How it started

Finding out I have cancer

Years ago, I was watching Amy Schumer on a late night talk show. She was talking about advice she'd received about comedy, I can't remember now if it was from her grandmother or someone famous, but the advice was this, "always go for the joke."

Laying on a hospital bed, in a hospital gown, in the colonoscopy prep room, I watched my efficient GI doctor type my answers into the computer. Name? DOB? What are you here for? Any pain? I was distracted by a perfect manicure on a doctor about to perform a colonoscopy. "Is that Linkin Park After Dark," I asked? (Where are my girls with the love of blackish nail polish?) She looked at me. I could see her eyes smiling above her mask. "It is. I just got them done. I've never gone this dark, but I like it." I tell her the color is great on her.

What I was actually wondering and wanting to ask was, "...um, does your nail tech know what you do for a living?" Because that would have been funnier.

Post procedure, still a bit woozy from the light anesthesia, with Billy at my side, my GI doctor and her perfect manicure were sitting in front of me on one of those round stools doctors use. "You have cancer."

Honestly, had I gone for the joke about the nail tech, telling me I had cancer as I was coming out of anesthesia would have been a pro move. But I didn't. And she wasn't joking. It was just, you have cancer. No, "we found something, we're sending it out for a biopsy and we'll call you in a week." No set up. Just a shitty punchline - colorectal cancer.

She scribbled out next steps for us to take on a sheet of paper: bloodwork, CT scan, names of surgeons and oncologists. She added her cell phone number. None of it felt reassuring.

I studied the sheet. Our only map forward. I notice on my map, a question that asked, "How well did the patient prepare?" There were three options - Excellent, Good, Poor. There was a checkmark is next to "Poor". "Um, why is there a mark next to "Poor", I feel like I did a really good job preparing." It's a statement not a question. She looks at me with a little bit of soft pity in her eyes - and says softly, "that's more about the cancer than you."

Pfft, cancer and an F? I should have gone for the joke.

In the car Billy held my hand. After a few minutes I said - "Hey, can you to make me a 'Cancer Card'? Like a real card I keep in my wallet. We can make one for you - My WIFE has cancer. For the kids - My MOM has cancer. For Steph - My BESTIE has cancer. Like a Get our of Jail Free card. We could make a whole deck. And for just those moments it could come in handy, when you could use a little help, you can pull it out. Like when you could use a little extra understanding from say, customer service, or need a legit mea culpa - ‘Sorry I was a jerk, I have cancer.’ ‘Sorry I didn’t turn in my paper on time, my mom has cancer.’ You can pull it out, slide it across the counter…and be like, ‘I wasn’t gonna pull this card but…’”

I got the bloodwork done that afternoon. I had a CT scan the following morning at 8 am, and the doctor called at 1pm that afternoon with the results. I stepped outside the cafe where my brother and I were eating lunch to take the call. "The cancer is metastatic to the liver. It means it's stage 4. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you."

Two girls, both twentyish, walking big beautiful dogs pass by. Partly down the block, they turn and come back, "Are you ok?" They are strangers. They look scared of (for?) me but they stand there anyway. I am sobbing out in the open, head in hands. One says, "I just got a strawberry muffin. I haven't eaten any of it. Would you like it?"

What do you say to someone who just found out they have stage 4 cancer? Don't ask me. My learned behavior is to go for the joke. When I see people in pain, I freeze up.

But I want to learn - I want to have the time to learn - to be someone who shows up, stands there with someone who is in pain, and offers a strawberry muffin.