I think I got some bad chemo drugs because this ish is making my hair fall out

I was not buying what the chemo was selling on Wednesday night.  That was rough.  It was really just the nausea, but nausea is the worst.  Just saps all the energy out of you.  Fortunately, it was of the delayed-onset variety, so I was able to eat quite a bit when I got home from the hospital.  But I slowly deteriorated for the next several hours, to the point where I decided to bust out the "severe nausea" pills.

Terrible idea.  I think they accidentally gave me the "induce nausea" pills instead of the anti-nausea stuff.  These pills are "ODTs" - Orally Disintegrating Tablets.  I'm suspicious of dissolving things to begin with -  what's wrong with a simple pill?  But the "mild nausea" pills didn't seem to help, so I decided to try to pop the ODTs.

You know the last thing in the world I want to deal with when I'm nauseous and have cottonmouth from the 2897 drugs in my body?  The world's worst-tasting ODT that is supposed to "dissolve naturally with saliva."  Instead, it sat there on my tongue doing nothing besides making me want to vomit.  Damn thing hadn't even made it to my stomach and it was already making things worse. 

I finally said "screw it" and swallowed the thing with water, but it didn't seem to have much of an effect.  Until I sat up on the couch and burped like 27 times like that scene from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (I really dislike that movie, btw.  No real reason for it.  Just don't like it).  Then I started to feel better.  The few times I've experienced nausea, laying down has seemed to make it worse, so I try to stay vertical (or head at least 4 inches above stomach) as much as possible, and that seems to help.

The one thing I don't really like: The number of drugs I had in my body on Wednesday.  Before the chemo drugs, I take Tylenol, an anti-nausea drug, and Benadryl.  Then I get the 4 chemo drugs in pretty significant quantities.  Then I have my daily pill regimen, which includes antiviral, antibacterial, and Uric Acid controlling pills.  Then I threw a couple anti-nausea pills on top of that.  That's about 12-14 drugs/pills in a single day.  And you're not exactly working with a solid food base.  Fortunately, I've kept my liver and kidneys in peak physical condition.  But this can't be easy on the body. 

Thursday was much better, besides waking up in a pool of my own hair.  That Mortal Kombat picture I posted the other day was exceptionally accurate.  Problem is, my hair seems to be both growing and falling out at an alarming rate.  The beard too, which is currently at Kyle Orton neckbeard status and seems to be losing less hair, which means I'm possibly one week away from a beard comb-over. 

The psychological impact of losing the hair is not that bad.  I think the preemptive strike helped a little bit, but then I got attached to the new cut so it might have been a win-lose situation.  But, like everything else associated with the chemo, it's just one more shitty thing you have to endure.

I still compare a lot of this to the bar exam, and it's much easier to endure the difficult parts of chemo.  Mainly because everything you go through with chemo is for a really worthwhile purpose.  The enemy that you're up against is not man-made, and every human you come into contact with is really working hard to get you better.  That makes a real difference.  With the bar exam, however, the hell is man-made.  It's really nothing more than meaningless hazing.  Every human you come into contact with seems to be making your life more difficult and really cares significantly more about maintaining the facade of an "esteemed profession" than they do about you.  And everything you endure is pretty much meaningless. If I said "screw chemo," well, the results wouldn't be very good.  But if I said "screw the bar exam," I could still be an effective lawyer (I think that's what the three years of law school was for).  Yeah, I wouldn't be able to practice I guess.  But that's only because other people decided it should be that way a long time ago, and the prevailing wisdom ever since has been, "We had to do it.  So do you." 

Point being: It is much easier to endure hell when you know you are suffering for a reason.  And having gone through the bar exam and chemotherapy literally back to back, I've had a much easier time accepting the Universe-induced hell of the latter. 

Anyway, I Googled "How to prevent hair loss during chemotherapy" just for the hell of it.  I know there's no way to do that, since 1) there are a bunch of hairless people in the chemo room and 2) if there was, I think somebody would have told me by now.  But I like to see what sort of funny things the internet comes up with.

So I stumbled onto this site (from the Mayo Clinic, no less!) that suggested "Scalp Hypothermia," which sounds much more like a serious medical condition you can get from getting your head stuck in the snow, but whatever.  "Scalp Hypothermia" consists of placing ice packs on your head during chemotherapy treatment to slow the flow of chemotherapy drugs to the scalp.  Sounds intuitive, right?  Except it has some side effects.  Such as 1) Freezing your head, because, you know, you have ice packs on your head, which leads to 2) headaches caused by your frozen head, and 3) can increase the chances of cancer relapse because it prevents chemo drugs from getting to your scalp.  After careful deliberation, I have decided not to freeze my head. 

Other than the hair situation, my condition improved as Thursday wore on, and I even made it to the gym for  a bit at night.  Sometimes, I'll force myself to get up, take a walk, to work out for a few, or just do something to avoid laying around, because as much as I don't feel like it sometimes, I definitely feel much better after.  It's pretty easy to let your condition deteriorate during all this.  If you don't get up, you feel fatigued.  If you don't have an appetite, you don't eat, and that leads to a pretty bad cycle.  It's part of the mental battle of all this - willing yourself to do things that you really don't want to do.  But again: eyes on the prize.  I spend equal amounts of time telling myself, "Stop being a wuss.  Get your ass up and go run" and "Dude, it's cancer.  Relax.  It's not like the time you managed to crack your rib during a co-ed flag football game."

