While I’ve never been one to sit with a pair of clippers and religiously groom myself, I have always thought that certain individuals should do something to get a handle on their ‘issue.’

But there I was on Tuesday, staring at a small dog on the shower floor in front of me. I’ve had some extreme haircuts before, but nothing that would compare with the entire body buzz cut that I had just given myself with the assistance of my patient wife.

A few weeks ago, I took the first preemptive strike against cancer and the chemo treatments by sporting the mohawk that you’ve all seen by now. Well, what was once a Chemohawk is now more of a Lowhawk as it is starting to fall out. Having my barber trim the mohawk up was a bit of a halfstep that will ultimately end up with it becoming a buzzcut and then finally—bald. It’s the responsible thing to do if you don’t want to end up with hair scattered about your house, car, desk, etc. Last thing I want is my little one playing on the floor with an unintended new pet.

So I’ve always heard about Chemo patients losing their hair, but I never really thought about what that truly entailed until this week. At the beginning of the week, I was an ape and figured that maybe I was going to be one of the lucky ones that didn’t lose their hair. And then the ape started shedding. See, when Chemo patients lose their hair, they lose all their hair. So I’ve had another opportunity to get a step ahead of one of the side effects of Chemo.

What I wasn’t anticipating was how much different the body feels once you shed that outer layer. When I got the Mohawk, it was an immediate relief because when its 80 degrees outside the extra ventilation is quite nice. Now its 60 outside and I’m reaching for a hat. This feeling is only amplified when the rest of the hair goes. I can remember looking forward to the 60 degree mark in April because that signifies ’short weather’ here in Chicago. Now, I want a coat. Weight loss clearly plays a role here, but the timing just hits poorly to be going through this. Losing your hair in a Chicago summer might actually be something to relish. Losing your hair in the fall? If I can compare it to anything, its kinda like being in San Francisco. No matter how you dress, you will either be too warm or too cold all day long.

It’s frustrating, but something I’m sure I’ll adjust to. Now if I can just find a good pair of mittens to wear around the office.

Starting in June, I really headed downhill healthwise and only since chemo has kicked in have I felt a sense of normalcy. It is odd to think chemo has brought me close to what I was feeling like before the symptoms brought on by Hodgkin’s Lymphoma hit me, but there it is. Chemo has been pretty kind to me.

Truth be told, the worst thing I’ve had to deal with was the healing from the biopsy wounds. Those bastards, leaking every three hours or sooner for four weeks, were a biological nightmare. I was certain that infection would set in from that alone. But we got by that, and now—normal.

Or so I thought.

See, my body feels normal sitting still. Or playing on the couch with my daughter. Or at the computer working on a project.

When doesn’t my body feel normal?

When I move.

The slow decline in activity, coupled with the inability to eat properly in June and July, combined with the recovery from surgery has given me about 10 weeks of little to no physical activity with a body that was chewing on its own muscles for food at times. This has left me easily in the crappiest shape of my life and it won’t improve anytime soon. The body while going through chemo has to rebuild certain things internally. I need a rebuilt new immune system before biceps can be considered. Luckily, this is something that we can pull off and the docs appear to know what they are doing.

In the meantime, I’ve been instructed to steer clear of the gym, large crowds and work environments while my body cycles through the ‘rebuilding’ process as germs are my new greatest enemy (thank God for the ability to work from home).

What I have been told to do is try to maintain my ‘normal’ schedule so long as it doesn’t cross the germ barrier. In my case, normal involves entertaining a 2-year-old during the morning. So long as I keep things in open air situations, the germ factor is pretty low for this task. Winter will be a struggle, but right now its all the time at the park the little one can stand (provided daddy is packing the hand sanitizer after every trip down the slide).

I’ve been looking forward to this return to ‘normal’ for 10 weeks. The little one and I doing what we do—running her into the ground for an afternoon coma of naptime. Me getting ready for work afterwards and designing through the evening.

Today was day 2 of the return to ‘normal.’ I made it through day 1 ok. I felt a little winded after our 8 block walk to the park, but chalked it up to rebuilding stamina. The docs have told me that you lose 6 weeks of conditioning for every 1 week you are on your can. I’m looking at 60 weeks of lost conditioning. That’s why these trips to the park are so important to me. I can’t lose anymore conditioning or strength than I already have. I just won’t stand for it.

But I’ve found that I have less a say in what I will or won’t stand for than I like.

Today’s opponent—the sun.

Same walk as yesterday around the same time with the same gentle breeze coming in off the lake. We arrive at the park to find that our friends were just arriving. The little one has a pack of other munchkins that she likes to roll with and the parents all generally watch after the little troop. ‘It takes a village’ is an appropriate statement.

Yesterday was slightly overcast, so I didn’t bother wearing a hat. Today, bright and sunny so Mr. Mohawk decided to cover up.

Strike 1. The shaved head manages to keep me quite cool. A hat? Not so much.

Mr. Mohawk also decided to try a new Vitamin C booster drink to help aid the war against germs.

Strike 2. Stick with things you know unless you are going to be near a restroom.

Finally, upon arriving at the park the little one makes a play for extended time on the swings. Who am I to tell my kid no? Anyway, we’re getting back to ‘normal’ and swings are definitely part of normal.

Strike 3. After 20 minutes, Mohawk dad is ready to drop and hurl from the booster drink that has been churned in his stomach and baked in the sun. Luckily, another mommy on the scene was around to let him crawl off to the shade while his daughter continued playing.

And there I was. Chased to the shade, sweating as if I had been running in a marathon and doing all of this in the severe heat of 75 degree weather.

It was only 75-effing-degrees.

This is how far my body has fallen in the time this cancer has invaded me. A stroll to the park and some light exercise can chase me into the shadows to have to recuperate? And can you really call pushing your kid in the swing ‘exercise?’ I knew my conditioning was off but WTF?

