My New Friends

The nose surgery thing was a whole different animal than the back surgery thing.

Atmosphere-wise, that is.

When I had the back done they dialed da blues up on Pandora for me. We talked about the blues as Dr. Feelgood was cutting on me. Joked around a bit.

The atmosphere was light. I was in and out in an hour.

The waiting room for the nose thing was a bit darker. The walking wounded.

When Carol and I got there, there were three people who had already been dealt with. One guy had a bandage on his nose, another on his ear and an older woman had a bandage on her ear, and her head wrapped from top to bottom, exactly like Jacob Marley in the 1984 George C.Scott version of "A Christmas Carol."

The way MOHS surgery works is the doc shaves a bit of the cancerous area off and sends it to the on-site lab to see if they got it all. Meanwhile, the patient gets wrapped up and returned to the waiting room to wait.

They tell you the wait can be up to forty minutes. I waited an hour. But they got it all on the first pass.

Anyway, if you are lucky they get it all on the first pass. If not, you go back under the knife and a little more is shaved off. And you return to the reception area. Rinse and repeat.

There are three doctors in that office all doing the same thing so victims rotate from the waiting room to surgery and back like clockwork.

It is exactly like an assembly line.

Very, very odd.

When I first arrived there were some awkward hellos.

When I walked back into the room, bandaged up after Pass #1 there was instantaneous camaraderie.

And it was genuine.

Typical comments - "If you think I look bad you should see the other guy." But the emotion was real.

We sat there looking like mutant freaks on display, which I'm sure is how we looked to our handlers - the people who drove us there.

But between us there was an honest connection; even unspoken, you could feel it. It was palpable.

After an hour wait, they called me back in to tell me the doc had gotten all the cancer and that I was done.

The feeling of relief that washed over me buckled my knees.

Checked out at the reception area and walked back into the waiting area. My friends asked how it went and I told them I was done. One and done.

They congratulated me. Sincerely.

Carol and I were there for 2 and 1/2 hours that morning. In that time frame there were five of us getting sliced up. Two of us were one and done; the other three were repeat performers - I'll never know how many more indignities they had to endure.

I felt guilty as I was leaving. Genuinely guilty. The other one and done had already left.

I said good bye and good luck to each of the remaining three, they did the same to me. A little conversation. Smiles all around.

Smiles. Shared between people diagnosed with and operated on because of cancer. Smiles between people bandaged up like we had been to war or in a fight.

Extraordinary.

I will never forget that experience. To make such an intense connection with complete strangers, vulnerable humans all, in such a short time.

I wish them all well.

The Incredible Lightness of Being

Had my nosed hacked up on Tuesday by a Doctor Dude in Manchester.

Had a follow up check up yesterday in Concord with the Dr. Feelgood who sliced up my back. Did not know what to expect.

I was lucky. They got all the cancer out of my nose on the first pass. But they left the wound open, bandaged it up like crazy so my man in Concord could decide what was next.

I was expecting that he would have to close it up somehow. Maybe talk about or perform plastic surgery, which he told me was possible at the beginning of all this. I was expecting pain and discomfort.

The doc carefully unwrapped the massive bandage on my nose with great seriousness - he did not know how much damage had been done and I think the size of the bandage freaked him out. I made a couple of wise ass comments and he did not even respond.

He looked at the wound, laughed a little bit and then said "Did you piss somebody off in Manchester?" I love this guy. Then he really started laughing, grabbed a mirror as he laughed and told me to look at the relatively small wound that had been wrapped in a super sized bandage.

We laughed together.

It was a funny moment. He figured that the woman who wrapped me up was so afraid of infection that she engaged in overkill.

He gave me three options.

One - put a band aid and a little Vaseline on it and let it heal. This would leave a scar; an indentation. Two - undergo low level surgery that would partially repair my look. Three - undergo extensive surgery that would make my nose as beautiful as it was originally.

I chose option #1. I don't give a shit what I look like. I am done with slicing and dicing.

All that is left with the nose is for me to go back in two weeks to check the healing progress and two weeks after that again.

I begin the extended love affair with a dermatologist in November.