Woke up this morning (Friday) feeling pretty good as well, except in a similar pool of my own hair.  I hear you can lose about 50% of your hair without it being noticeable, and I don't think I'm at that threshold yet.  I can tell if I look closely, but from a distance, I still have hair.  But so far, the nurses have been pretty accurate as to when I'm going to experience certain effects (nausea the day of, hair loss around 3 weeks or just after cycle 2, a rough patch as you get off the Prednisone).  

I'm sorta just irritated with my hair.  It's been around through thick and thin for 25 years, and now things get tough and it goes all Bush-after-Katrina on me?  Thanks a lot, guys.  Thought we were homies.  Instead, you go on sabbatical for a few months because things might get unpleasant around here. 

But the good news is, aside from Wednesday, I have been feeling pretty good.  Hoping to keep that up. 

(Also, for those of you who are wondering, I will not be burning any religious texts tomorrow.  That Quran-burning thing really weirds me out.  I followed the story earlier this week just by headline, and I thought it was a coordinated, nationwide type thing organized by a handful of yahoo preachers who wanted to protect "hallowed ground" in places like Alabama, Tennessee, and Kansas.  No. It was one lone idiot in Florida who appears to have no congregation.  But the President, Secretary of Defense, FBI and press decided to make a huge deal about it, and now we have copycat idiots, protests overseas, and it's a worldwide story.  Quite possibly the best thing that could have happened to this dude in Florida, and the worst thing to happen to everybody else. 

And I usually burn all sorts of Roman Catholic stuff on Notre Dame game day, but in my attempt to refrain from pissing off anybody's God, I'll put a hold on the burning this year.) 

Michigan Football to add law school graduate, cancer patient to secondary

A press release from the U-M Athletic Department:

ANN ARBOR, Mich -- Michigan Football coach Rich Rodriguez announced this morning that recent Law School graduate and current cancer patient Nick Cheolas has been added to the roster as a defensive back and will likely start this Saturday at Notre Dame.

"I'm tickled to death to have Nick on the team.  He's proved his resiliency and toughness in law school and the chemotherapy room, and we hope he can continue to do that on the field," said Rodriguez.

"Frankly, we're a little thin in the secondary.  So thin that we feel a 5' 8'', 145-pound, 25-year-old cancer patient is our best option."

When asked about Mr. Cheolas's recent admitted steroid use, Rodriguez scoffed.  "This is Michigan.  F--- rules."

Mr. Cheolas, who was reached for comment while receiving chemotherapy treatment yesterday afternoon, seemed stunned by the news.

"I knew they had some losses in the secondary, but this is absurd.  You mean they couldn't even find a healthy white guy to throw out there?" said Cheolas.  "If I get cut out there, it's going to be a real mess. My blood is toxic, you know." 

Cheolas, a four-star recruit (academic) out of Harper Woods, MI, has started at defensive back the past several seasons for various flag football teams including the 8-Ballers, Bob Loblaw's Law Blog, and You Cannot Replace a Gerry Bertier, winning championships in each of his final two seasons.  He is generally regarded as one of the best Graduate Student cornerbacks at Michigan.  What he lacks in height, size, speed, and white blood cells, he more than makes up for with his savvy play and experience covering Dental and Medical School students.

Cheolas was honored to receive the call form Rodriguez, but said he is unsure whether he will be able to play every snap due to his illness.

"I hope coach Rod understands that I can't run more than like 20 yards without getting tired, and I might need to take brief catnaps between quarters," said Cheolas.  "And I underwent chemotherapy yesterday.  That will probably limit my effectiveness on Saturday."

When asked what team he fears the most, Cheolas didn't hesitate in his response.

"Michigan State, definitely," Cheolas said.  "Putting on ski masks and gang-beating the hell out of a cancer patient for no particular reason...that definitely seems like something their players would do."

Motherboy

12:04PM

Between the Benadryl and the four hours of sleep I got last night, I was knocked out for a little while.  But I'm back up and running now.  Here's today's lineup card:

1. Tylenol
2. Decadron (anti-nausea)
3. Benadryl (to prevent allergic reactions to Rituximab
4. Rituximab
5. Oncovin
6. Adriamycin
7.Cytoxin

I'm on the Rituximab right now, and that takes a couple of hours to drip in.  I'm getting the Rituximab at a much higher rate this time around, and I seem to be handling it pretty well.  No real effects to speak of so far, knock on wood.  This is incredibly boring.

In other news, Detroit continues to be "on fire" and I'm watching some things burn from my window.  This is one of the few forms of entertainment I have right now. I'd get a picture but the window is behind me.

Also, my mother came along today, and she's the only member of my entourage today.  Which made think of the Arrested Development episode, "Motherboy XXX" and also makes me think I'm turning into Buster Bluth.  Also led me to this picture.

Mother and me circa 1989

Also, while I'm on the Arrested Development thing, my diminishing hair count led me to think of a debilitating disease: Graft vs. Host.  So I Googled graft vs. host and found out that it is a real disease...and one that can be caused by bone marrow transplants.  Something tangentially related to my current condition!  So, I give you, Tobias Funke:

This will be me in October

12:57PM

Interesting administration of drugs today.  The Oncovin was administered via IV gravity drip (not pumped in like the other drugs).  The Adriamycin (the pretty red drug) will be "pushed" in via "giant syringe."  I'm working out all sorts of calendar and prescription issues right now as well.

But I'm also going to rant for a second.  The Rituximab makes your blood pressure drop, so I tried to think of something to bump my blood pressure back up.

