I guess this all started sometime around June 3, 2010. I was in DC looking for places to live late last May. I flew home on June 2nd, and within a few days, the first shots had been fired in the BarBri war. Within a few weeks, bar exam time was getting closer by the day. And then the lights went out.
The bar exam is something every recently-graduated law student has to deal with. It’s not the life-or-death battle some people make it out to be – and I would have said that even before my real real life-or-death battle – but it is exceedingly unpleasant to say the least. At best, it’s 1-2 months of that feeling of overwhelming preoccupation. You know that feeling when something pretty much dominates your life for a period of time? You wake up, and it’s barely a minute before your mind turns to whatever it is that occupies the majority of your time or attention. You can win small reprieves, but no matter what, that feeling just hangs over you like dark cloud. It might not be raining on you at any given moment, but the threat is always there. The bar exam is a small example of this. But like the overwhelming majority of these dark periods, it ends.
Mine just took a little longer.
I wish I would have known all this a little over a year ago, because I would have enjoyed May 2010 a hell of a lot more. As the calendar rolled over to June, I headed back home to study for the bar exam. That was unpleasant enough. But July 22…well that gave “unpleasant” a whole new definition. I don’t really get “stressed.” I’m quirky, interested in both analyzing emotions and in not feeling very many of them. Stress is one of the things I’ve never quite figured out, and my contrarian nature often leads me to act explicitly un-stressed in stressful situations. But if there was ever a moment in my life when I felt stress, sitting in the basement of U-M hospital waiting to get an ultrasound on a lump five days before the bar exam…that might be it.
Since then, you know a good chunk of the story. For most law students, the days after the bar exam are part celebration, part recuperation, part preparation for one last hurrah before becoming a working stiff. For me, it was a cancer diagnosis. I very literally deleted “Vegas” off my calendar and added an oncology consult, surgery, and a bone marrow biopsy.
And that was my new life. A month after the bar exam I was beginning chemotherapy. Less than a month after that, my hair had given me the, “dude call us when this is over” line and peaced out. Late September brought a bit of good news. But two weeks later I was de-diagnosed, then re-diagnosed, then FUBAR-d after a trip up to U-M Hospital. And you know how that went. Or how it didn’t, really. November rolled around and people were coming up with new names for whatever it was I had. Radiation took me into December, but the fog surrounding my diagnosis – and the potential for more treatment – never lifted. I hated uncertainty more than anything else, and the only solace I could find in my situation was the fact that I became certain that nobody knew a damn thing about anything. I guess I just got used to that dark cloud. I hoped to break into 2011 cancer-free and on the road to recovery. As it was, I could only dryly note, “this is not the uncertainty I wanted to bring with me into 2011.” Things got to the point where I just decided to up and move. I mean, I was planning to move at some point, of course. But it was literally 12 hours from decision to road.
So away I went from Detroit over to DC. But that cloud followed. I left having no real clue how I would proceed. I didn’t feel comfortable. I wasn’t at ease. I was starting a new job in three days, which is always a nerve-wracking experience. But even then, I didn’t know how long I would be there. I didn’t know if I would just be in a hospital in DC or Baltimore or Detroit or Ann Arbor in three weeks. How would this affect my job? More importantly, how would this affect my life? Dr. Advani joined the fray, Dr. Li reiterated her position, and Dr. Anderson wrote me a short novel. Finally, but only moderately mercifully, I reached a decision by late January: wait six weeks.
February was fine, in the way recovery from chemotherapy and radiation without knowing what you’re going to do next or even knowing your diagnosis is “fine.” But I would be lying if I told you that my illness wasn’t one of the first things I thought of when I woke up, or one of the last things I thought of before falling asleep. My decision had only delayed the inevitable. I think it was the right one (now more than ever actually), but it didn’t make halftime any less unnerving. It was a duel in which I was happy the shooting had stopped, but still wondering whether my adversary had fired all his bullets. It was every bit as “stressful” as you would expect that situation to be.
Oh, March. They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Well for me, March came in like a lion that had just eaten my spine, and went out like a lamb who couldn’t stand up without puking his eyeballs out and ended up in the hospital three times in 10 days. I met Dr. Ambinder, he was gung-ho about some spinal tap chemo, I taunted the chemo like an absolute idiot, and then proceeded to half-die worse than I ever had during actual chemo. I could barely post except to post pictures like these:
Finally, they took blood from my arm and shot it into my spine and my body literally healed itself. But then there’s the stuff since then that has been a little less publicized. My tests back in March all looked good, but my lymph nodes were still a little enlarged. I talked to Dr. Ambinder on April 13, who told me that my lymph nodes were “a little enlarged, but on the verge of nothing.” I had no idea what “on the verge of nothing” meant – I assumed it was a medical term – but I would have to live with it. His recommendation? Get a scan in another month or two.
In the meantime, I made it back on April 18th after missing 23 of the previous 25 days. And then? Things got busy. This isn’t terribly out of the ordinary for lawyers. Things happen, deadlines are set, and you have to work a ton for a month or two. The only reason it was noteworthy for me is because I hit one of those periods promptly upon returning from quite literally not being able to walk or eat for about three weeks.
