(Author’s Note: This was written over the course of several days so there may be some inconsistencies with present tense)

NED

Hi sports fans, it’s been a little bit but I’ve been thinking about this entry daily since I pressed “publish” on the last one.

I’m going to bury the lede here a little bit because we have a lot to go through, but if you’ve been on a ride at  Cancerworld you know this is an overall good update based on the title.

It’s been almost a month since my last update. I was dealing with some big feelings and preparing for the next week and the ominous first post-treatment PET scan. Life has improved a bit since then on most fronts, so forgive me while most of this is going to be in the past tense covering the month of August to this point and then wrapping up with a look toward the future. These entries aren’t going to stop; I’ve made a commitment to see this through to its natural end: either being declared “cured” in five years or my untimely death from a recurrence. Ideally the former, but, god has seen fit to continue my character development side-quests with regularity so you never know. I feel like I owe to someone that will read this in the future that just got their diagnosis and needs perspective on the complete journey.

I’m not going to belabor the PET scan’s finer points that I’ve covered in depth earlier in this tale, but at least this time I had the benefit of experience. The fasting wasn’t so bad this time around because I knew what to expect and game planned a little better, and my dad was on the ground to help me manage my energy levels by doing grandpa shit with my kids over the course of the first week of August which was a tremendous help. The first week of this month was probably the most consequential of my recovery phase in terms of discovering what my current condition actually was.

While I was slightly bummed I had to retain my chest port, it really does make all these post-treatment medical happenings a breeze. Anytime a doctor, nurse, or medical treatment facility wants to sink a line in me I don’t have to worry about PFC Fuckknuckles or 2LT Lastinnursecollege hunting for a vein in my arm like they’re chucking spears at a mouse. Just by saying, “I’d like you to access my port,” I unlock the VIP nurse treatment. I’ll be somewhat sad when I have to get rid of it next year and have to rejoin the commoners at playing blood-draw roulette in the Army hospital lab department.

I say all this because at the PET I had the radioactive serum injected right into my chest instead of the redwood gauge needle they used last time in my arm. I tell ya, the Army should look at just giving everyone a chest port while serving- it really does save time and heartache when it comes to draws, injections, and IVs.

Within a couple days the results were read by radiology and relayed to me from a nurse at my MedOnc’s office: No Evidence of Active Disease (NED in cancer shorthand). I was officially in remission. Hell yeah brother, cheers from recovery. I still had to see my RadOnc at the cancer center the next day, and the ENT a few days after that, but I didn’t have any reason to believe they’d dispute those findings even though they’d still want to each scope me just to take a look for themselves (ostensibly to train the residents).

That’s the extent of the latest formal medical news. There was no grand bell-ringing like there is after the final treatment. No congratulations, no handshakes: just a phone call from a nurse telling you the good news. My reaction was that I had no reaction. Imagine a person dryly saying, “neat,” with a straight face and no emotion and that’s basically the space where I was and largely still am. This will follow me around like a shadow for the rest of my life. I’ll get excited over getting small parts of the old me back, but overall it’s hard to get too worked up when my own body is a haunted mansion that I’m stuck inside for the next 35ish years.

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There have been tiny victories, though, shades of my old self trying to break through the fog of recovery. My taste buds and saliva/mucus glands are lagging a little bit behind where they should be, which has negative effects on my mood and appetite, but they have their moments. I was finally prescribed something for drymouth but haven’t started it yet because I wanted to see how it would impact me once the kids go back to school vs. managing new and exciting side effects while still having to solo parent them. We’ll see next week, I guess. Maybe it’s a game changer that accelerates recovery or maybe it’s another ineffective medication in a long sad line of ineffective medications during this gong show. I’m not betting the farm in either direction.

