The Long View

Every morning when I get to work, I write out a list of the things I need and want to do for the day. The list is always long. On it, it has O'Melveny work and meetings, daily fitness goals, Foundation brainstorming, calls with newly diagnosed patients or their spouses/children/etc., lunch and dinner plans, blog post ideas, and many, many other things. I tear through the list, day after day, happily attacking each task until the list is just a series of crossed out items. At the end of the day, I take a second to reflect, realizing that I've accomplished a serious amount of stuff. More importantly, though, I reflect on whether my day was truly valuable to myself and others -- did I connect with people, show my friends and family and colleagues that I love them, do my work with creativity and passion, take care of my body, make time to have fun? The answer is usually yes, but I still like to check. Then, I give thanks for the fact that I'm here, so alive and so well, and that I'm able to do exactly what I set out to do without physical limitations that hamstring so many people with cancer. If you wanted to know what goes on in the mind of WunderGlo on a daily basis, you just got it. It's all part of a larger goal. A much, much larger goal.

When you're told that your life is in jeopardy and could be ending soon, you start to think about the purpose of your life...what you want that purpose to be. Almost two years ago, cancer forced me to take the long view, and I'm not talking the 5-year-career-plan long view. I'm talking about the looooong view. As in, when I'm dead and gone -- whenever that may be (later rather than sooner, of course) -- what will be my legacy? When you think of your life in terms of your legacy, you've pretty much got the longest long view possible, since it extends way into the future to when you're no longer alive and able to shape that legacy. Loooooong view.

There are plenty of things I want to be remembered by, but the easiest and simplest way to explain my goal for my legacy is this: I want people to know that I lived. I want the world to know that I lived. I want to make that kind of an impact where the fact of my existence on this earth is known by people, and not just the people who know me personally. I'm talking serious impact here. I'm talking about making a profound difference by my efforts, my thoughts, my relationships and by the sum total of all the breaths I took while roaming around this planet.

It's a pretty big goal, but it's mine and it always has been, even before my diagnosis. So every day, I get up energized to tackle the big goal. I wake up inspired -- by the people and places I've loved and those I've yet to love, by the challenges of the day and of my diagnosis, by the beauty and pain and happiness and sadness that is a part of every human experience including my own. There is just SO MUCH in this world, and I want to drink it all up and be a part of it. It seems like a lot to drink up, but I've broken it down to make it more manageable. Every moment of my life is another sip of the biggest Big Gulp you've ever seen. Every moment is an opportunity to observe, grow, change, and affect things. It doesn't matter how grand or mundane the experience is -- whether I'm getting chemo, speaking in front of 100 people, fighting traffic (and singing in the car, no doubt) on the 101 Freeway, or watching Jaws for the 73rd time. Every moment is important. List by list, task by task, experience by experience, sip by sip.

There is no "down" time or "wasted" time when you take the long view. Every second is an opportunity to get out there and shape your legacy in big and small ways.

I've endured a lot to be here right now. Scalpels, scars, serious drugs. All in hopes of keeping me alive for as long as possible. I've worked hard and many others have worked hard on my behalf to ensure this moment. Because of all that, I know how precious each moment is. I know how precious this moment is.

This moment is my opportunity to shape my legacy. And I'm taking it.

Chemo Round 33

Now that I'm comfortably settled into this bi-weekly chemo thing, I'm starting to add some things into the mix. Slowly but surely, I've been trying to make my "on chemo" weeks look a lot like my "off chemo" weeks, and with some success. The goal is to make life as normal and uninterrupted by treatment as possible. I made some big strides toward that goal this time around.

First off, I'm not a big fan of the fact that I don't work out for the Monday through Wednesday of a chemo week. I know that I need to take care of myself and conserve my energy, but I found a way to achieve that while also cutting down on down time. I hit the gym on Monday morning, before my appointment with Dr. Lenz. Basketball and swimming: a perfect way to get my mind and body right for the challenge ahead. I wondered if I'd feel more tired or more energetic from my morning romp, and the verdict is in: I felt more energized. My body is a little champ.