Anyway, one thing was proven to me today. If this in fact my ‘lost summer,’ I gotta hope it decides to stay away until I can figure out how to deal with it again.

When I started down the road to treating this disease, one of the biggest things I was worried about was weight. Or the shedding of additional weight.

Starting the year at 250 and then facing chemo at 193 was a horrifying mental experience. And its not something that I have altogether gotten out of my head. I see some poor souls at the Oncology center whose arms can’t be any bigger around than a small water bottle.

‘Cancer is a terrible wasting disease,’ I’ve been told countless times. But now in day 8, I’m done with the heavy barrage of chemical treatments for round 1 and I’m actually up 7 pounds.

How? Well, let’s first note that the anti-nausea drugs have smiled favorably on me—thus far. Chemo is a cumulative thing and I could go the other way in a moment. But overall, I am attributing the weight gain to a high calorie diet.

See, if its remotely healthy or tastes good in small doses, I can’t have it.

Salads? Out.

Lunch meat? Gone.

Fresh fruit? Nope.

Soups? Forget it.

Any form of actual cheese? No way.

Anything—anything—that ages? Don’t even ask.

Before I started treatment, I was told by a nutritionist in the outpatient clinic that healthy eating was the key to successfully kicking cancer to the curb. Sounded great and was excited to do it. My body was tuned for it. I’d spent the first-half of 2010 avoiding high-calorie meals soaked in fat and oil. They tasted terrible to me when a Subway sandwich or good southwest salad (minus the guacamole) really hit the spot—no dressings needed.

Then along comes Procarbazine. Lovely little drug. Part of BEACOPP treatment plan. It’s given orally, toxic to the point that you have to wash up after handling the pills and manufactured by company whose name is actually my rival fraternity from college.

Of course, this is the pill I have to take.

And unlike most drugs that are mixed around from one chemo treatment to another, this one is used almost exclusively in the BEACOPP treatment which is why everyone is amazed at the dietary restrictions that this drugs brings along with it.

Seriously, no bananas but all the Easy Cheese you want. That might sound like heaven to the 13 year-old inside of me but the 36 year-old that was so excited to finally be eating right is struggling. Nothing tastes right, but its not for the reasons you so typically would associate with chemo. Typically with chemo, patients have trouble with their tastebuds turning on them. In my situation, its as if I have turned on my tastebuds and am now dousing them with the very things that I spent so much time training them to avoid.

Make no mistake, I am happy that I have this drug available to me. Without it, my chances of beating this disease might be lowered significantly. But I am pretty sure that the last thing I will want to see after this is over with it a can of processed cheese.

But there is a greater narrative here to be gleaned away that perhaps when we look at our individual stories we miss. There is a lot of bad shit happening to good people everywhere.

It’s in the numerous stories of people having to fight off cancer and their loved ones feeling the attacks hitting their mothers, fathers, siblings and co-workers.

It’s in the story of a young woman who in her early 20’s has already gone through the struggles of a failed kidney.

It’s in the pained faces of a young couple in their 30’s with two children, 2 and 2 months. This one got me the worst. Healthy guy, strong guy. Goes out for a morning skate at a local ice rink. One minute stretching, the next cardiac arrest. Enlarged heart they say. Luckily, someone in that locker room at 6:30 in the morning knew CPR and luckily, this ice rink was within a mile of a good hospital. Two days in a coma and a defibrillator installed in his chest later, his family is still intact.

But seriously, WTF is going on?

I don’t remember people being sick like this when I was a kid. But I guess that’s the difference between being a kid and not noticing and being an adult who is finally beginning to see it all around himself.

Oh yeah, this is all part of my new found perspective. Well sometimes this perspective blows and this is one of those times.

So to all you who are fighting and grinding through your days against the odds that have been stacked against you—I now see you in ways I couldn’t before. And to those of you who are painlessly making it from door-to-door every morning as you so about your days, know that nothing is guaranteed and to count your good health as a blessing—not a right.

My confidence is firm. My faith is secure. But why?

Aside from the presence of God being strong with myself and my family, I’ve done everything I can to get myself mentally prepared for this. I was having a conversation with my mother—who made a surprise visit this weekend—about my successes and failures in life. The common factor that true in all instances was that the difference between success and failure for me has always been dictated by how bad I wanted something. Was I really ‘all in’ or was I tentative or distracted? In the instances when I put everything on the line and really believed in myself, I always won. In times when I failed—always not all there. Not once was there a situation where I gave it my all and still failed.

Fast-forward to now. The plan for success is the same as it always has been for me. If I really want to survive, if I really want to beat cancer—I have to be all in. I have to live, sleep and eat this battle for the duration until victory is achieved.

My family and friends don’t deserve anything less.

Almost 9 hours until the first round of chemo. Better get some rest.

Wow. That’s all I can really say to you.

Whether you’ve been kind enough to leave a comment over at the3six5 project where I made my battle cry or you’ve been among the throng to offer a helping hand via Twitter and Facebook, I can only say the feedback has been overwhelming.

When I started to open up about my situation, it was really try to be supportive of my wife’s desire to bring our friends into the fold so people where aware of what was happening. Writing the backstory was therapeutic and helped really put the parts of the puzzle together in a way we never really had before.

The timing of the ‘3six5′ project assignment can almost be called serendipitous, as Wednesday’s date was assigned to me back in January. Of course, back in January, I was certain I’d be telling you about our latest app or some new platform we were excited about. You know, PR-type stuff. Never in a million years would I have dreamed that the post I would make would be about me, nor would I have ever believed that it would be about me having cancer.

But there it was. And we tackled it and you responded. But never in a million years would I have seen what happened today occurring.

Hey Cancer, Fuck You.

Four words that sum up exactly how I feel about this situation. But they didn’t come from my mouth. I wasn’t even in on the brainstorm. This is all the handiwork of my dear friends @kevinthepang and @amyguth. This is easily the most vulgar get well card I have ever seen. And I love it.

