Stink Eye
Today’s story is about the worst case of stink eye I ever received from my wife. (Stink eye is when you say or do something that isn’t approved of by someone or somebody in the room or who is with you at the time.) So I had finished my chemo rounds and we were in […]
Stupid Robots
I was lying in bed one morning in the hospital and my morning pills came. The way that it worked was everyday there would be a series of bags all connected together with my name on it: the medicine, the pills in the bag, the whole nine yards. The nurse brings the pills in in […]
Going In
I wanted to relay a short story that illustrates one of our core principles. I call it get yourself together but it’s essentially gathering yourself and getting control of your thoughts so you’re in a position to be as good of a patient as you can be. It was the day after Christmas, I was […]
Principle 3: Studied Indifference
Principle 3, I call it studied indifference. What does that mean? It means that you know every single solitary thing about what is going to happen to you during every single course of treatment. It might be an operation, it might be a chemo session, it might be an MRI, bone marrow draw, take your […]
Principle 2: Advocate For Yourself
The second principle is to advocate for yourself. So what is that? It means that at every step along the way in your treatment you ask for things nicely (that is very important!) that reduces the stress or increases the comfort of your treatment. This isn’t like a limosine ride to each one of my […]
Principle 1: I call it Get Yourself Together.
What is it? It’s you taking control of your thoughts in a way that allows you to perform at optimal functioning as a cancer patient. So why is it important? If you are running around with a lot of bad thoughts in your head and you can’t get them out of your head and it […]
Surgery
I wanted to share a story of early in my whole treatment, an adventure with having T-Cell Lymphoma that illustrates a really important point. I had a tumor in the back of my leg, above my hamstring, the doctors weren’t exactly sure what it was, so they had done a needle aspiration, where basically they […]
An Insult to Dumpster Fires
I’ve got a story for you today on expectations and how sometimes things just don’t go our way. Especially as a cancer patient, managing expectations and understanding processes can be hard. And we can’t always control that! Let me tell you about The Insult to Dumpster Fires. The day had come, and it was finally […]
Were You There When It Happened?
I’d like to share a story with you today from my childhood that has a lot to do with being a better cancer patient. Every summer as a 9 or 10 year old kid, my friends and I would wake up, have breakfast at home, and then get on our bikes and go. We’d all […]