Today's topic: Boise State.

What the hell, guys?  The mere fact that we're talking about penciling in one team for the National Championship game in September is enough evidence that this is a bunch of BS.  Everyone knows their relative strength of schedule.  That's really not in dispute.  But the arguments for putting them in the NC game just don't make sense to me.  For example, Pat Forde:

Snobs snarled. Change is clearly uncomfortable for the Old Boy Network, and for fans who don't want to even consider interlopers from outside their precious power conferences.

No way Boise could handle being in a big-boy league, they declared. No way they'd even finish in the top half of the SEC or Big 12 or Big Ten, they sniffed. And no way they can beat Virginia Tech, they insisted.

I'm not sure what the point is here.  The first paragraph reads like a Michigan Daily editorial, and the second paragraph contains two still-valid arguments and one straw man that I'm not sure anybody actually argued.  I mean, who was seriously arguing that there was "no way" the #3 team in the country could beat the #10 team at a quasi-neutral site (yes, I'm aware it was at Fed Ex field in Maryland, but Boise fans showed up in force, since they have only one big "away" game a year.  It was their personal national semifinal). 

Or this one, by Ivan Maisel:

Win two Fiesta Bowls and begin the season with a No. 3 ranking. Check.

For what other college football team is a bowl game after the 2006 season invoked as something that should anything to do with this season's rankings?  None.  Not a single one.  You can't possibly tell me that if we're looking at 11-1 Alabama and 11-1 Texas at the end of the year, somebody would bring up Texas's 2005 National Championship and claim that that is why they should be in the National Championship game over 'Bama.  We trot out special arguments and concoct a special sort of rules when we talk about putting Boise in the NC game.  But the criteria for being there should be a little more stringent than, "it would be fun to see."

Bottom line: At no point during their season does Boise State have to go through the grind of playing multiple or consecutive difficult games.  Virtually every team in every "power conference" does.  Seriously, check it out yourself.  You cannot understate how important this is in a game like football.  They never have two difficult games back to back, or two difficult games in three weeks, or two big road games in a month.  It doesn't happen.  You want to leapfrog teams from the "power conferences?"  Then play 'em.  You have 4 non-conference games a year.  Play them.  Until then, quit playing one big regular season a year - in the first game, when all your players are healthy and you've had an entire offseason to prepare - and pretending you can waltz into the National Championship game in September.

My blood pressure is back to normal.  End rant.

2:01PM

Here is the "pushing" of the Adriamycin:

So this stuff is pushed and we're in the home stretch with the Cytoxin.  Oncovin and Adriamycin get in pretty quickly, Cytoxin takes a little bit of time, and Rituximab takes the longest.  I've got about half hour left, but so far, everything has been good.  Really boring, but I got a lot of reading/writing done.  I decided to wait to get food until I'm out of the hospital because my only options here are hospital cafeteria food or Little Caesars.  And I already have enough medical problems without throwing a Hot-n-Ready on top of everything.  Then again, I am on IV anti-nausea drugs, so it might not be that bad...

Getting this junk pumped into you isn't that bad, and the steroids keep you feeling pretty good in the days following each cycle.  Then it gets a little bumpy.  The thing that makes the entire chemotherapy experience difficult is the process of repairing the body after each cycle.  That process gets more and more difficult after every cycle.  You really begin to feel the effects, I'm told, around cycle 4.

It's weird stuff, this magic poison.  It's actually quite amazing that they can just shoot various substances into your veins and "cure" you of cancer.  I wish this crap didn't have so much collateral damage, but that's the way it is.  Hell of a lot better than coming in for bi-weekly blodlettings or something. 

I get some weird looks around here sometimes.  Like, "I wonder who he's here with...I hope he's not a patient...oh shit he's a patient."  But I get used to that after a while.  The nurses always seem happy to see me.  And everybody remembers my name.

This thing sucks but I'm really thankful for every minute that I don't feel like hell.  I'm really looking forward to putting this behind me, but I'm very, very adamant that I'm not going to think or plan that far ahead.  You really do take this thing one day at a time.  You sort of know how its going to go the moment you wake up.  If you wake up and feel good, you're going to have a good day.  If you wake up and feel like hell, it's going to be more difficult.  Depending on what ails me, I'll pop some pills and lay down and hope to feel better.

But either way, it helps to know that I'm getting better, even if I feel like hell.  Cancer is weird like that.  If you feel awful, its because the stuff is doing its job.  Like listerine or something.  With most every other disease, feeling terrible is a bad thing.  It's pretty bad here too, but its a secondary concern. 

As for this cycle, I actually feel better than I did during cycle 1 (which went very well).  Getting through things very quickly, although I seem to be out-urinating everyone else in the room (I drink a ton of water now, and the IV fluids tend to have that effect).  Otherwise, I'm comfortable, I feel good, no reactions, no vein problems.  It's really all I can ask for in this situation. 

Nearing the end of cycle 2 as of 2:29PM.  I'll keep you posted. 

I'm glad the hospital did not burn down last night like everything else in Detroit

8:12AM

Thanks to a timely phone update and some tech support, I have been able to "tether" my phone to my laptop, which means I now have internet access during treatment.  So...hooray timely updates!

I'm not sure how feel about the downtown treatment room.  One one hand, it has a very nice hardwood floor.  On the other hand, it has like 30 chairs (Dearborn only has about 10 and rarely are more than 2 or 3 filled).  And you know how I feel about other people.  