So much about wishing the sick back to health is powdery and soft to me. When is the last time you saw a get-well card that wasn’t written in cursive and filled with flowers and seemly targeted at someone in their 70s? Hell, most of them you could exchange ‘Get Well’ with ‘Our Deepest Regrets’ and you’d have basically the same card.

HCFU spoke to me because it felt familiar. This is full of life. This is full of attitude. Yes, I’m sick. Yes, I have Cancer. Yes, chemo might put me on my back at some point. But when that happens, I don’t want anyone to come pat me on the head and tell me to get better. I want someone to get in my face and ask me why I am still on my ass. I want someone to remind me that I’m too young to take this lying down.

I’m full of God’s love and have faith he will see me through the dark path ahead. But I’m also a strong man with more than enough attitude and fire to let Cancer get the best of me. Should I get knocked down in this fight, I know my friends will be there to shout ‘Hey Cancer, Fuck You’ and push me right back into the fight.

And that is exactly what this fighter needs.

I really appreciate the love you guys are throwing my way. I made my splash onto The3six5 project tonight and your support has been overwhelming. You can read all about today’s big development’s here.

What I want to emphasize that no matter where you are, no matter what corner of the globe you are sending your prayers and good vibes from—I feel them. I feel you rooting for me as you would a football team on Sunday afternoon. I feel the pressure to succeed. It’s helpful here because failure would have a dire result. I need the continued interaction with you. I don’t want to let you folks down. You’re praying for me. You’re showering my family and I with your love and support. We’re all invested in this now. We are connected.

How could I die on you now? That would be fucking rude.

And the mohawk? There is no crying when you have a mohawk. There is no doubt. You are wearing a mohawk. You are wearing it because you are going to war. This is not a fashion statement. I took what I did as a step in preparing for battle. The battle of my life.

I’m not afraid. God has got this and if you believe that as I do, then you will know that I am without doubt. I still fear this disease, but I have the confidence to know that God wants a better man and this is the path he has chosen to extract that from me.

I’m going to war. And every single one of you can help me.

Fear not, there have been plenty of choice iPhone apps to be released in recent months (current favs: AirVideo, Plancast, Miso) and the iPad’s offering of apps only continues to bolster a product that continually fights off my iPhone when I’m relaxing at home. Among the apps I can’t put down for the iPad are iBooks, the previously mentioned AirVideo, Flipboard and the Marvel Comics Reader. Even the iPhone games like Bejeweled 2 get a boost on this larger screen.

No, I haven’t been lacking for material. I’ve been spending most of my time looking for answers. This all started back in late-April/early-May when I felt a pain in my chest when I would sneeze. Nothing severe, and I dismissed it as a bruise or pulled muscle from playing with my 2-year-old daughter (soon to be 3 now).

Things were otherwise good. My hockey beard was coming in nicely, the Blackhawks were winning and we were on the verge of releasing our first in-house built apps at Tribune. By the middle of May, I started getting light chills in the office. They keep it pretty cool in the basement of the Trib Tower, so I put on a coat and soldier on. Release dates and projects needed attention. Another symptom started brewing around this time. Itchy skin. Everywhere. It was more annoying than something that made me feel bad but I figured it was just a bout of excema or something coming on and the body tends to self-correct those issues.

It was May 24th when the first sign of something deeply wrong hit me. I was throwing a party atop the Tribune Tower for newly hired @ourmaninchicago to welcome him to the Trib family. The gathering went off without a hitch. Lots of Blackhawk tunes, burgers and @chicagoleah even provided the keg (for once I wasn’t footing a party by myself). The party fizzled down around 8pm as there aren’t lights on the 22nd floor balcony. It was pretty much down to close friends @ernestwilkins, @brentdpayne, @bill80, @chicagoleah, @localcelebrity and a few others. I had only a few beers as I was grilling and djing and hosting and doing anything else that needed done. With the long afternoon/evening near complete, I needed to excuse myself from my peers and find the men’s room.

I never returned.

I blacked out when I arrived in the restroom and at some point before the rescue party arrived I had gotten badly sick. That night showed me who would stick with me in a time of need as the DJ equipment found its way off the roof and to a safe place, the keg was stowed and the roof was clean even before @brentdpayne and @bill80 rescued me from my tormented bathroom cell. Bill got me clothes to wear out of the building and Brent drove my car back to my place and cabbed it back into the city. Seriously badass friends. That night I had a case of what they call ‘night sweats’. Basically I drenched a king-size bed while sound asleep. I awoke the next morning in a cold sweat but felt otherwise fine. We all assumed it was something I ate, but I was suspicious that something else was going on at this point but not really sure what I would tell a doctor. ‘I went out and drank some beers, got sick and had night sweats but feel fine now?’ It didn’t feel like a cause for alarm, but I’ve been out numerous times after that evening and have yet to touch alcohol of any sort.

With the Blackhawks making their run through the playoffs, I was well distracted. Our Apptivate team was busy building their soon-to-be-released Android App and the frenzy of the games consumed me.

Then I started getting fevers.

Mind you, I felt fine all day long. My diet that I started in January had paid dividends getting me from 250 to 230. Had plenty of energy. But with the fevers, I felt my energy begin to slowly wane. I was certain I was working too many hours and the flu was about to hit. But it never did. Not only did the flu never hit, but the fevers seem to take care of themselves. Lasting only a few hours and then going away.

I knew something weird was going on now. So I, unprompted by anyone around me, made an appointment to get in to see a doc. It seemed like the weirdest thing at the time, ‘Why would I go to the doc when most of the time I feel fine?’ Thank god I just let my body make the decisions at this point because as we would later find out, something bad was brewing.

The first doc I saw was a nice gentleman by the name of Dr. Jon. They brought me in (my daughter in tow) and I explained all the symptoms that had been brewing to this point. He asked me a few questions about work, family, travel, etc. and then ordered some blood work and a chest x-ray. His biggest concern was that my workload was causing the fatigue and that my overseas travel might have exposed me to a bug that was now popping up. So off I went with his instructions to await his reply.