I walked out of that office with a small band aid on my nose and my head in a psychedelic haze. Did not expect to be done yesterday. I was blown away. I was floating.

I felt light. I felt relieved. I felt reprieved. I felt so good, so happy that I did not know what to do about it.

This is a kind of happiness no one should ever have to experience given what it was a reaction to, but it just felt so goddamn good.

Had myself a crazy celebration. Bought a sub on the way home - large Italian, tomato, onions, pickles, mayo. When I got home I ate it, drank a beer and had a short whiskey to toast myself.

Sat down in my recliner watched a movie - "Inside Llewyn Davis" - with Maka in my lap. Part way through the movie Lakota joined us and I had them both in my lap.

I am a real wild man these days.

For the past month I have been afraid. Stressed. Exhausted. In pain and uncomfortable. My body has been sliced up and stitched up and bandaged up; I have gobbled pills and gritted my teeth.

The news came out of nowhere and turned my life and my mind upside down.

Just as suddenly, it was over. Relatively.

I am sitting here absorbing this new reality.

My mind has been scrambled and it is busily rearranging itself.

With a weight and seriousness and depth of meaning like never before, today is truly the first day of the rest of my life.

Local Boy Makes Good

I have a massive bandage on my nose.

Reminds me of Jack Nicholson in "Chinatown".

I am cool.

A Lesson I Need To Learn Immediately

"Worry robs us of our faith and our joy and gives us nothing in return."

From "Feast Day of Fools" by James Lee Burke

Reality Check

"Maybe this wasn't a good way to think, he told himself, but when you heard the clock ticking in your life, there was no worse disservice you could do to yourself than to entertain a lie. Death was bad only when you had to face it knowing that you had failed to live during the time allowed to you, or that you had lied to yourself about the realities of the world or willingly listened to the lies of others."

From "Feast Day of Fools" by James Lee Burke

Incidental Occurrences That Rip Your Mind Apart

Late in August I came home after a simple, enjoyable night spent in the company of my son and my brother, to be informed by my wife that I had cancer.

Melanoma.

A short time afterwards we were watching an episode of "Vice Principals." Bill Murray plays the principal of a high school whose wife is dying from cancer.

There is a scene where she and Bill are sitting on a stage at a school function. She is in a wheelchair and does not look very good. One character asks another what she is dying from.

The character replies "melanoma."

Carol and I laughed it off at the time but it stuck in my head. Way back deep in the dark cave of my thoughts.

This morning I was reading "Feast Day of Fools" by James Lee Burke. One character tells another that he is dying. Has three months to live. "I'm terminal. I used to smoke three packs a day. Five years ago I quit and thought I'd gotten a free pass. I went in for a blister on my nose last week, and the doc said it was already in my liver and pancreas and had reached the brain."

I am going to have cancer shaved off my nose tomorrow morning.

These coincidences mean nothing. And they mean everything.

I read another thirty or forty pages. When I quit there was a bit of a meltdown. Rapid breathing, a tear or two.

All indicators are positive for what I am going through. Cancer on training wheels. I keep deferring to people in my family who have waged war against cancer, fought with everything they had or have.

Still, I am frightened. I have had only a short time to deal with this. My body was sliced up on 09/01; it will be sliced up again tomorrow.

I know in my heart that when you come right down to it the medical community knows nothing about the true state of my health. Or anybody else's.

I am talking about the deep down, what is really going on inside type of stuff.

Last week two people close to my brother died. Two. In one week.

The wife of a guy my brother plays baseball with died of a heart attack while walking herself to a close-by hospital to get checked out for an asthma attack she was having.

She was 34 years old. She was an exercise freak and a health food devotee.

A couple of days later, a guy on my brothers baseball team scored a run at the plate, doubled over at the dugout because he couldn't breathe and collapsed and died of a heart attack.

He was 58 or 59. He had recently had a physical. He was a close friend of my brother's.

If I do not react in an appropriate way to the health news I recently received I am a fucking idiot.

I could be alive for thirty more years. I could only have a handful left.

I don't know; the doctors don't know.

I have to change my life.

I am as afraid that I don't have the guts to do that as I am of the cancer.

