Woo-woo shit.

There are going to be topics we circle back and revisit out of order from time to time, because when you don’t decide to write a cancer blog until eight weeks after first detection, things are lost in the whirlwind of activity that happens during the opening salvo of medical intervention.

Rewind to 1 February. In Ireland, and places with other strong Irish-Catholic communities, there is the “St. Brigid’s Eve” tradition.

“St. Brigid’s Eve, celebrated on the night of February 1st, which is the eve of the Feast of St. Brigid. In Irish folklore, St. Brigid is considered one of the patron saints of Ireland, and her feast day marks the beginning of spring and the Celtic festival of Imbolc, which celebrates the coming of the lighter, warmer days.

One of the customs associated with St. Brigid’s Eve involves hanging cloth or rags on a tree branch or a bush. This is often done as part of a ritual to honor the saint and invoke her blessings for the year ahead. The act of hanging the cloth is meant to symbolize the blessing of the home and protection from illness and misfortune, as well as a way of asking for a bountiful year.

St. Brigid herself is often associated with healing and fertility, so people believed that by hanging cloth on the branch, they were invoking her powers for good health and protection. In some variations of the custom, people also would tie pieces of cloth to the branches and leave them for the night.” -ChatGPT

One such place that this tradition is celebrated is Newfoundland, Canada, where Addison is from. We were walking into my house the evening prior to the Vancouver visit and she said, “Shit, I almost forgot.” and proceeded to take off her cloth wristband and tie it to one of the shrubs in front of my house.

Me, puzzled, “What are you doing?”

“It’s Saint Brigid’s Day, we are going to leave it on this bush tonight and in the morning you are going to wear it for the rest of the year to bring you healing. It’s Newfie Irish-Catholic woo-woo shit,” she said, matter of factly.

In the morning, as we headed out the door to go on our trip, she took it off the shrub and put it on my wrist.  I figured at this point I’d take all the help I can get and, if nothing else, it would make her feel better.

Fast forward a day. 3 February was like most other Mondays where I roll into the office and get hammering on whatever task I was dealt for the week. My boss had already begun to slide things off of my plate and had all but cancelled my two-week trip overseas happening later in the month, so my task list was shrinking with every new piece of medical information coming to me. I kept chipping away at my inbox when I got a text from my mom: a link to some sort of Catholic site describing Saint Blaise Day.

Mind you, just prior I’d found out my official diagnosis and biopsy results, so I’m fully invested in getting as much help from every dimension possible, including the spiritual one. I clicked the link and uttered, “No fuckin’ shit?” when I noticed that this day, 3 February, was Saint Blaise’s Day.

“St. Blaise’s Day is celebrated on February 3rd and honors St. Blaise, an early Christian bishop and martyr who is the patron saint of throat ailments. He is also associated with protection from diseases of the throat, and his feast day is marked by a special blessing known as the Blessing of the Throats.” -ChatGPT

I knew what I had to do: I had to embrace the woo-woo and unknown mysteries of the universe. The coincidence was too real for me at this point, I was on a mission from God.

I walked to the staff duty desk and asked where the command Chaplain’s office was. It was just across the parking lot in the basement of another building. Much of the “Special Staff” in my unit exist in such circumstances, and the man with the connection to The Man was apparently no different in this regard. The only Chaplain in the office that late morning was The Command Chaplain. As in, a full-bird Colonel, but he’s a Chaplain, and like most, very affable despite our rank disparity.

I knocked, and with a big smile he welcomed me into his office.  I gave him the elevator speech about my cancer, the holiday, and that I needed to find a Catholic Chaplain by close of business (COB) today.

Understanding the serendipity of this encounter, COL Chaplain went to work tracking down a Catholic Chaplain. About an hour later I get a text from an unsaved number:

“Kyle, this is Father Houseman, COL Chaplain sent me your number. I’m sorry to hear about your cancer! What times work best to meet?”

God may not always be responsive, but his staff sure is. We worked out a time to meet that afternoon to perform the blessing at the Main Post Chapel.

