Scans and Resolutions

I wrote this post, as it'll become obvious in a paragraph or two, a couple weeks back, but having just posted this one, I held it so I could reflect a bit on it.

In the interim, I had my annual scans which showed some slight lymph node growth. Key word: slight.What does that mean? We don't know. It could be the normal waxing and waning of lymph nodes; the beginning of follicular's return; the fighting off of a cold or other infection; or a combination of all of the above. From a practical standpoint, it means a visit back to Dr. L in three months and scans in six (instead of a year), and at that point, we'll determine if intervention is necessary.

It'll be just over five years since I was diagnosed when those scans occur and what intervention means has changed a lot in that time. New therapies, including the much heralded immunotherapy known as checkpoint inhibitors, are now potentially an option for follicular lymphoma, as are Rituxan, Rituxan and Lenalidomide, and others. The science continues to advance and if treatment is required, we'll deal with the options then. But scans are just a picture in time, and hopefully the picture this time just caught my lymph nodes waxing a bit. 

And now on to resolutions...

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It's New Year's morning and the house is quiet. I'm sitting in my family room, coffee at the ready, music in the background. Outside, the day is gray and bleary, a disposition that seems as much New Year's hangover as it does winter. But the gloomy weather can't cloud my outlook. I love these kind of mornings. It's my favorite time of day and not just for its soothing peacefulness, but because it's a time of new beginnings, blank slates when the day is stretched out before you, full of possibilities and opportunities. Refreshed (and properly  caffeinated), when the house is still like this, it feels like the whole world is equally so -- and waiting for me.

Today, that feeling is amplified as it's the first day of 2016, a chronological new beginning. Our New Year's celebration last night was intentionally subdued; some video games with the boys, movies with the family and Chinese food that was delivered twice - we declined the second delivery at 9:30. I've been thinking about resolutions, a subject I've written about on this blog before, here and again, here.  My main concern with resolutions is that if they're absolute ones, the minute they're broken, there is little incentive to continue. (Or as John Oliver says, they're the perfect middle ground between lying to yourself and lying to others).  And saving resolutions for January 1 creates the prospect of a pre-New Year's anti-resolution binge. 

But all that said, it's hard to deny the allure of using New Year's Day as a springboard for self-improvement. And so rather than making specific resolutions, I'm going to focus on a word and in 2016, that word is Feed. In the days, weeks and months ahead, I want to:

Feed My Mind

In a nutshell, this comes down to read more, write more. It's creating more mornings like this and more evenings as well. It's cutting down on the junk food of mental stimulation, which for me, often tends to be meaningless sports on television. I'm not suggesting I'm going to give up watching the Patriots or Chelsea, or playing Madden football on the X-box. But to watch Southern Alabama play West Georgia may not be the most nourishing of activities for me. 

Feed My Body

The six weeks or so from Thanksgiving to now is full of sugar -- from apple pie to birthday cake to Christmas cookies. And while the myth of sugar and its relation to cancer is just that -- a myth - there's a lot of science about good nutrition and its positive effects on cancer prevention, and on good health. I'm fortunately addicted to running - and I plan to nurture that addiction for many more years. It'd be good to complement that with more attention to what I'm putting in my body.

Feed My Soul

How do you feed your soul? It starts, for me, by feeding your mind. For me, a well-nourished mind creates an environment more conducive to happiness, and, well, peacefulness. And in that state, I'm more able to connect, more ready to deal with the uncertainties, more prepared to quell anxieties, more willing to accept imperfections in others and myself, and more ready to be in the moment.  

Feed My Family 

It's hard to believe but I have less than four years of having Matthew in my daily life. Less than seven for Noah. That's a short stretch of time. I want to be sure that I give them the best of me. As much as my resolutions above are for me, I know that if I really want to be the best dad and husband, it will happen much more readily if my mind, body and soul have been well-fed.

Here's to a filling 2016.

--michael

Does Cancer Make You a Better Person?

Fernando Morales is a cool kid. He's a now 18-year old kid who was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma in 2011.

We featured his story on the Dana-Farber blog  more than a year ago as part of pediatric cancer awareness month, and then this past August, he appeared in the NESN/WEEI JImmy Fund Radiothon.  In the clip, he says with full assuredness that cancer's "brought out the best in me" 

I first saw that clip as part of this video  (Fernando is at about 1:40)  back in September and that has stayed in my head.

Cancer brought out the best in me.

Can I say the same? 

