By the seventh treatment in early August, they could barely get the IV in my arm. My veins had always been like beautiful accessible tunnels of life. Every nurse that ever tapped me when I donated blood complimented me on my veins. By the seventh treatment it took the third and most experienced nurse three tries to find a good vein. I sat there as she roughly tried to stick the needle into various places on my hands and arms. 

“Nope, that one’s gone.” the nurse was calm and methodical if not terribly gentle compared to the younger women on the floor. 

“That one’s done, too” she continued to wander around my arms, holding the needle between two fingers. Was I “done” already? That’s all I can take?

“Ah, there we go” she spotted something on my forearm. I never looked at the needles any more, so I turned away and let her do her penetrating business. A few seconds later she stood up and walked out of the room, leaving me with the other two nurses. They continued hooking me up to the infernal machines. I started to get more nauseous by the second. My chest was tight and I couldn’t breathe. I went pale, then green (according to my mother), and then reached for the nearest trash bin where I proceeded to empty my stomach. 

I hadn’t had the first part of the treatment injected yet. They weren’t even done hooking up the saline solution. Well this…sucked? I continued to heave past the point of actually throwing up. Here I was puking my guts out in front of all these other Cancer patients. Most of them didn’t pay any attention. I couldn’t help but noticing that I was the youngest person sitting in a bed getting treatment. My mother asked that we get a little more privacy on my behalf, and they moved me to a private treatment area so I could be less of a distraction to the other patients. 

The nurses gave me a direct IV injection of an anti-vomiting drug called Maxeran. 4mg of Ativan on top of that and it was like the boat stopped rocking. They put warm IV bags of saline on my arm to help with the cold feeling. I sat there and counted the minutes until I would be able to walk out the front door. I tried to imagine the clean air and not the stale, sanitized air of the Cancer ward. 

Things were looking more and more dire with every treatment. As the chemo did its job it also ravaged my body in every way possible. I felt like I was dying, and I wasn’t sure it was just the tumour. How bad was our medical technology if the treatment made you feel worse than the Cancer? Or is this what it felt like when you started to lose the battle? I tried to go somewhere else in my mind and think about other things.

The next three weeks are a blur of restless tossing in my bed, sweating and wrenching and thinking how long it was going to take for me to die. If this treatment didn’t work, I would have radiation at least, and then possibly a blood cell transfusion. I’d need a donor my type and everything, and it would cause a lot more problems with my complete absence of an immune system. 

My body was barely keeping ahead of the treatments, from a statistical standpoint. My red and white blood cell counts were extremely low, but always just above the threshold of “too sick for treatment”. If your body didn’t have the stamina to keep up blood cell production, you were into transfusion territory. With no immune system and a host of medical issues that can be caused by blood transfusions, that was always held as a last resort. 

***

***

It was almost my birthday and I had barely anything to look forward to. I figured mathematically that I would probably see 24, but maybe 25, definitely not 30. Due to my extended chemo tour I had “cancelled” my official birthday party plans. Alissa and I were sort of getting along but very, very distantly. I really only had one thing in my life that I was still holding on to: The new Julie Doiron album. 

I know, I know. It’s lame to use a record to anchor your thoughts around, but music is important to me. Sometimes certain artists produce work that resonates with me in a very deep and personal way. Moncton, New Brunswick’s Julie Doiron had produced some of the most deep and affecting music I have ever heard. Her new album, Goodnight Nobody, was already looking like her best work yet. If nothing else, I was going to go out on September 7th and buy that CD. 

It’s the little things you hold on to (at the end?). 

There was a bonus milestone. Just about 3 weeks after my last chemo treatment the day before my birthday—September 4th—Julie Doiron was set to play in Ottawa at a small club downtown. Tickets purchased. Let’s do this.

***

My eighth and final treatment was a larger clusterfuck than the previous one. I was ten times as nervous and about a hundred times more nauseous. They had given me a prescription for something called “Nabilone”, which was supposed to be a synthetic THC that basically got you to relax. I took two before we left for the hospital, and I think that was the worst idea ever. I didn’t get “high”—not that I knew what that was—I just got dizzy and even more sick. I was having trouble walking, talking, the whole thing. But not in a classic stoner way, more like a classic person having a stroke way. 