Some random thoughts while I wait for my bloodwork to come back:

1) The Mitch Albom post from yesterday is not actually from Mitch Albom.  There seems to have been a significant number of people who were unclear about this, and, in their defense, it wasn't clear from the post that it wasn't actually Mitch Albom.  Part of the problem is that the "column" was so damn good that it was hard to tell that it was a parody.  To be honest, when I first received the e-mail on my phone and just glanced through it, I thought it was actually Mitch.  I first thought, "How did Albom find my post?  Does the guy spend all day typing his own name into Google?"  Then I realized that that was exactly the type of thing Mitch Albom would do.  It was only when I caught the e-mail address (therealmitchalbom@gmail.com) and the subtle jokes ("Let me know if you are ever free on Tuesdays to chat" and "After meeting with Nick for the first time ten days from now...") that I realized it was a joke. 

But damn, was it good.  It was just spot-on Albom writing.  Meaningless, whimsical, dramatic drivel.  Repetition of a stupid phrase exactly three times ("One moment. One arm pit. One lump.")  Writing on a subject he doesn't know well and about a subject he has never met.  It's a real testament to how crappy the writing is.  It's so replicable.  Like Obama speeches.  Let's see if I can do Obama on a whim:

[Obama takes stage backed by diverse group of blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics.  And there are women in there.  Oh and they are wearing UAW jackets]

Now, there are those who say that cancer patients can either lose their hair during chemotherapy, or possibly die of cancer!  This is a false choice.  That is why I have introduced legislation prohibiting chemotherapy treatments that make patients lose their hair!  There are those who say that this will eliminate livesaving treatments.  But let me be clear.  Those who say that this will eliminate lifesaving treatments have presented Americans with a false choice.  They offer no solutions.  They are the party of "no."  But the time for talk is over.  That is why Congress must work to pass the "Preventing American Families from Hair Loss During Chemotherapy Working Families Restoring America's Promise Do Other Good Things Fuzzy Puppies Act" to rebuild schools, (insert positive verb) (insert positive noun), and, ah shit, I can't think of the third thing...rebuild our crumbling infrastructure or something?

The lesson, kids: Crappy writers/speakers are easily duplicated and I'm not sure why these people still have jobs.                                

2)  I woke up at 6:15am this morning to go to chemotherapy.  This is, to date, the worst thing I have ever had to wake up early for. 

3) On the way to the hospital this morning, I saw a dude smoking in his car with all the windows closed.  And I'm the one with cancer.

4) Currently, my hair is Kano, and this round of chemo is Liu Kang.  This is not going to end well. 

5) The woman in the chair next to me just picked up her phone and said, "Also, the pictures on your Facebook page...if I was an employer....you just...gotta change that."

6) The hand situation today is significantly better due to much nicer tape, shaved wrists, and a lower point of entry.  I really hate the catheter in the hand instead of the wrist (I would prefer a catheter nowhere), but this is apparently done in case they botch the first poke.  This way, they can continue poking up the vein.  My solution would be to do it right the first time, but whatever.  

9:18AM

It appears my blood caramelized (I think the actual term was "hemolyzed," and this means it clotted up) in the tube and they needed to draw more blood.  Which required a second poke.  Irritating.  Only one of the samples clotted up though, and my CBC count (the important one) was good.  So we're good to start treatment.

The deal with the blood work: the drugs destroy magnesium and potassium, so they want to make sure those levels are good at the beginning of treatment.  Otherwise, they give you pills to boost your numbers or something.  

9:43AM

We're up and running now after a long delay for no particular reason.  Shit's really derailing my run at the speed title.  Tylenol pills consumed and Benadryl going in (this is to prevent allergic reactions to the Rituximab.  The second battle has begun!  I'm going to do some other things now, but I'll keep you all updated.

Oh: I've un-invisibled myself on GChat for the first time in several months. So you can bother me there.

Cycle the second

I still don't fully believe it.  I know it, but knowing isn't believing.  I still don't really feel it.  I guess that's a good thing, but it's much harder to believe you have cancer when you're running around like you always have, feeling the same way you've always felt.  I'm extremely thankful that I made it through cycle 1 relatively unscathed, but the whole "serious illness" thing is much more believable when you feel something.

I get irritated sometimes too.  Not angry, mad, or upset.  Those are the wrong words for what I feel.  But irritated that I seem to have been the winner of a really terrible lottery.  Any young person who comes down with a disease of this magnitude out of the blue and says they never ask "Why me?" is lying.  I don't really grapple with the question; I'm over the initial "Why me?" stage and I stand by what I said before: there's no sense in asking the question because you know there isn't any answer. But the question is always hanging around.  And the frustration manifests itself at times. Not in spurts of deep mental anguish.  But more like a Gob Bluth "Come on!"  And then I go on with life.

***

I vividly remember receiving the news of my diagnosis on the phone. It's a phone call I'll never forget. But if you were sitting in the room with me while I was on the phone, I doubt you would have known that anything was amiss.  I think I muttered an "ok" or something to that effect.  Then summoned my dad into the room and threw the phone on speaker so we could write down the foreign terms being slung around.  I can't say I was completely blindsided because I, uh, had a giant lump under my left arm that was telling me something might not be right. 

In part, that's just the way I handle things.  I don't like to show much emotion.  I'm not sure I could have been emotional about the news if I tried.  I got off the phone, called Emily, and within minutes I was on the phone with the Oncology people at Henry Ford Hospital.  They had already scheduled my first 4 appointments.  Then my surgery was scheduled for that Tuesday. I didn't really have time to sit around and think. And I'm very glad for that.  The worst thing I can do is sit around and think about stuff.

Which is pretty much all I do here, but at least my thoughts have an audience, some sort of coherent structure, and a beginning and an end.  It helps to have this outlet.  It helps to hear from people, to answer e-mails and texts.  To talk to people on the phone.  The more time I spend doing those things, the less time I have to sit around and have those fleeting moments of "Why me?"

It also helps that I have four months of nothing to do.  It would be much more difficult to deal with this if I was missing work or school.  Those are two things that I don't have to worry about that I would have had to worry about had this happened at any other time in my life. And I'm at home.  This happens a few months earlier, I'm trying to avoid infection in Ann Arbor housing.  A few months later, I'm dealing with all of this in a new city.  It's hard to look at cancer at 25 and say "It could be worse," but...it could be worse.  Much worse.  And I'm thankful for that.

***

I hate the phrase, "Everything happens for a reason."  Despise it. I think it is the single dumbest sentence conceived by humanity.  For starters, it's non-falsifiable.  Everything happens for a reason?  Well no shit.  You've discovered the law of causality. Second, people who use this phrase usually have some contrived metaphysical explanation in mind for whatever tragedy they have just suffered.  And it's never, "God thinks you're a real asshole and this is his way of telling you that."  It's usually some sort of, "God is giving you a great challenge to test the strength of your faith." This is, of course, after years of  being taught to fear God and that his ways are mysterious and as mere humans we cannot even begin to fathom them. But misfortune strikes us and suddenly we're so sure that our suffering is part of some grand plan.

I don't buy it.  Sometimes life just sucks.  I know the reason why I have lymphoma: Some cells mutated.  Then they divided quickly.  There.  There's your "reason."  I can't sit here and convince myself that my suffering is part of some noble plan.

But I'm also very ok with that.  Because really terrible things happen to really good people all the time. And that's life.  And there's not much you can do about it.  Some people have trouble accepting that, and I don't blame them.  It's pretty terrible stuff. And some people believe that there are mysterious "reasons" behind all of this, and that's fine too. Maybe they're right.  There's certainly no way I can say they're wrong.  But I don't think that way.  If I claimed that was my line of thinking right now, I'd be lying.  If I tried to think that way, I wouldn't be fully invested.  I'd be lying to myself.  The whole thing would be a farce.

This whole thing is as much a mental struggle as it is physical.  I never really liked that line.  But it's true here.  If you can keep your mind right, you can endure.  If you're in the right place mentally, you can get to sleep at night.  You can get yourself out of bed in the morning.  You can go to doctors appointments and joke around with doctors and nurses.  You can have bad days and know they're all part of the process of getting better.  You can be quasi-forced into shaving your head and think, "this is awesome!"  I am extremely cautious about getting too optimistic with my thinking.  I plan for the worst case scenario at every step of the way.  But I can get to a point - and I have - where I am at peace with the situation.  And I think that's the best place to be.  You can't get too optimistic because you set yourself up for a let down, and you can't be too pessimistic, because you will drive yourself crazy at every juncture.  You have to get to a point where you are mentally stable, and that means no pouting, no pity, no pondering, "Why me?"  You know why?  Because

I'd rather not take life advice from a bumper sticker. But that's a pretty wise bumper sticker.

***

And so here I am on the eve of cycle 2 ready to get another liter of poison pumped into my body tomorrow.  I don't know if I'll soon be 1/4 or 1/6 of the way done, but I do know that no matter what, I will be one day closer to getting rid of this thing.

Each cycle will get a little more difficult.  Without the possibly Neupogen-induced back spasm type things I endured last week, I pretty much recovered from cycle 1 in less than a week, and I really only felt bad for about 24 hours.  All things considered, cycle 1 went pretty well.

D-day on the hair is coming up.  The chances of the hair hanging around are slim to none, so...be prepared for that or whatever.  I don't expect the hair to make it to cycle 3.  Expect a post on great moments in hairless history or something sometime soon.  

I'm down at Henry Ford Main Campus (downtown) Wednesday starting at 8am.  I'll be there for a while.  If you happen to be walking down West Grand Boulevard, stop on by.  I like visitors.  These treatment rooms are always filled with downers.  People should be more happy like me.  Otherwise, I'll keep you all informed via the blog to the best of my ability. 

I'm going to go shave my wrists now.  Godspeed. 

Mitch Albom responds

At 2:48PM today, an e-mail popped into my Inbox.  It was from "M Albom."  The e-mail address: therealmitchalbom@gmail.com.  Could not have been more legit.

Normally, I would have laughed this off.  But the corresponding note and column are works of art, and I would be depriving you all of something special if I failed to reprint them here.

So here, my friends, is The Real Mitch Albom's response to this morning's column:

----

from M Albom to ncheolas@gmail.com date Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 2:48 PM subject Column from Mitch Albom

Nick -

I saw your scathing post from your cancer blog this morning and decided it needed correcting, so I have penned this column in your honor.  I hope this smooths everything over.

Let me know if you ever are free on Tuesdays to chat.

Best -
MA

Life isn't measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.  But this wasn't a normal moment.  And he knew it.

It was one moment.  One arm pit.  One lump.  Worse than a lump of coal in your stocking.  It was on his lymph nodes.