I didn’t hear anything from the man for NINE days.

I started to assume everything must be fine and then I got his call. It came on a really bad day, a day that a project near to my heart got scrapped. In the grand scheme of things, I need to go hug whoever pulled the plug as I would soon have much more important things to worry about.

So after waiting forever, Dr. Jon delivered the news. ‘You’re slightly iron-deficient anemic’. Like by .5. And he wanted me to have a TB test.

Oh. No. I knew it was so over. Because I knew nothing about what this man was telling me. I knew TB was a bad thing and that I had infected half the city of Chicago and that it would all be traced back to me and that my kid would have to take all these pills and that…

Yup, mind running out of control. This is when my cycle of nightly burial started. I simply didn’t know how to keep from googling my symptoms and finding every disease and plague—that I clearly had because I had a fever that night.

Amid all this, I did cut back my hours drastically. No more getting home at 3 & 4 am from the office. It was a bed by midnight curfew, self-imposed, and it was working. I felt better. But of course I did, I went from 3 hours of sleep night to 7. That’s gonna show up in the balance of things.

Completely freaked out, I go back in for the TB test. Everyone told me that this is largely just procedure and that I’ll likely come back in 3 days and it will be negative. ‘You just don’t look like you have TB,’ the nurse said reassuringly. She did voice some displeasure with Dr. Jon for his lag in following up and that stuck with me as I waited for the results. What the hell took so long to get back to me? I’m over here burying myself in mental torture every night and this guys just taking his sweet time.

It was clear, if this TB test was negative I wasn’t getting anywhere fast with Dr. Jon and I wanted to see a new doctor.

During this time period a new, more menacing symptom began to rear its head. I lost my appetite. It came on so gradual that I’m not sure when it started. It seems like I was snacking less and then slowly it got to the point where I just couldn’t eat. When this happened, the weight began falling off. I was down to 225 by mid-June. 216 by mid-July and 200 by the beginning of August. Now I realize that some of my weight loss was by design, but to go from 250 to 200 is disturbing. I look like I did when I was in high school. More on why this is occuring later.

So we go back to the Doc for the TB results. Negative. Excellent, now lets find out what the effing hell is really happening here. ‘Get me a new doc,’ I said to the scheduling person. I was to see Dr. Jeff at 9:30am on Monday, June 21st. I was satisfied with myself for the move and more so for sticking up for my health. My in-laws stress, ‘You simply have to be your own advocate sometimes or the health care system will ignore you.’ They are so right.

Back to the clinic (with daughter in tow) for my Monday morning meeting with this new guy. I am completely unsure if this will end up getting me any closer in my quest for answers but I’m oddly optimistic.

I’m brought back into the patient room, my daughter quietly playing with my iPhone, and Dr. Jeff walks in. And older man, who reminded me very much of the character Frank Lundy played by Kieth Carradine on Dexter. Don’t know why but I immediately trusted this guy. He soon showed why. Within 30 seconds of pulling up my X-ray, he spotted the problem. ‘Either you have an enlarged heart or someone has smuggled something into your chest. And you don’t look like you have an enlarged heart,’ he said very calmly. Still to rule out the enlarged heart, they ran an EKG on me and all systems checked out. He then told me that I was to go have a CT scan that day at the hospital so they could see what that was in my chest.

I was somehow relaxed about what had just transpired. I had, for the first time, a clue where the root of the problem was. The only problem I had was it was 10:30am and I still had my little one for two hours. So we headed to the park and played til we were wiped out.

After dropping the little one off at the sitter (she goes in the afternoons) I set out to get this CT scan done. Get to the hospital, find where I am suppose to go and hello administrative red tape. Turns out, I didn’t have a previously scheduled appointment on the books and my insurance company hadn’t authorized this procedure yet. I didn’t push back because they sounded like they were correct. So I was scheduled for a Friday CT scan that I would take right before I would go on a big family vacation to Minnesota. No sweat. Everyone gets what they want.

The next morning comes around and my phone rings at 8:30am. Its an assistant of Dr. Jeff grilling me on why I didn’t get the CT Scan. I told her the reason and she furiously jotted down notes to push this procedure through the red tape. This conversation made me begin to realize just how serious the medical team dealing with my case was taking this. So after dropping the little one off, I bounce back over to the hospital for the CT Scan. Was in and out within an hour. I had no idea how long it would take for the results to come back but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be waiting 9 days to find out what was going on.

Turns out, I didn’t even have to wait 24 hours. Dr. Jeff reached me while I was taking the little one on her first visit to the library. He’s a very straightforward guy, so it shouldn’t strike me as odd that he would just come at me with the findings. ‘You’ve got a mass in your chest and it looks like it could be a lymphoma, thymoma or form of lung cancer,’ he said in a very authoritative tone. ‘I’ve got you an appointment tomorrow with our surgery team so they can talk to you about the biopsy procedure.’

Boom. As I’m driving. Trying to entertain my kid. I now know that I probably have some sort of cancer.

The rest of the day was a mess of informing the wife, close family and a few others. I wanted to keep this air tight until I knew what the hell was really going on. Its hard to explain to people that you ‘might’ have cancer. If I had cancer, I wanted to know for sure before I started sharing with people beyond the need to know group.