Something God’s staff also does particularly well is physical security. Every fucking door on that chapel was locked at 1630. I found a door that was open in the office wing of the chapel, however, and roamed the halls of the empty wing of God’s cubicle farm before finding the main hall with the rows of pews, pulpit, altar, the whole shebang.  It was eerily quiet. I expected my presence would draw out Arnold Scwarzenegger like it was the last scene from End of Days.

See, I’ve always, at best, had a rocky relationship with the almighty. Unknowable things have never really sat right with me and I always treated the religion with a high degree of suspicion. Like, if this dude really exists why doesn’t he show himself? What is he hiding? What’s he have to lose by making it obvious to us that he exists? This skepticism has served me generally well in life, but the older I get the less other explanations previously thought more plausible by my scientific mind start to make sense. My relationship with spiritual things now can best be described as, “Hey, listen, there are a lot of things we can’t explain, will likely never be able to explain, and however you interpret that is fine so long as you aren’t infringing on the rights of others to believe what they like.” That’s how I’ve sort of found peace and balance with what some call spirituality.

I digress. Father Houseman entered the building from… somewhere, perhaps he materialized like the nun from Blues Brothers; I’m not sure- I didn’t ask how he got in. I approached him and we got right to chatting. One of the first things I noticed was his age: He was incredibly young. Easily ten years my junior. It was sort of odd calling this man Father, but I understood the assignment.

He pulled out the candles, the appropriate literature, and uniform items needed to make St. Blaise’s throat blessing a “Go” at this station. We got down to business and he instructed me on when I needed to speak and what I needed to say. He completed the ritual and we chatted some more. I walked out of the chapel feeling like I did one of the few things I could do without the help of a doctor to fight this thing: I enlisted the entire might of the Roman Catholic church through St. Brigid and St. Blaise. Fuck yeah, winning.

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The Tube.

Continuing from the end of the last entry, MAJ Rafferty wasn’t quite done grinding my view of the phrase “quality of life” into dust by explaining the back-end of long term consequences of the chemo & radiation tag team.

“So, because we don’t like to operate on you while you’re being treated due to the risk of bleeding, we’re recommending you get your chemo port and feeding tube placed immediately,” he said, looking at me to gauge my response.

My. WHAT?

Because my throat is going to turn into a fiery red hellscape of pain and misery, they were concerned I’d stop being able to eat by mouth and lose a tremendous amount of weight, an unhealthy, dangerous amount that would significantly lengthen recovery. A feeding tube, pre-installed, would nip this in the bud by cutting out the middleman (my mouth/throat) and giving me life while simultaneously destroying my will to live, because if you are 38 years old with a feeding tube, the plan you had for your life has gone horribly wrong.

They explained the feeding tube was only temporary, probably, and I’d be able to get it removed early in recovery if I managed to maintain my weight through and after treatment.

Alright boys, fucking bet, challenge accepted. Feeding tube is up there with a colostomy bag on the checklist of shit-gone-wrong that would cause me to volunteer for the Ukrainian Army. I will maintain my weight so hard.

I walked out of that meeting with a parade of referrals to schedule, and a horrifying outlook on life. Life before, during, and after treatment was going to be radically different and I had four days to live my best life.

I spent three hours of that time wandering around the hospital scheduling referrals. See, when you are an active duty cancer patient, appointment hotlines and long wait times don’t exist. You can walk into any office, announce you have cancer, and shit all over the plebs with routine illnesses. You’re the king shit of hospital mountain. It was so backwards from anything I’ve experienced with medical scheduling in my entire military career up to this point, and it was glorious.

I went back to the office after that because my coworkers had, to my complete pretend-surprise, barfed Party City all over my desk and coaxed me back into the office long enough to sing happy birthday to me and feed me cake. I don’t even like cake or most baked goods, but it’s bulking season, remember? They’re good people, so I played my part with a smile, even though my soul had been absolutely dismantled that morning after the Tumor Board.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. My birthday was also that weekend. Whoo, party. #lastbirthday?

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Like a sheet of glass.

After leaving the office party, I hit the road to get my kids. I travel about 700 miles per week, almost every week, to get them from their mother in Oregon. Why this is the arrangement is for another day, but we tolerate it pretty well, so it is what it is for now.

My tube and port installation was scheduled for the following Tuesday morning, 11 February, so I knew this would be the last of the fully-normal Dad time they’d be getting. 

As I drove down Friday I spoke with my mom on the phone, who is another hero of this story up to this point. She said she was coming out to take care of me and help with the kids during my treatment, the only question was when she was coming out.  We deliberated and decided it would be best if she flew in on Sunday or Monday so she could join me for the installation, recovery, and battery of pre-treatment appointments leading up to that time. She booked a one way flight to Portland on Sunday evening so I could get her on my way back to Washington.

The kids were still blissfully unaware of anything at this point, not dads illness, not grandma spending a few months with him, nothing. At the time of this writing, they still don’t, but that time is quickly approaching.

I was able to get them an hour earlier than normal so we got home in time to do their normal bedtime routine and prepare for the next day. On Saturdays my daughter has hockey, so we woke up and went out to that as we always do.

By this point the word was out to my extended circles. I was wrangling my toddler son, talking with friends about my condition, and watching my daughter play (watching her skate out there is the joy of my life). I was starting to experience some fatigue talking about it again, for what felt like the 50th time in two days, so I started to isolate myself in the corner of the rink to watch my daughter. 

Curiosity and concern are very natural human conditions, so I don’t blame the people close to me for wanting to know more, but it does get taxing having to have these conversations over and over again after having just lived them. Now I live in this weird space of, “how can I show this person I appreciate their concern without having to make this stump speech again?”

After getting home my daughter baked some cookies, as has sort of been a little tradition of ours every few weeks, and we played the tic-tac-toe bean bag toss game in the living room. Some friends of ours hosted us for an hour or so that afternoon so I could get the kids some outside-the-house social interaction, and since these friends had already heard the cancer spiel and knew I wouldn’t talk about it in front of the kids, I knew that was a space of time I was safe from having to think too much about it.

Me and the ex agreed to meet outside PDX at a later time so the kids could see Grandma for a little bit and I’d be able to spend some quality time with them on a Sunday at my place beforehand. See, Sundays are normally a, “ok, get up, eat, get ready, go somewhere like a playground for an hour or two, then hit the road by lunch” routine, so it was nice to be able to relax and eat lunch at our house here before getting on the road.

The kids were elated to see Grandma for the first time since the summer, when she stayed with us for two weeks to help me not have to find childcare for my block of summer break visitation. We wandered around the Target right outside PDX for almost an hour waiting for their mom and it was relatively stress free- it was Super Bowl Sunday and Target was a ghost town. I could let them run wild in the store and not be that parent because there was simply no one else there to be bothered by it.

I knew I had less than 48 hours of freedom when we returned to my house on Sunday evening, and I intended to do the one thing I knew I’d miss doing the most: play hockey.  I found that my local rink would be having a “stick and puck” (open skate specifically for hockey players) session Monday morning and I hit up my team’s group chat asking who was in for the “last skate” before I started treatment. In reality this will likely have been my last skate until well after recovery begins due to the ramifications of this specific treatment regimen.

Monday morning rolled around and I drank my last cup of coffee for a few days, grabbed my bag, my sticks, and went to the rink. Four of my teammates showed up and something fantastic happened: No one else was there. We had the whole sheet to ourselves. What’s more, the rink staff actually cut the ice the night prior. It was smooth as glass and ready to be carved up. No divots, no cracks, no grooves in sight.

Me and the boys dumped a crate of pucks and began fucking around with skating, shooting, handling, and eventually they started to indulge me by letting me 1 v 1 and 3 v 2 them on defense (I primarily play defense). It was going to be the best hour of my week, which sounds great… but the week had just started.

The views and opinions presented herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Army.