What’s even more exciting, to me, though, might seem wholly insignificant to most of the people reading this: my medical team and leadership kept their word and kept the Army out of my business. My new career manager called me this morning asking me my thoughts on a career move I was supposed to make last year but opted to push to the right so I could complete the first year of the journey where I am now. He was looking at my file and saw no flags, and no administrative or medical markers that indicated I couldn’t move or be moved. This is exciting for a couple reasons: One, if you spend too much time being flagged (marked as non-deployable or otherwise generally invalid) for medical reasons this will trigger what is called a medical separation board: where the Army brings together the best and brightest bureaucrats to determine if you are fit to continue serving. This is a perilous and stressful process if you absolutely do not want to get kicked out of the Army, which I don’t. No matter my misgivings with how things are and have been transpiring in the world since we lost Harambe, I still believe the republic is durable and the Army it’s most durable institution- one worth serving no matter how much I bitch to the contrary. I’d like to stay for the long haul, or at least until I secure a pension so I can live out my days being the yeoman farmer that Jefferson always wanted us to be. My doctors did me a solid by filing the paperwork into the medical records system, but making sure the administrative system wasn’t the wiser by not officially limiting my medical readiness (however they were, and remain, prepared to do this if my leadership ever showed a hint of interfering).

The second reason, and perhaps more importantly, my leadership actually put the “people first” mantra into practice. I was told, “Do not come back until you are healed/ready” and contrary to the normal pessimistic view many in the Army have by saying “mission firster,” no one pressured me to return or even check whatever administrative block I’d become delinquent on during my absence. No one flagged me or demanded I submit to some sort of archaic accountability procedure by shoving me into a recovery unit. If you’re a leader, take note: Your people have four to 20ish years in the Army, but they need that body until they die- act accordingly. 

My leadership elected to forgo a body in the shop and instead saw that sacrifice in an investment: “we can have a healthy person back who can contribute in some kind of way later, or we can get a broken and possibly disgruntled person now.” You’d be shocked at how many leaders get this dilemma wrong… mine didn’t. I’m grateful there are still these kinds of people leading other humans in the Army.

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The real MVPs this month were my friends and family that stepped up to help me out. When I was on my own in the time between when my mom left and the kids got here, it was pretty easy to live on this plane of reality. Sure, I had appointments, body maintenance and tasks, but largely when you’re only responsible for yourself and your body just wants to sleep all the time it’s not difficult to survive. Boring, unfulfilling, but if your only task is to heal that’s pretty much life.

Inject two small humans into the mix that depend on you to survive and that changes the calculus. My three year old son is Terminator: he cannot be bargained with, he cannot be reasoned with, and he will not stop… ever. I’m half-joking of course, but anyone with an active three year old boy knows it’s a struggle for one healthy adult to supervise him let alone adding his eight year old sister to the mix. They are the absolute light of my life, but they suck energy like a black hole. My parents, aunt and uncle, and friends deserve a lot of the credit and praise for my recovery up to this point. Without them I’d be even more of a shell of myself.

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The Long Game

So I’m in remission, what now? Welp, now we wait. There’s nothing I can “do” besides not do things that might exacerbate a recurrence or slow down recovery, like smoke (I haven’t smoked anything more than a cigar per year in years) or drink (I was sober-adjacent before cancer and even more so now). I still can’t “overdo it,” whatever the fuck that means anymore, but I’m supposed to be in some kind of semi-recovery state through May. If I’m not around 90% my old self by then apparently…something happens? I’m not sure, I’ve not broached the “what then?” with my medical team. After the first year my only (medical) objective is to survive without a recurrence for four additional years. Neat. That definitely won’t loom over me.

My remission isn’t the only long game in my life however. My career, co-parenting, and financial goals are all in “long game” status. Very few things in my life shoot dopamine into my life. The instant gratification of some big non-cancer milestone just doesn’t exist right now. Now that I’m returning to work I’m going to take a crack at getting back on the ice weekly, but at a higher-level scrimmage where I’ll probably feel like an old giraffe on ice the first few skates. Hunting? Sure, but I’m pretty sure my last name is an old German word for, “can only find animals out of season.” So while there are tons of other benefits to those two loves of mine, neither is poised to give me a big “W” anytime soon. That’s ok, I guess, but the test on my patience and discipline is constant. At least I can drink coffee again. I’ll take a small W in lieu of a larger one for now.

I have a lot more that I want to say, and have been thinking about, as I begin to start seeing my treatment and recovery phase more and more distantly, but I think I’ll push this update out and let those ideas marinate a little while longer.

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.