With the meeting with a surgery team now in the picture, the wife is officially part of the Team Courtney posse as we head into these meetings. Of course, my first meeting with the team is marred by more red tape. Can’t hospitals just work? Anyway, after a minor bit of juggling we finally get into see Dr. Khaled and this team. So the nurse brings us back and pulls up my records before she leaves. Almost instantly, we’re both staring at the screen trying to make out any morsel of information. About that time, one of the doctors on the team bursts into the room. Dr. Mike, I’ll never forget his frantic opening line. ‘Do you know why you are here?’ Both my wife and I were like the cats you see at Halloween. Hair straight up, scarred out of our minds. He has me recount the story (as I have already to this point for you) and begins showing us the area of concern on the CT scan. It seriously looked like someone snuck a ping-pong ball into my chest. He then went on to say that they suspected that it was going to be a form of Lymphoma. The reason he had such a strong feeling about my case was that his wife had Stage 4B Hodgkin’s Lymphoma 7 years prior and he saw numerous connections in our stories. While It was great to get this sort of personal outreach from the doc, it was also a little spooky as we really hadn’t confirmed what was going on yet. (see: hanging onto hope!)

In walks Dr. Khaled, a dapper Egyptian doctor that seems to run things over at UIC. He had a much, MUCH different approach to the first doctor. Calmly explaining what they suspected and what the options were for diagnosis, the stress level came down in the room dramatically. Jokes were thrown around, serious questions were asked. I’ve always had a real desire to make sure that the people who are trying to make me feel better actually like who I am. I think they tend to fight more for you than the patients who just badger them and constantly fight back against their instruction. Needless to say, my wife and I were comfortable with Dr. Khaled and his team. They pat us on our heads with their blessing to take our family vacation and off we go to Minnesota. Only later will we find out the reason they want us to take the vacation is because they realize that I won’t likely have one for a long while once chemo starts.

As we get ready to shove off to Minnesota, something becomes blatantly clear to me. All the trappings that I have used to manage and mask my symptoms and their impact are now about to evaporate as we head north. Everyday, I take care of my little one until 12:30. This had been slowly wearing on me to the point that I was now taking a small nap before heading into the office. But once in the office, the most physical exertion I would encounter would be a walk up a flight of stairs to get a Diet Coke. No biggie. However, surrounded by my in-laws (all of them, many unaware of the severity of things) I would have children expecting to play 24/7 with uncle Chris. This is something I love to do, but knew that I simply couldn’t. In all honesty, I knew outside of my daily routine, there weren’t alot of things that I could do. But one thing I could do still, was drive. Driving is a relaxing, liberating thing for me. I’ve always took off onto the open road with great glee and going somewhere I had never been was just what I needed. Well, that and my headphones. The sound of the road by itself at 2am while everyone is asleep is a recipe for disaster. So I turned this up as loud as I could and put the hammer down for Minnesota.

After staying the night at some random spot in Wisconsin, we make our destination by late afternoon Saturday. I remember that I was in a really bad mood because the US had just been eliminated from the World Cup. I was hoping to see the game, but was left to listen to it on the rental car’s XM radio. Only problem, the only broadcast available was the Team Ghana broadcast—in french. So not only am I straining to make out what is happening, I am showered in the opposing teams celebration as our boys were eliminated. Not a recipe for a pleasant ride with me. Looking back on it and the hate that I was reigning down on the soccer haters in the states, I think I have learned a lot from cancer already. See when you have cancer as a stick to measure the relative suckiness of what is happening around you, it becomes clear in a short manner of time how few things really should rile us up.

My team losing < Cancer
Drive-thru getting my order wrong < Cancer
Death > Cancer

Pretty much death is the only thing that sucks worse than cancer. Which is why so much these days just rolls off my back. Or at least, I’m trying to live that way. It doesn’t always work, but I used to get road rage in the worst way driving through the Loop in Chicago. Not anymore. I just ask God to bless the idiots and move on. Have no time to waste energy on hate when those things really don’t matter in the greater picture of life.

So we get to Mille Lacs Lake and join my wife’s family. I was actually nervous driving up as I had no idea how they might react to me. Did they all know, didn’t they? Keep in mind, I’ve known these people for close to two decades as Karen and I dated in college, so these are not strangers to me. So we eventually do get inside, and all is right with the world. Hugs all around, no mention of the potential cancer openly. We head up to our rooms. Which are upstairs. This worries me as I know I don’t have the energy to chase my daughter up and down the stairs constantly. Luckily it works out that my daughter ended up gluing herself to an older cousin and they traveled as a pack for the next 7 days.

The first two days were rough on me. No routine to fall back on, no appetite to eat—I was low on energy and ideas of how I was going to make a week here. I finally collapsed into my wife in a bit of a mental breakdown, I was simply unsure how to cope in such a different environment. No one but myself really knew how much the symptoms had hindered me because in Chicago, I knew how to work around them. I think just leveling with my wife exactly what I was going through finally put us both on equal footing with how I was feeling and with it I bought some peace of mind. That night I went onto play a riveting round of Wii Sports with my nephew and niece. I felt a little bit like myself again. But that’s not to say it lasted. Later that evening, I woke up around 2am. My entire body was on fire and I was having a much harder time breathing. With no idea where any medicine or a thermometer was, I simply went downstairs and ate popsicles for a good hour. My body cooled down and I slept like a baby. But something was still badly wrong.

The remainder of our stay at Mille Lacs was largely uneventful. Lots of relaxing on a boat pretending to know how to fish and talking Arkansas football with my father-in-law. Pretty much how a vacation for me should be.

Driving back, I had high hopes to see an old friend of mine who helped me get my start in the industry while in Tulsa. The timing just didn’t work out and I simply didn’t have the heart to say ‘I was your Best Man and I might have Cancer.’ The whole thing just seemed kinda rude to spring on someone who was busy. So we carried on to the Mall Of America. I felt surprising good, even going on a rollercoaster that flipped me upside down a few dozen times. Somehow I saw that as some sort of test that the docs would use to validate that I was healthy. I was simply trying to prove to myself I wasn’t completely broken.

With the family thoroughly exhausted, I put them to bed in the car at 6pm and put the pedal down for home. We ended up making it to Madison, Wis. before bedding down for the night. My birthday was the next day and I wanted to be well-rested. Rest or no rest, I simply didn’t have the energy to enjoy Madison like I wanted to. So we headed home and with the car unloaded I was in bed by 6pm on my birthday. My wife and little one even baked me homemade cupcakes but I simple didn’t have any appetite to eat them.

