Cancer offers no quarter; it doesn’t negotiate, it has no feelings, no compassion and no impulses other than to grow and kill everything in its path, leaving behind a wake of despair.
You know that a tense conversation is about to take place when your doctor enters the examining room with a seriously sad look on his face and doesn’t want to meet your eye immediately.
My oncologist had the look my dad would have called the “mule lip,” he looked like he felt he had somehow failed me professionally. He looked to me like he might cry, something I have never witnessed before as most healthcare providers have to remain, in some ways, stoic.
Having been already notified of the results of a biopsy performed the week prior, I already knew the score, and it isn’t pretty, so we made a few jokes together to even up the vibe of the room.
I found myself trying to cheer up my own doctor so that we could soberly and realistically chart out how we were going to respond to the resurgence of the cancer that threatened to end my life last year.
We all may have popped the champagne corks a little early; the cancer is back, and it is more than just looking for a fight. Right now, it has the upper hand.
This latest development is certainly not the fault of my doctors. In fact, it was my oncologist’s alert eye that caught the masses in my lungs on a routine CT scan and ordered the biopsy, something a less competent physician might have mistaken for clouds of aspiration blurring the camera.
His attention to detail means we know exactly how rapidly the tumors are growing and can come up with a mission plan that slows it down or contains it to the area so that it can’t spread any further. That is the optimistic overview.
Right now, my best option is to invade across the channel using all assets like D-Day, only, in the real world, by 1944, the war had already swung clearly in the favor of the Allies, and, comparatively speaking, I am at the mercy of a body that is getting tired.
For your WWII buffs, I may as well be sailing across the channel with Italy’s fleet.
So, what we are planning to do is throw everything we have left at it and hope for the best.
More radiation therapy for me is out of the question, the human body can only take so much, and I have absorbed enough radiation to where I ought to be glowing like the “Elephant’s Foot,” the huge mass of radioactive material at ground zero of the Chernobyl disaster. Meanwhile, immunotherapy could wreak havoc by causing my long-compromised immune system (no, I do not have HIV) to react in all kinds of unwanted ways and still may offer no benefit at all.
My doctor’s clever approach shows that people who say that the “big” pharma industry is in collusion with doctors to make sure cancer is never fully cured so all of them can profit are conspiracy theorists who are full of horse manure. My lead physician, Dr. Jeremy Wells, is one of the most compassionate people I have ever met as well as a creative problem solver who I know would trade any material wealth he might have for the ability for people he treats to be able to ring that bell signaling the end of treatment and have that be the actual end of treatment.
If we could clone my team, which includes Dr. Jeremy Wells, Dr. Alan DeAngelo, Dr. James Byrd, Dr. Jed Howington and Dr. Robert Cambell, everyone who suffers from cancer in our town would be cured.
In fact, I’m willing to bet that if my team of doctors got together and did find the cure for cancer, they would share their findings with the world and never file a patent. That is the caliber of the doctors and their staffs I have had the pleasure to have fretting over me.
We aren’t just thinking outside the box. We are tossing out the box altogether and taking a rather unconventional approach that might become a new benchmark for how to fight back against the disease.
Technology involving the chemical formulations has allowed for patients to be able to take in and handle a lot more chemotherapy over a span of time if it is being delivered over several days nonstop, day and night.
The plan is for me to go in on a Monday to get kind of a “shock” dose, then I will be outfitted with a special pump that gives me one continuous week-long dose. I then return the pump and take another round of shots Friday afternoon, and after a couple of weeks of letting my body rest and recuperate, we will do it again and again…and again, for the next several months.
The one thing we did not discuss were timelines. It is useless, at this point, to do that, because we won’t know if this mission will go on past the first day of me trying out the experimental drugs, and they are all experimental.
Right now, I am making my first short term goal to still be walking the Earth through Christmas. I can’t imagine the treatment going much longer than several months. If I can hold out, then we have a chance to contain it, maybe for a couple of years.
If I get through Christmas, then you can put another check mark in the column keeping track of the number of miracles the Lord has granted me.
Speaking of miracles, the way that our community has put an embrace around me and blessed me is without measure. I will never forget when I went through the coma in 2008, people I didn’t know put me on prayer lists throughout the CSRA. My, then, former college professor, Debbie van Tuyll urged people she knew to help, and she went herself and donated plasma, knowing that the procedure I was undergoing in the coma required a lot of that prized blood product.
Blood drives were held in my name, so I suppose I can honestly say that I have the blood of my community flowing in my veins, Black, White, Latino, Asian, short people, and tall people all have contributed the lifegiving sera for the many transfusions I have needed.