Nick Cheolas has cancer.  It was words that didn't go with the man.

After meeting with Nick for the first time ten days from now, one thing became clear.  Nick isn't a man you feel like would ever get cancer.  Not now at least.  Not at the doorstep of the Bar Exam.  But sometimes you walk into a bar.  And it hurts.  Hurts bad.

You see, what's tragic is that it isn't more tragic.  This is a happy story.  Really.  Nick has a healthy approach to this challenge.  His strong faith points him seaward - a journey of discovery he certainly won't stop believing.  He will beat it.  Hair be damned.  Strength be diminished.  Color from his face be gone.  Pale to the victor, indeed.

He may move slowly for the next few months, a thin man with heavy burdens.

But that is all it takes.  One moment.  One arm pit.  One lump.  To send your dreams deferring. 

But only for a moment, he says.  He talks and we admire.

You need to think about it.  How many of us would do what Nick is doing? How many would approach the assembly line of life with such blue collar fortitude? How many titans of finance would go back to being a bank teller?  How many of us would be able to drink a gallon of milk and go run a marathon?  Does any of this have anything to do with Nick?  No.  And that is exactly the point.

Cancer makes no sense.  None.  It sneaks from the dark corners of our life plans.  There is nothing trivial about that. Cancer has no place in our twenty-somethings.  Syphilis, maybe.  Mono, certainly.  Sclerosis of the liver, perhaps.  But cancer?  Not now.  Hopefully not ever.

Cancer at any age can make someone feel isolated - at least until a former student comes and visits you.  But Nick is not isolated.  There is support for him.  We have his back.  Even as cancer has the rest of him.

We know cancer can't win.  Kill your children, kill your city.  We can't let that happen to Nick. And he can't do this alone.  We have to be pulling for him together.  There is already one division in Nick's life.  Its address is 436.  There can't be another.

One moment.  One arm pit.  One lump.  No more.

It is our moment.  Our arm pit.  Our lump.

How I write good (in which I continue my Freep crusade)

I swear I'm going somewhere with this picture of Mitch Albom.

I've received a ton of support over the past few weeks. A lot of people have said some really nice things.  I have no doubt that some of it is bullshit, but the vast majority of it feels sincere.  It's just been really nice.  As terrible as this whole thing is, there are a lot of positives in this experience if you can find the time to look for them.

One thing a ton of people have commented on: my writing.  There are people who thought I was a good writer before any of this.  There are people who didn't know a thing about my writing but came away apparently impressed.  There are people who knew my work academically but didn't know about my "freestyle" writing form.  There have been several requests for me to publish my work or go write a book or do whatever.  People have asked for my permission to laugh at my cancer blog.  I think the most accurate synopsis of my work came from a person who said the tone was definitely "me," but the opening up/emotional aspect was most decidedly not.  Anyway, enough people have commented on this blog/my writing that I thought I should comment on it.

***

I don't really have any "rules," per se. Adhering to a bunch of rules tends to break up the flow of my writing.  But I do have one thing that I keep in mind whenever I write: Keep it simple.  Brian Cook, proprietor of MGoBlog.com (a Michigan sports blog that I follow closely and have referenced here several times), summarizes this point well:

Everyone who's ever written a paper with a page requirement knows the special agony of having nothing to say and a ton of space to say it in. The sentences that result are meandering things that say not very much in a ton of space. That's what 90% of people learn from English classes: how to turn a perfectly respectable sentence into something incomprehensible, cliché-ridden, and three times as long.

I've spent a lot of time trying to forget what I learned in most of the English classes I've taken.  Here, I just write.  Whatever comes into my mind (as you can tell).  I have some natural advantages here: I know a subject better than my audience, and my audience wants to know about it.  This is why you follow certain sources to learn about politics, culture, fashion, gossip, sports...you read to learn about something that interests you, so you read a source from somebody who knows the subject better.  I don't think I would be as successful with a blog on another subject because there would inevitably be 20,000 other people with an opinion on that subject.  Fortunately, there is a relative dearth of 25-year-old cancer patients, so I've been able to acquire a large chunk of this market.

Second natural advantage: I think I'm insane.  Not the "see that guy who just broke that bottle on his head?! He's insane!"  But more, "Hey I have cancer.  Let's go tell some jokes!" or, "What are you thinking about 24 hours before you begin chemo? William Tecumseh Sherman!"  Like Irish dude from Braveheart insane.  George W. Bush shared a post with Charlie Villanueva.  I almost had to excuse myself from Chemotherapy class because I couldn't stop giggling.  Some people aren't sure when I'm joking or being serious here, and are too afraid to ask.  But I'm convinced that most good writers MUST have something wrong with them.  I just write.  I really don't edit at all.  So the stuff that comes out onto the page has to be somewhat interesting, which means the stuff in my head has to be somewhat interesting, and I don't have the time or the energy to sit around and make this crap up.  Plus I constantly have multiple drugs in my system.  That helps.

***

If I have one "rule," it is this: Don't be Mitch Albom.  Whenever I write anything at all, I think to myself, "Is this something that Mitch Albom would do?"  If the answer is yes, I promptly delete whatever it is I was writing and give myself a papercut on my eyelid to repent.

Take, for example, writing about a horrible disease.  I wanted the world to know my story, so I got myself cancer and decided to write an almost stream-of-consciousness account of whatever I was thinking/feeling at the moment.  What did Mitch do?  He found somebody else with a terrible disease and watched somebody else battle it.  Then he did all the writing.  Then made millions of dollars.  Pain to Mitch: 0.  Gain to Mitch: Millions of dollas. 

