February 4 is World Cancer Awareness Day

Take a look at this team. They are really on it. Click the image for link.

You may ask yourself, now, why would he say that? It certainly could apply to any human, anywhere. There are 340 activities around the world for Cancer Day. So, it must be happening, you know, out there somewhere.

Hubris leads to nemesis. Cancer, hunger, war, disease, and crime all happen. It must happen because it’s all over the news. It’s hard to connect with anything like this while you read it on the device in your hand while it charges at Starbucks as you sip your mocha. Our children have never seen it. Our current leaders and culture barely remember it. Adversity is for somebody else.

Until it’s not.

My gift came in March of 22. Renal Cell Carcinoma on the left side kidney. It was big, mean, and very close to my blood vessels. I was told that this was the most common form of cancer in men after prostate. So much for being bulletproof and invisible. I had an unusually large bubble of invincibility regarding my health, especially. The reason is this: when I was younger, I was in the military and served in many very intense places in the world, which, shall we say, do not always offer ways to stay clean, safe, or dry. Thus, the military, wanting to preserve its asset, inoculated me with so many vaccines that I easily lost count, mostly by air pressure injections in the shoulder. We were issued ‘yellow cards,’ which were trifold cards similar to COVID cards but twice the size. So there were 6 panels with little boxes that they would stamp to indicate that you had this or that injected.

Mine ran out of space.

Here is the payoff: I have not been ill with a cold, flu, fever… nothing, for decades. I don’t have much empathy left for my poor family when they get colds, etc., because I cannot remember when I was last ill like that. Maybe 1980… I don’t recall. So imagine my face when I have been told that I have cancer. You could have pushed me over with a feather. I felt like somehow I had an illness savings account that suddenly cashed in on me. Nothing then, wham. I asked the doctors what the plan was, or if they even had one, and they said, ‘Take it out.’ Simple enough. What are you doing in the morning? How early should I be there?

Not so fast.

When they were in there taking it out, they ran into issues. The tumor had attached itself to my spleen. This is not good news. The spleen is very vascular, and if you even bruise it, it bleeds. They had to cut into mine to remove the tumor, and so, you guessed it, leaky. It filled the left side of my body with blood. Bring on the transfusions. The 3 hour deal became an 8 hour deal. They later told me that I coded once on the table but came right back. I think it was hemorrhagic shock due to the huge fluid loss.

I’m still here.

Now, I say in a weak and uncertain voice that I am a cancer survivor. The cancer was all in the kidney and had not broken out into my lungs, lymph, etc. They got it all. No chemo, no radiation, nada. Tylenol and an admonition to not eat more than 4oz of protein at a sitting (the kidneys eliminate it) and to drink tons of water. That’s it.

Had I waited for another month to seek treatment, it would have been too late, and I would not be writing this. It would have been hospice instead of surgery. Remember, I don’t get sick, right?

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I am not intentionally linking wildly sci-fi vaccinations that the military gave me to this. (although I thought it) I am not certain if anything I do particularly created the environment that this cancer took advantage of. (although I thought about it) I am not blaming 5G, drones, aliens, or french fries for it. (although I have thought it)

I AM grateful to the incredible staff of caregivers that surrounded me. Countless MRIs, CAT Scans with the dye that makes your pee glow in the dark (cool), the urology surgical team, and the general surgery team at the San Francisco VA (docs from UCSF). Drs. Lissa Rankin and Jeff Redinger took me home and shoved delicious spinach down me until my blood could carry its own oxygen again. My wife for being supportive and loving me through this like it was easy, and it was not easy. After my military retirement, the VA provides my healthcare. I thought all these years that they were getting a deal with me, but I never went! This could have easily bankrupted us if I did not have healthcare. I know that is how it happens for some.

The gift I mentioned above. It’s perspective.

I now know what I could not know was hidden from me and had to be revealed by a crucible moment like this.

I have been paying attention to what was not happening to me, not what was. There were vacuous spaces of time where I had no context for my life because I was not challenged by illness. Everyone looks at the stars but fails to perceive the millions of light years of nearly incalculable space between that star and the end of your nose.

I am happy to write for you. I am happy to write for me. I believe (vs. think or can prove) that cancer is what arrives or can arrive when you fail to notice the fabric of your being and beingness that you remain unaware of. Pay attention to the black voids, the shadow worlds, and the container of you.

In that dark space of my mind, when I was bleeding out in the bed, and the ceiling was retracting away from me, all I could think about was how lucky and fortunate I have been on this ride. I want to offer solace to those with cancer who did not walk away.

“Consciousness is a radar that is scanning the environment to look out for trouble, in the same way that a ship’s radar is looking for rocks or other ships. The radar does not notice the vast amount of space where there are no rocks and other ships. By and large we scan things over but we pay attention only to what our set of values tells us we should pay attention to.” ~ Alan Watts

Thanks for reading,

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