Work had been going pretty well up to this point and throughout this ordeal, I had still yet to miss a day of work or an assignment. This was all about to change as Dr. Khaled’s team were eagerly awaiting a chance to get started on me so we could get to a diagnosis. The Doc was very clear that he wanted to be as minimally invasive as humanly possible. So the first attempt to diagnose what was going on would be done through a needle biopsy. Make no mistake, my needle biopsy was much more entailed than one that might be performed on an arm or neck. This would be a CT-guided biopsy as they had to go around arteries and though the lung to get to the mass. So, July 7th I undergo the first attempt to diagnose the issue. The procedure itself goes off without a hitch, but there is a complication. It now appears that I have some fluid building around my right lung. While I am somewhat panicked, they assure me that it won’t take much to drain the fluid and that it might help diagnose what’s happening. Relaxed and ready I go in for the afternoon procedure to drain this fluid. This isn’t an experience I would suggest to others. The problem I had wasn’t the procedure itself but the pain meds that are used for this. Basically they give you novicane in your back. Not a big deal, but they hit something they shouldn’t have. Immediately I was in pain with my stomach doing backflips. I remember telling the nurse that I was going to empty my bowels right on her table. My heart rate dropped to 80 over 50 and I was immediately on fire. If it wasn’t for a nurse by the name of Georgia Cash fanning me with a piece of paper and talking me through it, I think I would have passed out. With the complications, they only drew a sample of the fluid. It came back negative for cancer cells. A positive result would mean I have a very advanced stage of cancer.

So the waiting begins for the results. 5-7 days is the window to sit and wait. Meanwhile, I’m having a hardtime fathoming just how much trauma my body had been through. I was back in the office the next day (against doctor orders) and immediately knew why. I wasn’t to lift my child, at all, for fear that my lung might collapse from the procedure. But we knew we were close to an answer so it was worth it. I hobbled my daughter to the sand pit at the end of the street and we made the best of it. It was July 14th when the news came back that the needle biopsy had been unsuccessful in diagnosing the mass. We were leveled, mainly because we knew that the next biopsy was much more invasive and it would be a week away with answers even further away. Still it was our only option and we just did what we could to get family support in place as the next procedure would involve a hospital stay of at least 5 days.

The next Monday, I was to go into the hospital for some prescreening tests to ensure I was fit for surgery. That morning, I took my daughter to the park for the longest 45 minutes I’ve ever spent trying to entertain her. I simply couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. And nothing is worse than your daughter wondering why you won’t chase her up the slide like you ALWAYS do. Anyway, I knew what was happening at this point. It was the fluid on my chest. I simply had no idea how much was there. See when the body fights off a infection inside itself, it often will try to ‘drown’ the offending invader. This is how my fluid was forming. My body was doing it in my own defense.

So we get to the hospital. I try to put on my best face and attitude but the numbers simply didn’t tell the story I needed to. My oxygen levels were low (90%) and my heart was racing even when I was sitting still. So they sent me for an echograph to get a better picture of my heart. What we found is that my heart was basically swimming in fluid too—and I was severely dehydrated. Fluids pumped into me and my Wednesday check in for the surgery was now looking like Monday. With no family support to help with the baby and no way to warn work that I wasn’t going to be in (dead phone) I begged to go home. Turns out you can leave a hospital anytime you like, but it’ll be against their wishes. So I went home and tied up every loose end I could to prepare for what was coming.

The next day was a series of firsts. I’d never stayed overnight in a hospital before. Certainly not to undergo a serious surgery (the fluid make this a serious ordeal). That night, my in-laws brought me a prayer cross. I cried endlessly. That was a sign that I was really in trouble at first that has since become my ultimate beacon of calm and support. I was too young to be in that room. Too healthy to be around sooo many sick people. The noises that night didn’t help. Later I would discover headphones to be a great equalizer but the first night I didn’t know how to operate the bed so I didn’t sleep until 3 or 4 and when I did sleep, nurses were busy in the room trying to get my vitals. Let it be known, you don’t go into the hospital for sleep.

The next morning came quickly and in no time Dr. Mike was in my room explaining exactly what to expect today. Being the only doctor to ever have provided me with their cell phone number, Dr. Mike and I have actually ended up becoming friends—something that I would have never imagined based on our first meeting. Still, this morning was classic Dr. Mike with him dropping a bombshell or two as we talked. First, the procedure would involve them cutting three holes in my side to shove a camera in and go get a sample of the tumor. While this is occuring, they will be draining the fluid off my chest and heart. Sounds all good so far. Basically, before they finish up, they like to have the lab make a prelim on the diagnosis of the sample they extract. This is where it gets very scary, because Mike informs me that if they get anything but Lymphoma they will crack my chest open and perform the same basic surgery that open heart patients go though to remove the mass. Keep in mind, to this point it had been ‘three small holes down the side, piece of cake.’ Now its ‘Unleash the Kracken!’

Within moments of the ‘pep talk’, they wisk me away to prep me for the operation. I say my goodbyes to the wife and in-laws and sit in this lime green room for what feels like forever. I look around me. I’m the only one sitting up. Everyone else is in clear pain or duress and ready for relief. Me, I wanted to bolt. But I knew we needed answers. About the time I start to calm down, the anethstesia team surrounds me. They’re all talking to me, distracting me I assume, as one of them is working on an IV that went bad overnight. So as she removes that and starts to replace it I am talking to the head anethstesiologist and … I wake up in ICU.

This incident took me days to finally figure out.