Also, I try not to write about things that did not happen.  I will not write to you about my valiant triumph over lung cancer.  I will not tell you how nice it was to have Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson join me for my chemo treatment.  I do not have a post about my fourth cycle of chemotherapy already written. Some of the things on this site are slightly embellished, but the emphasis is really on slightly.  For example, John Coleman did not ask an oncology nurse if he could smoke in the clinic.  But the overwhelming majority of stuff here is absolutely true, and I've had witnesses to nearly every part of my treatment to verify that (minus the sperm bank stuff). 

I'm not going to lecture anybody.  I'm not going to tell you not to smoke, to eat well, to exercise, to cherish every moment and on and on.  What the hell position am I in to lecture anybody?  I've been around here for 25 years and already managed to get myself the cancer.  Perhaps that makes me more awesome because it took me 25 years to accomplish what most people take 75 years to do.  But I don't know.  This isn't a race I really wanted to finish first.

Finally, if you live in the Detroit area your entire life, you always hear stories of various celebrities and athletes who roam around this hood.  You hear stories and bits of information about people, and the more you hear, the more you get a sense of what people are actually like.  And from nearly all accounts, two words come up time and time again in reference to Albom: Egotistical asshole.  And when you tell audiences (after accepting an award for journalistic excellence five years after making things up in a story)...

"And always, always, be mindful of who you are serving – not your ego, but your reader," 

...well, those words ring pretty hollow.

So those are my "secrets." I don't think I'm particularly special or talented or whatever.  I really don't.  But I do think most of my success stems from the fact that I just try to be truthful and honest here, and I'm really not interested in making this into something it's not or venturing outside the range of what I know and have experienced.  Probably the highest compliment I can receive about this blog is, "It sounds just like you, man."  You can write all you want, but you can only deceive people for so long.  And when people find that out, you've lost your credibility and you've lost your audience.  And people are going to be pissed.

I got a magic ticket

 
There was a point on Saturday when I thought I should go get myself a PET Scan because I might no longer have cancer.  A brief period when so many amazing events happened, in succession, that you really just felt on top of the world.  That anything was possible.

It all started when I found a pair of tickets to the game.

I know that sounds unbelievable, but so did the cancer thing, so believe it.  Plus there were witnesses. I was walking down Main Street, 20 yards from the stadium, with thousands of people around.  And to my left I saw two tickets blowing across the grass. So I picked them up.  At first I figured the owner would be nearby, running to catch his tickets.  I mean, there were two of them.  Two tickets blowing in the wind won't stay together over a long distance. So I stood there for a while waiting for the owner to claim them.

But the owner never showed.  And there was no way I was going to go around to people asking, "Hey I just found these two tickets, are they yours?"  Because, come on.  Plus, I'm currently interpreting things like "finding two Michigan Football tickets blowing in the wind" as a kind gesture from God of the "sorry about the cancer, man" variety.

This was the first in a series of pretty amazing events.  I made it into the game, and, after a cop stole the Gatorade I tried to sneak in in my pants (God is a powerful guy, but there's really no way you can expect him to stop police officers from doing things like stealing Gatorade from a cancer patient.  But the officer was polite while doing it and didn't taze me, so...miracle #2), we made it to our seats.  Then I got to see Brock Mealer - a man doctors gave a 1% chance of ever walking again - lead Michigan out of the tunnel.  That's the type of stuff means a lot more to me given my current situation.  It's hard to express what it was like to see it in person. 

(A side note on the Brock thing: The State of Ohio must have the meanest doctors on the planet.  I believe what Mealer says about the whole thing because it's Ohio.  But I can't imagine doctors doing things like ascribing a percentage chance - especially 1% - to somebody walking again. Or saying things like:

His mother insisted her son would walk, but doctors politely told Shelly Mealer that she didn’t know anything about medicine. Don’t live in denial, they said.

That’s the line Brock remembered.

“One of the most vivid memories I have is the surgeon just giving me the news that this is the best I could hope for,” he said. “They always wanted me to accept that fact.”

But the fact of the matter is that a guy who was given a 1% chance of walking again by doctors in Ohio did just that on the turf at Michigan Stadium.)

Then Michigan's defense came out and forced a quick three-and-out in which Connecticut lost six yards.  This was followed by Michigan's offense putting together a 100+ yard touchdown drive.  The only way I could have been more sure of God's presence after a series of miracles like that is if Tim Tebow was under center.

I told you I had never been more nervous for the start of a Michigan season ever before.  Season openers used to be foregone conclusions. I really hope to return to those days, and I really think we will.  But for one day on Saturday, nearly everything went right.

As for me, I have felt as good the past couple days as I have in a while. Very close to that unattainable 100% (as a rule, I will not declare myself "100%" until I am cancer-free).  And I felt better at the end of a 3:30 game than I have in years.  It's amazing how you feel when your schedule isn't "get home from the bar at 2:30, eat an obscene amount of Bell's Pizza (which actually rivals chemo in terms of toxicity), sleep for a few hours, wake up, drink a Gatorade to "hydrate," have a beer in the shower, go tailgate for five hours, eat hot dogs and pulled pork, go to the game, stand, jump and scream for 3 hours, then eat an entire pizza one the way home."  When normal humans do those things, it's called a "bender."  When college students do it, it's called "college."  When law schoolers do it, characterization straddles the two. 