Everyone was rushing around me to get me sedated and calmed down. The next thing I remember I am hooked up and ready to go, and I spend the next three hours dry-heaving into a waste paper basket every few minutes. It was like, totally bogus, dude. 

Some “trip”. I was convinced that all the years I had avoided marijuana were justified if this is how I was going to react. Of course, it was admittedly some kind of synthetic reproduction of the real thing. I hated all of the drugs they were putting inside me, and this one was the biggest let-down yet.
There was a great anti-drug campaign when I was a kid. The commercial jingle went:

“Drugs drugs drugs: Which are good, which are bad? As your Mom or Ask your Dad!” 

I knew now, they were all bad, and my parents would probably agree with me. I sat there in that green padded hospital chair and took my medicine as best I could. I shifted back and forth and tried to find a comfortable position. There was none to be had. I tried to keep my stomach from jumping around more than I was. I couldn’t distract myself, my brain wasn’t working. I was passively witnessing the input my senses were sensing, but I couldn’t process or analyze anything. I was reacting in real-time, unable to keep any thoughts in my head for more than a few seconds.

After the treatment I was still very much out of it. I stumbled to the bathroom, stumbled to the car, and finally I remember stumbling into bed. When I finally came down from my haze I realized, this was my last chemo treatment. All I had to do was endure this final round and I would never have to do this again. Unless, of course, it didn’t work.

***

The “crisis” that started on my birthday had its origins a few months back. Alissa’s best friend from back home was getting married (to the man she’d been with since high school). It was going to be a grand affair in the park of her hometown, and Alissa was the maid of honour. She had a great dress picked out, and we had purchased airfare with the tiny bit of room we’d clawed away on one of our credit cards. But the night before she was supposed to fly out, she fell apart.

I had never seen her this panicked or frantic before. She was crying, screaming, rolling around on the bed. She didn’t want to go, she kept saying. She said didn’t want to leave me. Did she not want to fly? She’d flown before; just last year when her grandmother died. I tried to calm her down but she was just too upset. I could barely reason with her. If she wasn’t on that plane in 12 hours we were going to forfeit almost $600 in airfare. She wouldn’t say she wasn’t going and she wouldn’t say she was.

I was too sick and tired to help her, I just wanted her to solve her own problems for once and just let me sleep. After a few hours of her back and forth, I told her I did not want her to fly. I called the airline and cancelled her flight for her. Now she was upset at me for ruining her best friend’s wedding and not herself for not being able to fly. But then there was something else. In the hour of fighting and discourse that followed, she finally screamed at me:

“If I leave you then you’ll die and I won’t be there!!!” 

There was silence. Minutes, maybe? Probably not. I just stared at her in amazement. Was this the real her? Did she really have no idea how to handle this situation either? Did she care after all? Maybe there was some hope after all.  

I did a self analysis as we talked over the situation. My body was drawn out, emaciated. I had a throbbing headache and my joints ached. But my mind was fine after the first few days of treatment. The chemo drugs were out of my system by the 4th or 5th day, and between the hours of Noon and about 9pm I was basically “okay”, just a bit grumpy and nauseous. I had already proven that my body wasn’t all that “weak” several times, and it could be pushed. 

The idea of driving there was mine. We had rented cars and driven the last few trips back to her hometown and it wasn’t terribly expensive or exhausting. It was about seven hours door-to-door, and this time our destination was actually about an hour closer. Six hours sitting there with A/C and cruise control and the new Julie Doiron album in the CD player. When I realized I could “save the day” and go on a bit of an adventure at the same time, my brain was hooked on the idea.

*** It should be noted here that my wedding invitations are a very good example of how or relationship dynamic worked. She wanted to be the Princess in the Tower, and be swept away by her Prince. I wanted to be Charming but I ended up like a certain ogre (who will not be named for legal purposes). ***

It was “perfect”, in my mind. She was happy, we didn’t have to be apart, and I got to rent something that wasn’t a movie or video game! All I had to do was…drive all that way…and see all those people…in my omni-suit…with no hair. Okay so at this point it is probably worth noting that “perfect” had a whole new standard, and it was considerably lower. Compromises had to be made if I was going to survive this, let alone the cancer itself. 

My mother was more hysterical than Alissa had been to start with. She was absolutely convinced that if I went on this trip I would die, and would not accept anything less than my agreement to stay home. That was something I didn’t feel I needed to do, and I really didn’t want to tell my wife that I couldn’t drive because my mom said I couldn’t. I might have been as hairless as an Olympic swimmer, but I still had to fight for my own choices once in a while. 