All reports from the doctors were that I was completely awake entering the operating room, loopy from the drugs and making jokes, but awake. The procedure went fine, but they had a few surprises. One, we didn’t get an immediate diagnosis on the tissue sample which left the docs with a coin flip decision to crack my chest open or await the results. My docs told me over and over that they thought this was Lymphoma until proven otherwise and they stuck with their instincts. The next surprise was the amount of fluid that was removed from my chest. Somewhere in the vicinity of 4 liters was drained off during the procedure. Think about removing a gallon of milk from your chest and you get the picture. Finally, this procedure required the docs to collapse my right lung so they could get to the mass and remove the sample. The surgery went about three hours, so my right lung was collapsed for at least that long. After they wrapped up, they got as much fluid as they could out of my chest and then reinflated the lung. Problem: their was still some fluid in the chest cavity and now my lung just absorbed it. This wasn’t apparent while I was still being assisted breathing, but the trouble became readily apparent when I started to wake up and the anethstesia team removed the breathing tube. It was shared with me that I simply couldn’t breathe on my own and that they had to put the breathing tube back in me while I was awake. This apparently was quite a traumatic scene, so traumatic that no one on the anethstesia team wanted me to remember it so they hit me with what I endearingly have been referring to ‘a scrambler’. Its why I don’t remember going into the operating room, its why I don’t remember joking with the docs and its why I don’t remember the trauma of not being able to breathe and having a tube rammed down my mouth.

So I finally come around 3pm, surrounded by the in-laws in ICU. Being placed in ICU after surgery was expected as they want to monitor everything. I try to pat my chest to see if they did the big surgery and too my relief they hadn’t. But I glanced at my wife and she delivered the unfortunate news that they weren’t able to diagnose it, yet. I was hoping for a nugget of insight after all that I had been through that day. Soon after coming to my senses, I began fighting with the breathing tube. This wasn’t in the plan and limited my communication with everyone to scribbling on a piece of paper. When I finally got comfortable with the idea of it being there a nurse would come in for vitals, nudge me and I’d fight with the damn thing all over again. The key to dealing with a breathing tube is not moving. So there I was, four IVs in my arms, three tubes out of the right side of my torso, breathing tube in my mouth and a catheter. A effing catheter. No one mentioned messing with my junk. But it wasn’t like I was going to be moving anytime soon, so I kinda had to have it. All this over some mystery meat in my chest. Thankfully, my father-in-law hung through the night with me. I must have scribbled out half the Razorbacks playbook in talking with him. We had to get more paper from the nurses. I’m not big on just droning away watching TV, so talking football was the best thing I could do to get my mind off the situation even if I couldn’t exactly talk.

I previously mentioned that you don’t go into the hospital to rest. Nurses constantly coming in to take your vitals, technicians coming through to get X-rays at 4am and the doctors in and out all morning. Just not a good situation for those trying to rest and heal. ICU takes this idea an amplifies it with every beeping, bleeping device you can possibly imagine. It’s like rolling your hospital bed onto a Vegas casino floor—by the slots—only without the bonus of drinks and a chance at winning. My father-in-law came prepared for the situation and broke out his earbuds and started listening to sports radio to drown out the noise. While I normally wouldn’t fathom sleeping with headphones on, this suddenly seemed like a great idea. He grabbed by noise-canceling headphones out of my bag, hooked them up to my iPhone and Bob Marley took care of the rest. Well, I got some sleep.

The days that followed were a slow process of the occasional removal of tubes and visits from friends and family. By Saturday, I was in a private room with a chance to go home and see my little one. The only thing holding me in was the fact that we still didn’t have a diagnosis. The docs felt it was just easier to keep me in the hospital in case they had to break my chest open rather than ask me to come back in. Dr. Mike came through on Sunday with the preliminary news and he was almost dancing when he told me Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was a little taken aback as I was still holding out hope that it was an infection or something less menacing than cancer. He would go on to explain that ‘if I had to have cancer, this is the one to get’ and ‘no matter how bad it is, it have a high cure rate.’ While I completely agree with him now, all I could think of at the moment was ‘here comes Chemo.’

In short order, I was discharged and other than the weeping from the wounds (which must heal on their own, no stitches) I was free to go home. That did come with a few stipulations. No picking up anything over 5 pounds (see: child), call if I have a fever over 101 and generally don’t be an idiot. After several days of being on a bland diet and the loss of the fluid weight, I was now down to 200 lbs and getting weight back on my body became a focal point for the family at home. The only problem was that I still had no appetite. Somehow under the watchful eye of the in-laws, I manage to rebound some of my energy during the week to the point they headed back to Little Rock on Thursday morning.

Of course, I took this as the sign that I was ready to head back to work. I would discover that this was a bad idea. While my energy was there when sitting in my office at home or talking with my family on the couch, walking several blocks just to make it into the office wasn’t something I had tried in well over a week at this point. My body was deconditioned from being largely on my ass for an extended period of time. Add to it that the wounds from the surgery would leak with greater frequency with the drive into the office and the walking around and you can see why heading in Thursday was a bad idea.

While I worked from the house on Friday, I had a greater issue to handle. It’s one thing to skirt the rules on when you should and shouldn’t head into the office, the rules about fevers and surgery are pretty cut and dry. That night, I had a fever of 101. I was certain that it was being driven by the Lymphoma, but I still had to call the doc if I was going to be playing by their rules. He overall agrees with me and asks me to take some Tylenol and see if it breaks. If it does, likely Lymphoma-driven. If it doesn’t, I could have an active infection brewing from the surgery. Sure enough, the fever broke and the doc only asked that I swing by the ER in the morning for a blood draw and chest X-ray simply as a precaution so they could compare it against my records. I was happy, my wife was happy and we all slept soundly that night.