So as April turned to May, work challenged health for “thing that occupy my every waking moment.” I came back to work on April 18th. Since then, I’ve had six days where I haven’t billed time. Since April 25, I’ve had four days where I haven’t made it into the office. All of them were days I was out of town. I’ve worked pretty much full days for over a month straight.
Which happens, of course. It’s not like that was unexpected, or surprising, or even objectionable. You don’t get into this industry without knowing the lifestyle that goes along with it.
But the cancer thing was still on my mind until I made it back up to Hopkins on May 27. And then finally, mercifully, I got some good news: The nodes were shrinking. I’ve felt fine for months, but ever since I was diagnosed with cancer while feeling perfectly fine, I’ve no longer been able to use “feeling fine” as my proxy for health. Through the winter, into spring, I just worried. The nodes were enlarged. “On the verge of nothing,” but enlarged nonetheless. The big deal isn’t exactly the size of my lymph nodes, but the change in size. Things get smaller, we’re fine. Things get bigger, we have issues. And finally, after months and months of limbo, questions, uncertainty, and fear, things were quiet. I could breathe. Just a little.
But still, there was work. While I spent part of May 27 in Baltimore, I worked full days from May 22 until June 24. Which isn’t awful because hey, better than chemo. But still, I had that cloud. As May turned to June, I still wasn’t free. From the minute I woke up, my goal was to get to work to get things done. When I got home, often late at night, my goal was to catch some sleep before getting up. As happy as I was with the late May cancer news, I had work to do. And that took precedence. There was no time to rest. There was no time to celebrate. There was only the task at hand. And that, from May 27 until June 25, was priority #1.
***
But on June 26, 2011, I didn’t go into work. Not going into work on a Sunday – that isn’t normally a huge deal. But I’m entirely abnormal. And June 26, 2011, was the first time in 389 days that I haven’t had to worry about something within moments of waking up. It was the first day I haven't had to worry about something before falling asleep. There was no bar exam. There was no cancer. There was no uncertain diagnosis, or no up-in-the-air treatment scenarios. I felt fine, and knew I would probably feel fine tomorrow. I could walk, eat, and I had hair. I didn’t have to worry about my career, or my life, or my work, or my next doctor’s appointment, or the million things I had to get done that day. All of those things, we worry about at one point or another. But for me, they lined up in such an absurd chronological procession. For a couple months, it was the bar exam. Immediately after that it was cancer. Then that all got shot to hell, and I was left dangling in the balance for months even after I was “done” with cancer treatment. Then I literally couldn't eat or walk months after finishing the cancer battle. Then, shortly after that went away, I began a Joe DiMaggio-esque streak at work, which positive late-May news couldn’t derail. Since then I haven’t really even had time to think about things.
***
I’ve rambled a lot, and I know that. Which, whatever. I write for me as much as I write for you. But the endgame is this: For roughly 385 days, I have not had peace. Every single waking moment, since last June, I have had a reason to worry about something. It could have been something as serious as life or death, or it could have been stupid like the bar exam, or something mundane like “work.” But for over a year, I have not had a moment where I haven’t worried about something. That takes a toll on a man. That takes years off a life – more than I’ve already shaved off. Every day, every moment, through good times and bad, I’ve had something horrible on my mind. Maybe it’s failing the bar exam. Maybe it’s getting something done at work. Maybe it’s “I hope this chemo works.” Maybe it’s, “I hope they figure out what type of cancer I have.” Maybe it’s “I hope I can walk tomorrow.” But it doesn’t matter. Every day, there was something on my mind. For 389 days, I haven’t had peace.
***
I hope I do now. I think I do. I don’t have some stupid exam to worry about. The big crush at work is over. My lymph nodes are shrinking, the CT scan looks fine, and aside from kinda-low white blood cells, you’d be hard pressed to peg me as anybody who has had to deal with cancer. I’m not even entirely sure what to do with myself. I got out of work a little after 1am Saturday morning, and I had no clue what to do. So I sat down and started writing. Haven’t had time to do much of that lately.
I want my old life back – the one where I didn’t have to worry about or write about things like this – but I know that will never happen. I know that era is over – for many reasons, some of which have nothing to do with cancer – and I’m fine with that. Such is life. But I have not yet had a chance to experience life as a cancer survivor. A life not dominated by some incredibly pressing matter. For 389 days, from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep, my own life has weighed on me. Now, finally, I think I can rest. There will always be that “living under the gun” feeling. But I won’t be actively worrying about the next lesson, or the next round of chemo, or the next doctor’s appointment, or the next assignment. At long last, I might have some peace.
Another requirement: All U-M grads who acquire a dog must name it something Michigan-related. So, with many thanks to those of you who participated in my informal “help us name the dog” contest last month, we have chosen to name this furry critter “Brady.” We figure the name is foolproof. It’s partially a nod to our current coach, since five months after Michigan hired Brady Hoke, my lymph nodes are shrinking and Columbus is a smoldering crater. But even if Hoke doesn’t work out, we have Tom Brady as the backup plan. So no matter what, we won’t end up like those people who have a little mutt named RichRod running around right now, pooping in the fridge and giving up 42 points a game.
Also, he looks like a Gremlin:
