.