Next, I focused again on hydration. Water, coconut water, herbal tea, and -- most deliciously -- the juiciest fruit I could find. Peaches, pluots, pears...pretty much any fruit starting with a "p," really. When you're dealing with chemo, some foods don't sound too appetizing. Many don't. For me, anything cold and refreshing always hits the spot, and the juicy summer fruit I scarfed down fit the bill for sure. Because I stayed hydrated, I managed to stave off that chemo-induced headache that I've gotten so many times.

Finally, I did something a little risky. I bought tickets to go see one of my favorite rappers of all time, Nicki Minaj, on Wednesday night. Now, a Wednesday night for a cancer warrior who received chemo on a Monday is usually a night for sleeping and dealing with chemo side effects. My chemo Wednesdays are by no means as tough as a lot of warriors I know, but it's not like I get through them without feeling a little gross at least. There was a chance that I wouldn't be up for the concert. I knew this when I bought the tickets, but I figured that if I rested during the day, I could make it out to see my girl and her music would buoy me through the night. I was definitely right on that one. I napped on and off on Wednesday and by around 7:45pm, I was in the shower singing along with Nicki and preparing for the concert. I didn't know exactly how I'd do in terms of fatigue, but the concert was at Nokia so it wasn't like I wouldn't have a place to sit if necessary.

I didn't need to sit. From the first minute I got into the venue, I felt the energy from the music and my love for Ms. Minaj roll right over me. I waited fairly impatiently as Will and my buddy Stoney got through security, and once they were through, I took off running to our seats. As in, running headlong into the throng and only taking a few seconds to turn around and holler for my guys to catch up with me. And then we were in. Nicki was amazing, just as I knew she would be. I screamed, danced, laughed, rapped, and jumped up and down for two hours. Her dancers threw some t-shirts into the crowd, and guess who got one? Credit goes to Will's head for stopping the shirt and Stoney's quick hands for snatching it up before one of her crazed fans could gobble it up. After the show, I was still humming along and suggested we hit up a 24-hour diner for some late night grub. Vegan whole grain banana pancakes made the night complete. I slept like a baby. A very happy baby that just crushed her last round of chemo.

Note to self: plan something fun on Wednesday nights to officially shake off the chemo dust and get back into action.

And back into action I am. Back at O'Melveny, at the basketball courts, and in the pool. Because my schedule is getting a little crazy in the next couple of weeks, I got another week off chemo to allow for the travel, etc. So not only did I get through Chemo Round 33 easily, I don't have Round 34 until the end of the month. Sweet deal.

There's no telling how long I'll have to be on chemo (my CEA remained stable, by the way), but when I get through treatment like this, it doesn't much matter. I'm happy and strong, and I can't ask for anything more. Well, maybe another Nicki Minaj concert. But that's it!

The Importance of Attitude

It's not a secret for those that have followed the WunderGlo blog since the beginning: my attitude has played a major role in my survival. If there is one thing that I could point to that has gotten me through all of the physical challenges that battling Stage IV colon cancer has dealt me, I would say without hestitation that it has been my attitude, my mental and emotional and spiritual approach to battling the disease. My positive, tenacious outlook has been completely natural, a gift far greater than my physical strength and youth could ever be.

 

I realize that I'm not "normal" in the sense that fear or anxiety or sadness never entered the picture when I was first diagnosed or ever since. I simply don't feel these emotions in the cancer context. I know it's hard to believe, and many of my fellow cancer warriors out there may think I'm full of you-know-what, but I swear to you all that it's true.

 

In the place of those emotions is confidence. Sheer and unabashed confidence. The type of confidence that Michael Jordan had when he shrugged after that huge game in the 1992 NBA Finals. The kind of confidence that Jay-Z has when he says that he's the "best rapper alive." The kind of confidence that Austin Rivers had when he sunk that buzzer-beater over UNC this year (you know I had to work in a Duke basketball reference). Boldness, swagger, faith, and an unswerving belief...belief in my doctors, my treatment plan, myself, and my Creator.

I remember someone writing on my Facebook wall early on, expressing sorrow at my diagnosis. I responded: "Don't worry. I got this." I remember after my first surgery when Dr. Ramos was still shell-shocked at the amount of cancer that he'd just seen in my body. I squeezed his shoulder and told him that it was all good. I remember Dr. Genyk after this most recent surgery in January, freaked out about the disease that had lodged itself in my intestinal walls which rendered me more or less inoperable. I gave him a hug and told him that everything was going to be alright.

 

Nothing can shake my confidence. Nothing can mess with my attitude. Nothing can get in the way of my focus. Cancer is going down and I'm going to enjoy taking it down.

 

And see? Here I am, very much so alive and kicking. I'm still in treatment, but I'm handling this disease and having a great time. I could have freaked out, shut down, and let cancer do its thing. But I refused to do that. Even when the chips were down, I refused to cede one inch of mental or emotional ground to the disease. It may have been thriving in my belly, but it's never had a chance in my mind and in my heart. Even when I was the underdog, I've always been the odds-on favorite in my mind and heart.

 

So what if things didn't work out the way they have? What if I would have died quickly? What if that original prognosis of doom and gloom would've been correct? 

 

My attitude still would have made the difference between days filled with dread and days filled with joy. You, my dear readers, have been on this journey with me and you know how much fun I've had as WunderGlo. If this blog -- and my life -- would have stopped in December of 2010, or in April of 2011, or at the beginning of this year, you would have known that from the day of my diagnosis to that stopping point, I lived a happy and satisfied life. A life filled with love. A life filled with magical moments and beautiful people. You know it because it's all here on the blog. Even if I wouldn't have had quantity, I would have had quality.

 

And that's what "beating cancer" is really all about to me. Not letting the disease ruin your life or crush your spirit. It changes your life without a doubt, in big ways and small ways. It certainly has changed mine. I'm 30 years old and I'll never have children of my own unless I adopt. I'm 30 years old and I'll never hit the club, get wasted on vodka shots, and follow it with a late night cheeseburger. I'm 30 years old and I've got a plastic port in my chest and a footlong scar down my belly.

I'm 30 years old and I know that living to 50 would pretty much be a miracle.

 

But the fact that I'm here -- shooting hoops and lifting weights, running my Foundation and writing my book and working at O'Melveny, bobbing my head as I DJ a party, laughing my butt off with friends and feeling strong and happy and grateful -- is already a miracle. I'm into miracles. I like my chances. I really, really like my chances.

Because when you believe, anything can happen.

Chemo Round 32

I don’t know what my liver and kidneys are up to these days, but I’m immensely happy with them. This last round of chemo – Round 32 – was just as easy as the last several rounds, with my faithful organs pumping the chemo through my body quickly, efficiently, and without any real discomfort at all. By Wednesday afternoon, when I should normally be in bed chilling out and watching movies, I was bouncing around our kitchen making strawberry watermelon lemonade (with lemons from my own lemon tree). I fell asleep pretty early on most nights – early for me, at least, at around 10pm, but in general I felt energized and not headachy. Hey, I even had to do several hours of O'Melveny work on Tuesday and Thursday, and even lawyer work didn't give me a headache. That, my friends, is a win.

On Monday when I got chemo, I also got the results of my recent CT scan. The radiologists never actually know how to say anything nice on my report, but I compared my scan report to one a few months back, and at least three or four slightly enlarged and “suspicious” lymph nodes were no longer visible this time around. So that means we have scan-based proof that I’m beating the hell out of cancer but the radiologist who wrote the report is just too much of a negative nancy to point it out. There are only two visible and enlarged lymph nodes visible now, and they are shrinking. From my last surgery, we know that there are (or were) tiny specks of disease throughout my intestinal wall, but the CT scan doesn’t pick that up and never has. 

Bottom line is that we don’t put that much faith in the scans. They show a couple of concerning lymph nodes that are a couple of millimeters bigger than they should be and shrinking, and they don’t show anything else. They never tell the whole story. It's not a sparkling report, but I expect to never have a sparkling report from the Norris radiologists. It’s a solid CT scan. It shows we’re on the right track and that the “tumor burden” (medical lingo for “amount of cancer”) on my body is ridiculously minimal.

With CT scans that aren’t exactly insightful, how do Dr. Lenz and I really measure my progress? My blood work results…my tumor markers, and especially my CEA since the other tumor markers are in the normal range. 

So how’s the CEA? Last time, I dropped from an 8 point something to a 7.3, and this week, I busted into the 6s with a 6.9. A “normal” CEA count for someone who doesn’t have cancer is 3.8, so I’m getting awfully close to that number, and to vanquishing this idiot disease. Lenz and I won’t stop at 3.8, I’m sure – we don’t just want to beat cancer, we want to embarrass it. 

For so many, cancer shows no mercy. So in turn, and for everyone who has lost their lives to the disease or who struggles so much because of it, I’m showing cancer no mercy.

The Fleeting Beauty of Life

My heart is heavy for the victims of the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. The senseless tragedy is one of those things that tears at your heart. The sheer cruelty of such an act is hard to even wrap my head around. So many lives taken in mere moments. So much pain and anguish in the hearts of the surviving family members of the victims. It's so tragic and terrible that it almost seems like it can't be real, but it is real. 

Earlier this week, before the tragedy in Colorado, I learned that a fellow cancer warrior (who I'd never met but whose blog post I read a couple weeks ago) had passed away. Her post was so stirring and saddening at the same time. I was struck by two things about it. The first was the cross-country train trip that she never got to take because of her cancer treatment schedules and, at the end, because of her failing health. The second was how fast she went from a self-sustaining adult to bedridden and completely dependent on caretakers -- under a month's time.

Both the shooting in Aurora and the death of my fellow warrior brought home to me how precious and fleeting life is.

You know, some people say when they receive a cancer diagnosis, they feel like they have lost control of their lives. Everything gets thrown on its head and what one used to regard as a "normal" life is never the same. 

But the truth is, there's no such thing as being "in control." None of us really have control of when we die, and this thought may be disturbing to some people. The fact that our lives can be extinguished by cancer or by a madman in a movie theater could send a shiver up our spines. But it's true. Nobody knows how long we have on this earth, and when it'll be over for each of us. Death could be on each of our doorsteps in this moment or the next, or the one after that.

Here's the thing, though. There's something we do have control over...something we always, always can control. The one thing in this world that we are 100% responsible for and of which we are 100% in charge: our approach to life. Our attitude. Our outlook. And the way we approach our lives is the thing that can make or break our quality of life. We all have our individual struggles, some more dire and life-threatening than others. But the way we face up to adversity -- and equally, the way we celebrate triumph -- is the stuff that can transform who we are and how we live. 

No matter how long you live, life is short. The time we spend in this world with our loved ones could never be enough for any of us. We all want more life. Trust me, I really really want more life. But I've found that focusing on quality of life -- living healthily and happily, going after one's dreams, loving the hell out of our loved ones, being grateful for what we have, and helping others in every way we can -- is precisely what has transformed my days from great to truly sublime. So while it would be nice to live for 100 years, I know that each day I live is so full and beautiful that if I weren't to hit that 100 year mark, I would still have lived a life that I was proud of and that I thoroughly enjoyed. And that's all I can ask for, really. That's all any of us can ask for.

Nobody knows when our time will be up. In the meantime, let's live our lives with all of our hearts.

Rest in Peace, Pat Steer.

Rest in Peace to the victims of the shooting in Aurora, Colorado.