The strangest things pop into your head at times like this.

Many years ago we were sitting in the parking lot of the NH Motor Speedway prior to a race. I was joking around with Sarge. I don't remember the context but I said something like "Well then, I will have to beat you up."

He replied "You'll have to grow a set of balls first."

It was all said in jest, we both laughed, but there was deep truth in those words.

I regret my life. Deeply. It is not my own. I look at it as if it was a joke. I was an accountant for most of my life.

Are you fucking kidding me?

That is irrelevant. No one to blame but myself. I could have changed things at any point down the road but I did not.

And I still have time.

What I regret more are the meaningful things. Keith lives 30 minutes away from me, Craig 45.

I go weeks, sometimes months without seeing them.

Because I don't make the effort. Their lives are busier than mine; it is on me. Christ, Emily's parents see Keith and Emily much more often than Carol and I do and they live hundreds of miles away.

Because they make the effort.

We get together formally, birthdays, holidays, and I worship those get togethers. But I have always wanted to have a more informal relationship with my sons. And with Emily and Karen, who I love and respect deeply.

Christ, four days a week I work five minutes down the road from Keith and Emily and I never stop in.

Carol and I have been married for thirty eight years. I have hurt her, she has hurt me. We came very close to losing everything at one point in our lives.

We are both 62 and dreaming about full retirement. A very unsettled time in our life.

Still, I believe that we love each other. Love each other in the meaningful sense of the word; love each other in the sharing of entire lives kind of way.

I love and respect my brother. Deeply. I see him as the intelligent one and the one with the wicked wit. I see him as a fighter, I see him as a success.

I don't see him nearly enough and his life has had deep pain in it. The worst.

I am not here to make promises today. My mind has been overwhelmed with thoughts lately. My emotions are running the show.

I had to let it out.

Nice

I hate the word nice.

It is weak. Packs no punch.

However I have no choice, I am forced to use the word to describe the night Carol & I had last night. There is no way around it.

We had a nice night.

I am going down to Manchester Tuesday morning to step back in the ring for Round #2 of the cancer chronicles. Gonna shave some cancer off my nose.

Actually, we are going. It was recommended that I be chauffeured.

Which seems a little strange because I was told I could be on my own with the back thing. Doc Feelgood said I could rise up off the table after surgery like Jesus, walk out to The Big Ride and drive myself home.

That surgery seemed to be a bigger deal than the nose but what the hell do I know. I have been surprised more than once over the past month.

I did not drive that day and in hindsight I am glad I didn't. Carol chauffeured me.

Anyway we had no idea where we are going on Tuesday so we decided to take a reconnaissance drive yesterday.

Decided to slip in a trip to the movies while we were on the road.

Went to see "The Magnificent 7" in IMAX.

Soooooooooooooooo we found the location of Dr. Feelgood #2 and then motored south to the massive cinema complex in Hooksett. Got there around 5:30 and really didn't have time to go to a real restaurant.

So we went to McDonald's.

Like a teenage couple. McDonald's and a movie. Only we are both 62.

We had such a comfortable conversation at McDonald's. Talking about how Carol's parents raised her and how my parents raised me. Talking about how we raised Keith & Craig. Reminiscing over many moments in the life we shared and continue to share with Keith & Craig. Talking about our own siblings.

It was a conversation about life. Our life. And we smiled and laughed a lot.

It felt so good and so real and so natural. Consequence of 38 years living together.

Got to the movie early, which I felt was important. I am a master planner. A real thinker.

The movie opened on Thursday, so I was worried that it might sell out or that we would not be able to sit together.

There were no more than 15 or 20 people in the theater. That is not an exaggeration. The place was empty.

Bear in mind, this is an IMAX theater. Seats about 100,000 people.

Doesn't matter. We dug the hell out of the movie. It was spectacular.

Drove home, watched Law & Order, watched a little Saturday Night Live and the night was over.

The old man in me is tempted to rave on about what the night cost. $53. For McDonald's and a movie and popcorn.

The romantic in me, the sensitive guy, recognizes the night for what it was.

A simple night spent together in love and comfort and fond memories. The perfect realization of a lifetime spent together.

A nice night.