The diarist on the table at the Stanford University Advanced Medicine Center
A cancerous lesion on my brain stem--and two hours of driving in Bay Area rush hour traffic to visit a sick friend--finally announced its presence with authority at about nine on the evening of August 29th.
I'd had a slight headache all day, and felt a little wonky, but I had looked forward to the drive. That lesion, though, was insistent that my right eye veer left, and the brain power needed to wrangle it back was exhausting me.
All hell broke loose in my head after we got home.
Suddenly, I was on my knees in the bedroom, gibbering like an idiot and trying to stop whoever it was from driving that nail into the bump on the back of my skull. My wife bundled me into the car and headed for Stanford Emergency ten minutes away. The ride was bizarre. The lesion is on my brain stem, and my right eye was struggling to do its job (I could see, just not the same thing as the left). Everything was kaleidoscopic and painful and confusing and... in retrospect... terrifying.
I stumbled into the emergency room under my own power, was triaged, got CT scanned and MRI'd, then diagnosed, and enough drugs to get the pain settled down.
The Stanford Tumor Board met and decided that hands on neurosurgery was not the best way to go. I was in the care of Dr. Iris C. Gibbs, head of Stanford's Radiologic Oncology Department, and Guru of CyberKnife the next day.
The technology is scifi -- little linear accelerators guided by x-rays and computer-generated images are tilted and whirled around my head to several precisely-targeted positions from whence a particle beam zaps cancer cells into oblivion.
Metastatic cancer is challenging, but I'm being treated at one of the best places for this kind of thing in the world, so my prognosis is: Great Until Further Notice.
First of all, thanks to my love, my friend, my wife, Mary. She is the reason any of this is possible, and she saved my life and got me ready for it long before Thursday night. There are no words...
Second, thanks to my family, my friends, and that lovely constellation of bodies on the internet with whom Mary and I connect for your support--in macaroons, prayer wheels, yarn, dog treats, killer cheeses, online rants, comments, and in many other ways. My brother and his wife, Haley's mom-and-dad, PhylanBob, Lorie, Malph, Steves, Point Of Order, Stanford University, its hospitals and clinics, Dr. Anthony P. Lam (who chased the tumors out of most of my torso (before and after), the clinicians, technicians, and staffs of the Infusion and Radiologic Oncology departments, the folks at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital who performed a biopsy on my right lung this Monday. Just going to that side of the hospital--knowing what they do every day for children--made it a joy and a privilege to be there (nailed it, Doc!). And to my friends on Infinite Loop -- I am reminded of you every day I walk through the hospital's doors. You are doing great work here, too.
One more thing and I'll wrap this up.
Do not stop fighting for this country. Do not stop fighting for the love and the compassion and the brains and the talent and the hard work that create this wonderful, wondrous, good and great America we love. Do not stop fighting for what is right.
America is the right idea in the hands of the wrong people. We fixed it before and we will fix it again. For good.