This time around, the people of our community have sent me cases of the nutrition drink I had use to feed into the tube in my belly during the first round of treatment and contributed to the GoFundMe that my family set up for me; but the biggest thing has been the outpouring of prayers coming from far and wide.
Please continue to ask your congregations to pray for me, it is forever comforting to me to know that so many people are praying for God’s will to be done, whatever that turns out to be.
Last year, I was very trepidatious about sharing my struggle publicly; it is kinda one of the big rules of journalism, or at least it once was, that the reporter never wants to be a part of the story. Certainly not take a lead role. Yet, I am glad I made the decision to allow my community to go on this journey with me.
The notes and messages I receive weekly from people who have followed and have battled this thing with me in spirit together, those notes have helped me trudge on even when I was sitting in the chemo unit smelling the aroma of Giuseppe’s wafting from next door wishing I could order a calzone that could fit in the tube.
I not only receive weekly, but sometimes daily notes of well wishes from people who have beat cancer and went on keeping on being committed to living their best life as well as the caregivers of those folks thanking me for shining a light on the angels we cancer warriors we depend on while we man the front lines, are precious.
In my opinion, cancer is the scourge on humanity that we need to keep talking about and we need to keep searching for a cure. When opportunities in medical science occur, we need to fund them and continue to research like they did when a polio vaccine was in sight.
Virtually everyone alive has lost to cancer a family member, close friend, mate or have endured it themselves. Eventually, cancer should be something that we can cure if we keep trying and, trust me, I scour the newspapers looking for a break-through every day.
When people compassionately tell me that they are sorry to hear about my struggle, I always remind them that neither of us is promised another day by any deity, government or otherwise. It breaks the tension. But, it is true that everyone who has battled cancer, while we all have different experiences, we do have an everyday appreciation for life as we all know how fragile ours and everyone’s bodies are.
Some people, like me, have almost invited it in by smoking, but there are others, children such as Sullivan “Sulli” Hajek who never did anything to bring cancer upon themselves, yet they suffer just like the adults. I encounter these waifs in the halls of the Cancer Center, and it still breaks my heart to see the kids who are having to endure the treatments I have had to go through, and I wince at how it must be such a scary, traumatic experience for them.
Yet, those kids have the most remarkably sunny of dispositions, that’s all I can say.
Yes, the age of 54 is rather young to be making end of life decisions in our epoch, but I long ago came to grips with my own mortality and, all in sum, I have lived a fun and carefree life filled with many wonderful high points and far, far less lows than others have to experience, either by bad luck or by their own devices.
Like everyone else, I have made my momma cry a couple of times, but I have never broken her heart. My dad in Heaven, Tommy Hudson, I am sure is proud of me as I have tried to be obedient to my Lord in Heaven by having a conscience and a code of ethics on earth.
I am sure my dad Tommy is particularly proud of me for putting up the “good fight” and used my resources to become a bit of an advocate for people who suffer from the disease that claimed his life at a much younger age than me.
That said, I still fully believe in our mission at TAP, and I am determined to plan a fun Christmas season with my family, but I am also keenly aware of the challenge ahead. We really don’t know what is going to happen when the gear is hooked up and chemo juices start flowing. I am not trying to present some distorted Disneyland-like view of what I am dealing with, not at all. There is real pain involved and that’s why if I get a yen for an ice cream cone, then I go get one.
No longer do I need an excuse to feed my childhood whims, whether it is collecting vinyl from 80’s artists like Joan Jett, Queen and Rush or enjoying a nice chocolate from La Bonbonnière in Martinez, I allow myself to splurge from time to time. Dealing with cancer has brought out, a bit, the child in me; I refuse to allow myself to become jaded, there is plenty of wonderment to be found when we pause long enough to acknowledge and appreciate it.
Recently, I said to a friend and colleague of mine that we all should all “drink the nectar every day that it is sweet;” that is, we all should savor every breath and treasure every moment, no matter how insignificant those things may seem at the time.
The grass is only as green as you perceive it to be.
Two weeks ago, I noticed the obituary of a man I have known since childhood. He was my age and was killed in an automobile accident. I’m quite sure that he didn’t get behind the wheel that evening with even the most fleeting thought that, in just a few moments, his life would suddenly be over.
My personal policy has not changed. I will keep learning, keep writing, keep being honest, keep informing the public and keep stirring the pot in hopes we will continue the conversation about cancer and how we might eventually conquer it.
I don’t have my wing man on this leg of the journey. My beloved wife Jeannie died suddenly on April 15; but I have a very close-knit support group, and I know that the community-at-large has my back, as they say, and that makes me a very lucky and blessed individual.
I have ever the optimist spirit in that I will make it through this with our objectives met, if that is God’s will.
Never, ever give up!