That's all for fully developed thoughts on this weekend.  More random ones:

1) There are not many things in life that make me feel as old as tailgating.  I hopped around to a few different tailgates Saturday, but our first stop was at the "senior house" for a fraternity, (first, U-M cracked down on the frat houses themselves, so the tailgates got moved to houses on State Street.  Then the City of Ann Arbor spazzed out and went after the State Street houses, so the tailgates moved to Oakland.  It's a little like the "first they came for the Jews" thing, except everybody in Michigan's Greek system is Jewish so they're really only coming for the Jews).  Anyway...my group of friends just stood on a small sliver of grass by the sidewalk pondering that "do these kids think they are cool because they are hanging out with us or are we those creepy older people hanging out with the kids?" question.  I'm pretty sure it was the latter.  In any event, I felt old.

2) About the whole "I'll panic when we are no longer relevant" thing. This helps:

3) Oh, Freep.  I know this point has been beaten into the ground, but perhaps there are some people out there who still think the Detroit Free Press is the least bit useful or credible on the issue of Michigan Football.  Exhibits #217 and #218 as to why they are not:

• Mikey Rosenberg chimes in with breaking news: Denard Robinson is fast and he gained a lot of yards.  Nothing like giving props to a program you chopped in the kneecaps for no particular reason a year ago, but whatever.  But wait! There's "Related Information."  We're "Looking Back"...to Michigan's last three season openers.  And what was three openers ago? Sept. 1, 2007: Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32.  There are creepy stalker fetishes, and there is whatever the hell has been going on in the Freep Sports department the past couple years.  
• More Rosenberg!  In an article titled "Three Michigan questions with Michael Rosenberg," Rosenberg tackles the question, "What is next for Tate Forcier?"  To answer that question, Rosenberg quotes Tate Forcier, talks to Rich Rodriguez, and examines the reasons Forcier appears to have been in Rodrieguez's doghouse recently.  Just kidding.  He mentions that Forcier was sitting on the bench with a towel and that Tate's two older brothers transferred, and concludes, "it would not surprise me if Forcier transfers as well." 
  
  
  I'm not a journalist.  But I dabbled in journalism in college, and that is the shittiest journalism that ever shat.  Rosenberg literally came to his (non) conclusion by watching the same thing on TV that everybody else in the country watched and added two bits of widely-known information that happened to two other people several years ago.  Rosenberg - a "sports journalist" - asked his own freaking question and answered it with less effort than it takes me to get out of bed these days.
   
  

  MEANWHILE, Tom VanHaaren, who is quite literally "some dude who really likes Michigan Football" and contributes to MGoBlog, heard the Forcier rumors and made one phone call to Tate Forcier's father.  And instead of crapping out 100 words of junk with zero effort whatsoever, this blog post contains 300 words of information straight from Tate Forcier's father. Who knows what the end result will be.  But one source contains infinitely more information than the others. 

  
  It's the Twitter age.  It's the era of blogs and 24/7 news cycles and it gives us the ability to get more information, more quickly, and from better sources.  If you want to survive, you have to provide better information, provide that information faster, provide information from unique sources, or provide information in a manner that people can't find anywhere else.  The formula is not difficult.  Newspapers have not mastered it.  

4) There are not many things in life that make me feel as young as sitting amongst the general population at a Michigan Football game.  Dear Lord our fans are old.  Like, really old.  As in, these people seem to be risking their lives at every game.  I understand the stereotype of the "down in front!" Michigan fan, but please, stay seated because it seems to be a matter of life and death.  On the other hand, I seemed to have fewer medical problems than the people in my immediate radius for the first time in several weeks.  That said, the old folks around us were pretty spry and exceptionally pleasant.  The people in my section stood for the better part of the game and we had some young folks sprinkled in to keep the noise level up.  So all in all, a good experience.

5) I think, I hope, I pray that the piped-in music at Michigan Stadium was taken out to pasture and shot by David Brandon in the offseason.  He seems like a smart guy that would do this sort of thing.  But I swear to you, as I walked out of the Big House for the last time as a student, I did so to this:

Again: not many things worse than cancer, but add "walking out of Michigan Stadium for the last time as a student after another loss to Ohio State as six sorority girls surround Justin Bieber and shimmy to 'Jump on It'" to the list.

6) I heard the phrase, "Thank God that was the year Mary Higgins had bunion surgery" uttered with complete seriousness this weekend.

7) I had a much easier time being Sober Sally this weekend.  I think the atmosphere has a much greater impact on my own psyche.  I can handle bars like the Arena - a sit-down, hang out sports bar in Ann Arbor - much easier than I can take a club or a seemingly innocuous bar that inexplicably has Karaoke on a Sunday night that features a 60-year-old white guy screaming Jay-Z's "99 Problems."

8) The preemptive strike hair thing has completely backfired because I like my new hair and other people keep telling me they like it which means even if like 60% of those people are lying, there's now a significant investment in my hair.  Also, the combination of the new cut and the shaving sabbatical is exceptionally convenient.  I guess no hair would be convenient too, but that's no fun. 

9) To all my law school tailgate peeps who moved on and weren't in Ann Arbor for this one: I'm sorry and we missed you.  The experience of this game was badly needed after the past couple years.  

10) I had no idea what I was going to write here when I started this post.  I just thought, "maybe I should tell people something about my weekend."  I just cracked 1,900 words. I'm done now. Big day Wednesday.  Gotta rest up.