Normal

Hello everyone! For being such a writer, I'm bad at blogging. I have all of these monumental thoughts that scream to be written down in a blog, I just tend to have them at red lights, while I am otherwise occupied with work, or while I would rather watch the West Wing on Netfilx. I'm sorry guys. Just being honest. I love all of you though and I appreciate that you appreciate my blog. One of the greatest things about being a writer is hearing someone else tell you that they enjoyed what you created. Even better is hearing that it somehow changed them, changed their perspectives or even affected a decision they made. So I suppose I have been denying all of us enjoyment! Jeez. I'm a jerk.

Anyways, where we stand. As I write this, I am in the midst of my fifth cycle of chemotherapy. I am so torn as to how I feel about this.

To explain, as each of us reflects on his or her own life, we can all see various phases that we have gone through over the course of our time on earth. Each one, looking back, evokes memories: sights, smells, sounds. They can seem fleeting and even silly from the cozy nook that is hindsight; they can seem epic even if they were merely the musings of an immortal youth. At the time though, regardless of what they really were, each of them at one point or another represented our normal.

That's what this has become. Normal. I know that it is not normal to have cancer; in fact the word cancer itself refers to an abnormal growth of cells in the body. What I mean is that right now, this is my life. This is my normal.

I go to the cancer center, see the doctor, have him tell me that my levels are good and that I'm trucking right along. I go to the chemo suite, get plugged up, tease the nurses, take a nap, wake up, and leave. There are also some really sexy walks to the bathroom with my IV wheely-thingy in tow included in this song and dance. No extra charge.

After chemo, it's four to five days of feeling pretty crummy and sleeping a lot. Then one day, I wake up and feel alright. Three weeks later, I do it again. It is exhausting, but I have it easy compared to many; this is what makes me feel almost guilty a lot of the time. Especially sitting in the chemo suite watching people die. There is no hyperbole in that last sentence. It is a humbling and terrifying thing. If anything it makes me want to fight for them. It makes me want to live for them.

But it also doesn't stop my stomach from turning at the mere sight of the Cancer Center. It doesn't stop my mouth from watering (the bad kind, not the good kind, you know what I mean.) if I catch my mind remembering the salty flavor of IV fluids.

Our normals often change eventually; sometimes a relationship ends, you get a new job, you make a move for family reasons.

Sometimes, you beat cancer.

I will not have another scan until about a month after my last chemotherapy. At that point, my doctors feel extremely confident that they will then be able to declare me in remission. I am no longer in pain all the time. I no longer have tumors pressing against and just generally interfering with the general operation of my organs on a day-to-day basis. I have no idea how these drugs work. I just know that they are a miracle.

Not that long ago, my Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma could easily have killed me.

It is strange because growing up I always had such a morbid fascination with dying and death. Not so much the gory details, but the mystery of it. The majority of us will never know ahead of time how or when we may die, which can make the thought of one's final moments terrifying. In contrast, I always found that idea pretty freeing. Why would you want to know ahead of time, save for the opportunity to tie up loose ends and make sure you finally got around to that blog you were going to update yesterday? I smirk as I type that, but in all seriousness: I have been faced with my own mortality, and I'm going to win for now. I will wax poetic on death in another post because I think it is one of the most beautiful things about our human condition, but I will give you this.

We are all, each and every one of us fighting something; every person you pass here or there, every driver you see on the road, your mom and dad, all of us entrenched in battles for spiritual life and death. We all need each other. Regardless of what you believe, we are all each other has on this Earth. A wise person once told me that if we all took our problems out of our pockets and laid them in a pile together for all to see, most people would dive in immediately, grab theirs and run. Just know that. We are in this together, so help one another, and the world will be better. We all share the same terrible, beautiful human existence. We will all die. I just know that I won't die from cancer. And that's pretty freaking incredible.

I have one more chemo left. Two weeks until I never have to take chemotherapy again. Yea, I know, lymphoma can come back. But that's not how I roll. I believe that 80 to 90 percent of life is fought in your mind. I know I won't get sick again. I know that I'm going to do what it is I set out to do in this life.

I'm not gonna give up. You better not either. I don't know what you are fighting, but it is not bigger than you. It is not bigger than your spirit. Whatever it is, look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you are better than this, stronger than this.

WE are stronger. In that spirit I want to continue to thank all of you for your outpouring of prayers and support. We are almost there. One more chemo! Let's do this dance.

I'm really sorry if all of these ramblings made no sense. It's late and I just started writing. I love you all.

Matt