High and Low

It’s happening! Right now, this very instant, the first giant tubes of chemo (with an appropriately sinister nickname of “Red Devil” for both its wicked side effects and the color they say it’s about to turn my urine) is pumping through a tube into my chest. I waited 56 days, 1 hour, and 38 minutes to begin treatment for cancer after a Doc told me for the first time that I had the stuff, and the wait has finally ended! This is kind of messed up, but I’m actually excited to be here slurping up my poison through my fancy new “technological enhancement” as I call it, or “port” as the rest of the world lamely describes it.

The pale, hairless, and sleeping (I hope…) people around me, though, are serious buzzkills. They look like cancer patients on chemo; solemn, pasty Ghosts of Christmas Future just lying there as Emily and I are over here grinning like idiots into our phones taking selfies with duck lips, which I didn’t realize until just now I’ve never before attempted and am poorly prepared to execute (I have no lips!). But hey, what the hell, you only get one first chemo appointment in life, and we’re gonna’ make the most of it. I even wore my new “chemo shirt” that Emily bought me, despite the fact that I’m convinced she just re-branded a women’s breastfeeding shirt. Luckily there are no hungry babies around here with big ideas.

And the soundtrack to Chemofest 2019? Empire of the Sun is opening us up with “High and Low”. Listen to it, and you’ll know exactly how the first day of chemo feels. It’s such a good song, and it perfectly describes this whole journey. It’s all just highs and lows, and the fun part is that you never know what you’re gonna’ get in a day. It’s Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates. Sometimes you even feel both high and low at the same time, which I didn’t know was possible. It’s probably a lot happier and more energetic song than this saddest of places deserves, but dammit, it just feels so good to finally be doing something about the cancer, even if it’s gonna’ make me lose all my hair, pee bright red like I just left Chernobyl, and, (the least cool of all the side effect of all) give me leukemia in 3-5 years.

Today I’m thankful for the highs and lows and the everything in between. I can remember having climbed 25 different mountains in my life, some of them a few times, and I’ve been scuba diving and looked down over a wall that plunged 3,000’ down into the depths of the earth, and in between those two extremes I’ve seen and continue to see so much radiance, beauty, and love here on Earth. Even the pitiable forms that only slightly still resemble people lying in their recliners next to me and which I am destined to become still retain the image of our suffering God; He was, after all, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

I don’t know what it is about running a liter of death into your veins, but there’s just something about it that makes life seem awfully sweet. I can’t wait to get home today and see Nora and Wyatt. I can’t wait for the fall and I daydream about the first time a tone drops when I get to go back to work and drive big red fire trucks again. There’s so much good coming as we're running life full tilt at its most absurd.