For the last week or so I've been mentally writing a post that I was preparing to call: 10 Ways Cancer's Made Me a Better Person. As I wrestled with that list, the idea  migrated to Five Ways Cancer's Made Me a Better Person. That then  devolved to the current question: Has Cancer Made Me a Better Person?  

Has it?

While I've never heard anyone say they were glad they were diagnosed with cancer, I've heard patients express sentiments similar to Fernando's. The underlying theme is the oft-repeated cliche: Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. People talk about how they are stronger, more grateful, more aware, more thankful, even calmer in spite of the anxiety that cancer can provoke. 

But a better person?  Hard to say. Cancer has made me better at my job; I came back to my role at Dana-Farber with a better understanding of what and how to talk about cancer. But at the same time, it's made me more intolerant of people I work with who don't give their full effort. Is that growing intolerance due to cancer, too,  or am I just getting older? 

When I was going through chemo, every fourth week, I was tired and irritable -- probably hard to convince my family that I was a better person for those six months. Still, there's something nagging at my conscience that makes me feel like I'm wiser, more aware, more grateful. Do I live every moment to the fullest? Nah. Do I still get irritated at petty things? Yep. Am I the best evolution of myself? Not yet.

But in the end, what cancer's made me do is think, and write --  which for me is often one and the same. I've realized a while ago that writing for me is often how I think best. It -- writing, not cancer -- is a journey for me into self-awareness, almost a meditative state. And cancer's taken me deeper and more often into that place of self-awareness because it's made me write more often.  Part of why I wrestle with the notion of whether cancer's made me a better person is that by making that claim, I would also need to cede to the notion that cancer has fundamentally changed me -- that I'm not the person that I was two and a half years ago. 

I don't know that I want to give cancer that much of a stake in me.  

As Fernando says in his clip, you are what you are. Cancer doesn't change that. It only amplifies it. Hopefully, the parts that it's amplified for me are the good ones.

Anger Management

I had a very distinct and clear thought as I headed into Boston on Thursday morning. I didn't want to be surrounded by cancer. I didn't want to hear from other cancer patients or  survivors; I didn't want to read fellow cancer bloggers. I just wanted a cancer holiday. 

A day off.

The problem is: I was on my way to work at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Avoiding cancer was sort of impossible. So I did the next best thing. I meditated for a few extra minutes. And by meditating, of course, I mean running. 

After a good long run along the Charles River and back past the Boston Marathon memorial, I went to work where I read about cancer survivors, edited stories about platelet donors, and talked about our content plans (which, of course, is all cancer related). It was all fine. But for the past few days I've been wondering why I had that reaction.

I was tired, sure. But there was nothing to trigger it. I'm more than three months removed from the post-chemo steroidal roller coaster; I'm feeling better than I've felt in a while; running more than I have in three years. And, through this blog and elsewhere, I've largely come to accept the cancer part of my identity. Why Thursday did I suddenly want to twist, squirm and run from it? 

My blogger friend Tara talked in a recent post about anger, and it got me thinking, I've never really been angry about my diagnosis. Anxious, scared, annoyed, sad, frustrated, defiant, grateful to an extent. All those things. But angry? Well, not at the cancer. 

Could it be that for almost two years -  through watchful waiting, scans, treatment, and now post-treatment - my anger's been like a giant pot of water on low heat, warming but never reaching full boil? That occasionally a bubble will surface in the form of a disproportionate reaction to a kid's action,  an uneven response to an argument, a lack of tolerance to an inconsiderate act? 

Could my feeling on Thursday have been a bubble -- or a warning that a full boil is on its way?

I acknowledged in my last post that anger is darkness. To be honest, I wasn't sure why I wrote that. I felt it, but I wasn't sure where it came from. And it comes from here: the shadow of cancer can be full of anger and it can cast darkness over otherwise light times. And cumulatively, with each bit of anger that surfaces, it adds to the darkness and casts a pall over life.

Life should be full of light. Life with a healthy (yes, healthy) family, complete with two good kids should be overflowing with light. With so much light that it's hard to see. When I feel a bubble rising, that's what I need to remember.

When things are going well, the remembering is easy, but when adversity -- in all its shapes and sizes -- strikes, the remembering is hard. I wrote most of this post sitting on the floor in a dark corner of a hotel room that we were calling home for a Memorial Day weekend soccer tournament. Stacy and the boys were sleeping, or attempting to do so. 

It's been a fun weekend, but it's been full of sub-optimal sleeping arrangements, sub-sub-optimal weather conditions, and a few sub-optimal games as Matty's team is playing "up" against stiffer competition. Which is all to say that I've needed both a steady stream of coffee and frequent self-reminders that life is full of light. 

--Michael