One Week down

Well, one week down and four to go. I’m knocking on wood as I type this, but so far I haven’t had any side effects from the radiation or the chemo. I have 23 more treatments to go and have been marking them off on the calendar as I go. I’m looking for a more emphatic way to count the days down, so if anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. My favorite suggestion so far has been to get some cheap plates and break one every day.

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I was a little nervous about riding the van to Petoskey every day due to my general dislike for public transportation. As it turns out, that fear was groundless. There are typically me and two other guys who ride down there so there’s plenty of room for everyone and really, all I do is sleep for nearly the whole ride anyway.

The rides have taught me a couple things. The first, and most important, is that, while I’m not thrilled to have been diagnosed with cancer, I am not so bad off compared to some others. Both of the guys I ride down there with have throat cancer. One seems to be fairly mild, while the other seems pretty serious. The serious one has a pretty severe rasp to his voice and wears a wrap around his throat at all times. His shirts irritate his throat and he is constantly moving his shirt away from it. I feel for the man, I really do.

Without saying a word, he is a constant reminder to me that I have nothing to complain about.

The second thing I have learned is that someone in the mini-van industry has got to step up and do something about the comfort level of the third-row seat in those things. I’ve only had to ride back there once, but that was enough. It was like sitting on a granite couch at the Flintstone residence. And while I like the two guys I ride with well enough, neither has the “assets”of a scantily clad Wilma or Betty that would take the focus off the discomfort of that seat.

I have to drive myself down there one day per week because I have to meet with my oncologist in St. Ignace after my appointment in Petoskey. I have some blood drawn and they look at the results to make sure that my cell counts are still good. On those days, my friend Erick and I have decided to eat lunch together. He teaches at Northern Michigan College in Petoskey and was just recently married. I have known Erick since my sophomore year in high school and we struck up a very solid friendship.

And to simply call it a solid friendship isn’t really fair to Erick. There was a time when he, Bob Gulick, and I were inseparable. We skipped so many days of school together and went to Traverse City for the afternoon, that I’m surprised that my mother wasn’t arrested under the truancy law. Maybe they didn’t have that then.

As with most high school friendships, time and distance have taken their toll and my relationship with Erick is no different. Marriage, kids, and demanding work schedules all have a way of forcing us to move on and to lose track of bonds that we once thought unbreakable.

I will never look at cancer as a positive, but one thing that it has done is bring me closer to some of those people from my past that I’ve been sorely missing and didn’t even realize it until their texts and phone calls of support started rolling in.

I’ll talk about Bob more in another post, he certainly deserves one of his own. (Spoiler alert: that one might be a tear-jerker).

Anyway, what I was trying to say was that how much I enjoyed having lunch with Erick and catching up. One thing about Erick that has held true for as long as I’ve known him is that he can make me laugh. Doesn’t matter what the circumstances are or how inappropriate it might be, I feel like Jimmy Fallon on Saturday Night Live when we are together, because I can’t not laugh. You have no idea what a valuable friend someone like Erick is until you come to a point when you don’t feel like laughing much, yet there you are, laughing so hard your stomach hurts and tears are running down your face.

I am very much looking forward to my lunch with Erick next week.

I know that a lot of my posts must seem like I’m simply paying homage to people who are close to me and in a sense, that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I can’t speak for everyone who has cancer with what I’m about to say, but I imagine it must hold true for most of us. When you first find out that you have it, you don’t know how bad it is. There are tests to be done and doctors to see and all that stuff takes time. During that time, you can’t help but think about things and people, present and past.

And the “what ifs.” I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s important. You think about what you’re going to do if you only have so much time left. After the obvious thoughts about my children and of course Kelly, one of the things I thought about was regretting the fact that my friends and I haven’t stayed closer since we got out of high school.

I don’t mean to gloss over my thoughts and feelings about Kelly and the kids because the first couple days of this were spent entirely on what I was going to say to them if this all went bad. Fortunately, I am in a position to be able to see and talk to the kids every day and tell them I love them as much as I want. Hearing their voices, even if it’s just on the phone, is revitalizing. Kelly…Well, Kelly knows what those couple days were like because she was right there with me. I would dedicate one of these posts to her, but it would just embarrass her and I don’t know that I’d ever stop writing. She helped me sort through it all, even if she doesn’t know that it was her influence on me that allowed me to get a grip and determine a battle plan. I tell her thank-you more than once everyday and still feel like I come up short a couple when I leave for work at night. (There are also healthy doses of “I love you,” and “Don’t boss me,” thrown in there too.)

So, before I went completely cornball on you in that last paragraph, I was talking about losing touch with some of my friends. A life-altering experience has a way of making you want to correct all the things you believe you might have done wrong in your life. My list is long and not all of them are fixable, but some definitely are, and hopefully, I’ll get the chance to take care of them.

One of my biggest faults is that I am a grudge-holder. I don’t try to do it, but I have a hard time letting things go. There is a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that makes me laugh because it’s sort of a mantra for me. In the cartoon, Calvin is recounting his day to Hobbes which includes issues with his parents, his teacher and the principal. When Hobbes questions him as to why this happened, Calvin smiles and says that with the right amount of attitude, even the simplest social interaction can be turned into an epic battle of wills.

That might not be exactly how it reads, but it’s pretty darn close, and it makes my point.

What if the reason that I’ve lost touch with some people is because I haven’t made the effort to connect or because I’ve been an idiot over something that happened months, or even years, ago? So, yeah, I’m making an effort with some of my posts to let people know what they mean to me.

Now before you think I’ve gone stark-raving feelings crazy, I should point out that there are a few exceptions to my new-found sensitivity. For example, if you have ever played for the Limberlost in the Houghton Lake Men’s Basketball League, do not read these posts with anticipation of seeing your name mentioned – because it won’t be. Likewise, to the kid who was working the public address system in Mio, Michigan the day that I gave up back-to-back home runs in a fastpitch softball game and announced to the entire complex, “Mister, Mister, kiss your sister –TWO IN A ROW!!!” You should also save your time and read elsewhere.

See? I’ve still got a little work to do in some cases.

I Will Win