The next morning, the wife brings me in some breakfast before I shoved off to the ER. Little would I know it would be the last food I would get until 6pm. I had never been into an ER prior to that morning and I have the distinct impression that its kinda like the land of misfit toys. No communication and everyone seems to have their own independent ideas about what your issue might or might not be. Dr. Mike had called in the instructions for why I was there, but an elevated heart rate started the ER docs on their own crusade. First, I clearly had a blood clot. Wisked away to get a surprise CT scan. Once I was clear of a blood clot I was told I had a case of hospital-acquired pneumonia brewing. My doctors couldn’t determine if there was or wasn’t anything to the findings, but in cases like mine where your heading toward chemo a case of pneumonia could throw everything off-schedule. So they shoot first and ask questions later and next thing you know, I’m back in the hospital because I might be sick.

WTF?

That’s really all that went through my head. What about my weekend with my wife and little one? What about the fact that I drove to the ER and parked at a meter and had the car with the carseat in it? What about the fact that no one could help watch the little one and that my wife was stuck at home while I fought on my own in the ER? And where was the damn food?

That night was easily one of the more tortured moments of this ordeal as I simply couldn’t wrap my head around why I was there. I began thinking that this was just going to be the way it goes and that ANY time I have the slightest thing go wrong, I would sneeze my way back into the hospital. I could tell the nurses had a similar reaction to my situation. ‘You don’t look like you have pneumonia,’ they would say to comfort me not realizing they were just stoking the rage boiling inside me.

OF COURSE I DON”T HAVE PNEUMONIA!

It was something my wife would say to me later that weekend that would turn me out of my sea of darkness and doubt. “This isn’t who you are and this isn’t helping you and its hurting me to see you this way,” she sobbed as she tried to explain how I wasn’t the same patient who had just been in the hospital a week earlier. This was all a mental game that was kicking my ass. I had no way to question the doctors as they all agreed that I might or might not have a problem and I felt fine. So I put my faith back in the Lord that whatever was happening was happening for a reason and tried to run back toward my good humor act and making nurses and doctors like me.

If anything good came of the hospital trip, it was that I got to meet with my Oncology team early. I was suppose to come in on Monday and discuss the schedule of staging appointments I would need to fulfill to properly stage the cancer. But here I was in the hospital already, so they opted to just start with the procedures. This got us off to a rocky start because as much as I wanted to get right into the staging part of the process and agreed with everything they had in mind, no one opted to actually tell me what we were doing. So when Monday morning comes and someone shows up at my hospital door telling me its time to go get my chemo port installed, I was taken slightly off-guard. The biggest concern was that I still had three holes in my side and a suspected case of pneumonia brewing. Was this really the time to cut on me some more? A junior member of the Oncology team came by and apologized for the mixup and simultaniously enraged me by stating ‘you might as well get something accomplished during this hospital stay’ indicating that no one on their team suspected pneumonia.

Sigh. Let’s get the effing port in.

The technicians installing the port couldn’t have been more on their game. Keep in mind, I was having severe trust issues at this point. Loaded into the coldest table I may have ever laid on, the nurses went over every step of the procedure making sure that all the uncertainty and nervousness about what was about to happen was alleviated before we started. I was so relaxed that I slept right through it under some twilight anethstesia.

The other pieces of the puzzle weren’t so fun. A breathing test that just enraged the biopsy wounds. A heart test that involved radioactive blood. A full body PET scan that left me literally radioactive for a day to anyone within 5 feet of me. And of course, the bone marrow draw.

I obviously escaped from the hospital. No I didn’t have pneumonia. And yes I was still irked at the fact that they held me in. But we managed to get two weeks of staging tests done in two days. If there is any silver lining to be found in that stay, this would be it.

So now I wait. I know that Chemo is coming. I just don’t know how much or how long. I know I have cancer, I just don’t know how bad.

I often think of the people who came before me on this road. The human guinea pigs that took the doses of Chemo, or the first radioactive injections. How did they ever get this system right? How can anything that makes me harmful to others within 5 feet of me possibly be helpful to me? How do I know the system will work for me?

Those are all huge questions that are simply too big for me to fathom. I’ve put my faith in God, that God’s got this covered. There is really nothing I can do at this point but take the treatment and let the doctors drive. But I trust that God will be guiding their hands and watching over the treatment of my body and soul through this process.

I hope you’ve found this as informative as I have found it to be therapeutic. I don’t wish my situation on any of you, but if you or a loved one has to endure a situation of this magnitude just remember a couple of simple things.

1) Positivity is your best offense/defense
2) A little perspective can go a long way
3) God has got this

Thanks for reading. —cc

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* Kris Visselman, Director, Interactive Publishing Product Development,
National Geographic
* Steve Dorsey, Vice President/Research + Development, Detroit Media
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* Craig Walker, Photographer, The Denver Post
* Jeff Neumann, Designer and Illustrator, The Denver Post
* Christopher Dirgo, CTO/Envie Media
* Mark Holly, Interim Design Manager & Ad Designer, The Denver Post

For more details, see the go here.

On its face, its a lackluster idea that has the potential to become a breeding ground for pervs wanting to show you their junk. The only person that seems to have found a plausable use case for the site is Ben Folds. When Ben Folds is the extent of your positive cultural impact, I think it might be time to hang it up.

But the power of ChatRoulette isn’t in what it gives us directly but in how many good ideas could spawn out of such a bad one.

What could I possibly be talking about? Try these to start with…

Reel Roulette An amazing take on how to discover the work of new motion graphic designers everywhere. For those outside the field, this is your way in to discovering just how much amazing work is out there. To those in the field, this immediately puts the little guys on the same level as the big names in the industry and helps uncover the hottest new talent. It’s a side project from the talented @nickvegas from the Grey Scale Gorilla team. It’s win-win all the way around.

KittehRoulette Not nearly as serious as the Reel example above it but for those that can easily get lost on YouTube clicking on silly Kitten videos all day, can you imagine what would happen if you no longer had to click and you just got a steady stream of cut Kitten videos all day? Yup, we just lost half the office on Monday. Epic win and I wouldn’t be surprised if 100 or so knockoffs of this idea ranging from CarCrashRoulette to KickInTheNutsRoulette weren’t up by Tuesday morning.