[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts. My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.]
I was staring out the jeep's window watching stalks of sugar cane dance in the wind in fields we passed and I wondered if my ancestors had harvested sugar cane or cotton in those same fields. It was a balmy day in the small central Louisiana town where my father was born and spent the first decades of his life and I was leaving his memorial service. Driving was my friend "Handsome" Bill. A friend and I call him that because he bears a bit of a resemblance to tv/movie actor Jon Hamm who played Don Draper on the show "Mad Men." Our inside joke being "Hey Bill, when are you going to introduce me to Joan from your office?"
After going public with my diagnosis I learned some hard lessons, among them was that there are certain people who hear the word "cancer" and immediately presume that the person with it is on borrowed time. Cancer in the minds of many is effectively a death sentence. 1/3 of the people whom I thought were friends disappeared. I would later learn that some simply didn't know what to say so they said nothing and others simply left. I reached out to a former lover and told her of my diagnosis and she said: "Well...good luck with that." A few weeks later she called to apologize and said that she'd lost her mother to cancer when she was growing up in Detroit and couldn't handle the thought of losing someone else. She then quietly vanished.
A gorgeous, foul mouthed, buxom, small town blonde I know from California chewed my ass for NOT telling her before I told everyone else. I apologized to her for my being chickenshit in thinking for a second that she wouldn't have been at my side. A group of my female friends who were in their own battles with breast & pancreatic cancer reached out. and became an online support group whom I lovingly called and still call the "Bad Bytches". A "Bad Bytch" can withstand anything and if they're on your side your odds just went up.
Then there was "Handsome" Bill. Bill had been the Veterans Counselor at my college. An ex army sergeant who played ball while we were working on the degrees Uncle Sam told us we needed and was an all around decent guy. Upon learning of my health concerns Bill called and said: "Man if you need anything. I'm here." It's been my experience that people oft say that but seldom mean it.
I can't say that fall of 2021 was the worst year of my life as I haven't lived my entire life yet, but it was miserable. I had a procedure that made going to the bathroom a miserable chore. The woman who had been by my side had died of the Corona virus within days of being admitted to a hospital and a week later my father died. Because of Covid protocols and because I wasn't a blood relative I couldn't be at her side in the hospital when she died. Out of respect for her memory and her family's privacy I won't say the name of the wonderful woman I lost but will say this. She saved my life. A routine physical indicated an elevated PSA. Let me explain for those unfamiliar with the male urinary tract. Men have a gland called a prostate. it's normally slightly larger than a walnut and is directly beneath a man's bladder and the base of his penis. Canals flow through it which regulate the flow of his urine and well, let's call them male "fluids" during sex. When it becomes inflamed or enlarged it starts to produce certain chemicals or antigens specific only to the prostate which are detectable via a blood test. My PSA was high and my doctor encouraged me to get a biopsy. I was reluctant until the now late girlfriend convinced me to get a biopsy and in doing so sent me upon my cancer odyssey. Again, she saved my life.
One of the things about the cancer journey that doctors (well at least not our compassionate friends in urology) don't tell you is that depression is a good part of what you'll be dealing with. I was already depressed when a faceless nurse told me over the phone that the woman I cared for didn't make it and less than 10 days later my mother informed me that my father who had been suffering from dementia for the last 4 years had finally been released from the prison that his body had become. Dad's last wish was to be cremated and enshrined in a mausoleum in his hometown. Upon being told of this by my older sister who had been his caretaker I actually laughed. Dad always saw himself as larger than life and his wanting a big granite monument to himself seemed in keeping with how he'd lived. "Dad was dad." as I liked to tell my mother.
On learning that I was going to Louisiana for dad's farewell "Handsome" Bill volunteered to drive from his home in Austin to pick me up and bring me to dad's funeral hundreds of miles away in another state which is how I found myself in the passenger seat of a large jeep staring at a field of sugarcane on our way out of the place I frequently refer to as the "ancestral homeland". Leaving dad's final resting place meant taking a four lane blacktop back to Interstate 10. We were maybe half a mile away from the interstate when Bill broke the silence with "What's your favorite coffee brother?" I give him a confused look and answer "Cafe Du Monde." He smiles not taking his eyes off the road and continued "We're coming up on I-10. Now IF we take a right we can be back in Houston in a couple of hours and this journey will be at an end...OR" he said "we can take a LEFT and in an hour and a half we can be in New Orleans AT the Cafe Du Monde" drinking your favorite coffee and enjoying a beignet." I sat there in disbelief. "The decision is yours. We take a right we're on our way home, we take a left and years from now. you'll be old and grey and in a nursing home telling the story about how you and. your pal Bill went to New Orleans...for a cup of coffee."
At that moment I realized that despite the miserable things 2021 had heaped upon me, there were still wonderful people in the world including one of whom who had sacrificed an entire Saturday to drive nearly 1000 miles in a day so that his basket case of a college bud could say goodbye to his father. There are points in life when playing it safe is the way to go, when one must ignore Robert Frost's advice to take the road less traveled and to stay on the well worn path, but at that moment my friend had emboldened me to "carpe diem" (seize the day) and before we made it to the traffic light which directed us to the interstate and proclaimed "I guess we're taking a left."
We made it to New Orleans enjoyed COLD beignets and excellent coffee at Cafe Du Monde while a few charming college girls flirted with us. We were looking pretty good in our suits. Maybe they were just flirting with Bill and I was convincing myself they were flirting with both of us. Who knows. I even bought a can of their famous French Roast (which I still have) and we drove back at dusk and talked about life, the universe and everything. Along with dancing on a J-Rail platform on Christmas Eve in Akihabara in Tokyo with my loving adopted big sister Mami, the detour on the trip home from saying goodbye to dad will forever be one of my favorite memories and I can thank "Handsome" Bill for that and yes ladies he's single.
The handsome chump was right, I still regale people telling them about the time "[Me] and [my] pal Bill went to New Orleans just to get a cup of coffee."And for that I'm eternally grateful.
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