It gave me some energy and drive, just like having to walk in the Summer heat to get groceries. I knew I could do it, because I couldn’t see myself not doing it. The thought of me staying home sick instead of driving all day just wasn’t in my brain at the time. I tried to reassure her that I was in control, and I knew what I was doing. It made me furious to hear her saying that I was too sick and too weak. I knew better, and I would show her. I hung up on her and we packed our bags.

I actually did feel pretty good the morning we left for the wedding. The fact that I was “done” chemo really helped with both my mental and physical state. Perhaps this was the end of the journey down the rabbit role, and I would wake up healthy and in a happy marriage. I woke up with what most would consider a moderate hangover, and I didn’t feel like I was in any way too sick to drive. We were on the highway by Noon and we were at her friend’s house just after dinner. It was a pleasant early Fall drive, and we listened to music and chatted. 

For the first time since my diagnosis, we talked about the Future. If I was done treatment and was in remission, what would we do next? Alissa said that she wanted to get back on track to where we were going before, and she’d like to try to get pregnant as soon as possible. I agreed with her plans, especially the sex parts. 

When we got to our destination it was just starting to get dark, and we went to hang out in the basement. The girls quickly got to work on wedding favours; trying ribbons around chocolate flowers. I busied myself with the one freelance job I still had: a semi-annual newsletter for an NGO. It was always at least 40 pages of the most difficult typesetting due to the language, but after eight issues it was the most relaxing thing I could do at that time. 

I was feeling very proud of myself. I stood up and made people happy, even in my state of physical depletion. I could still do things if I wanted, and that meant I wasn’t beaten yet. I had stood up to my mother’s best pleading, but I knew I was fine and I knew I had to do this. I “had it all”, such as it was. Happy wife, typography, and a semi-comfortable couch. My body was just going to have to deal with the rest of the shit. 

***

The wedding went like every average, decent wedding with average, decent folk. Nothing happened of note and I felt pretty good most of the day. The ceremony was in a large public park, and the weather was sunny and warm without being especially hot. I took pictures with my little digital camera. I remarked how beautiful my wife was looking in her bridesmaid dress, and probably took more pictures of just her than the bride and groom. After the vows were said we drove over to a small golf club for the dinner portion.

Most people knew who I was, and they knew I was “sick”. I was never introduced as “the guy with Cancer” but I did get a fair amount of “how are you feeling” questions? I was tired, and just leaning on whatever I had next to me. I had pleasant conversation with several guests about the day, the bride, normal wedding stuff. It was a happy day for these people, and I tried to be jovial and merry.

I wasn’t really eating, but I wasn’t totally wiped out, either. I managed to eat a small portion of my meal, but I was mainly interested in people watching. I didn’t really know anyone other than my wife and her friends getting married, so I contented myself to look around the room and try to put stories to faces. The truck driver, the doctor, the international spy. The cancer patient sat in the middle of the room, observing. 

Alissa was moving around the room for most of the evening, chatting with friends and having a good time. She was so much more comfortable in her home town with her old friends. I wished that I could make her this happy, but it would a long time before moving was an option. My wife’s heart was here in her small town. My career and my doctors were both back in Ottawa. I certainly felt chained down, did she feel chained to me? 

By the time the dessert course was being served, I felt my energy start to wane. 8 p.m. on a Saturday night and I’m suddenly ready to hit the sack. We still had to drive about half an hour back to the house. I didn’t want to take her away from having a good time; she really needed a good night out. I would put up with my fatigue until she was ready to go. I wandered around the club house and found a quiet side room. I sat in the darkness for a while, watching people move around in the distance. 

Less than an hour later, she found me and told me she was feeling a little tired. I seized the opportunity, and we made the rounds. Many loving good-byes later we were on our way to the parking lot. Alissa was in a good mood, and we reflected what a great day it had been. I focused on driving and my mind sped off into the unknown. I tried not to think about the drive home, my next CT scan, and whether or not I was still cancerous in some ways.

I was never in the Present during this time. I was somewhere between the Past and the Future. I was lamenting my failures and shortcomings, and all the things I would never get to do. What did one good day matter if there were so few left? I looked over at Alissa, she was already sinking into her seat, her own tiredness taking hold. We spent the second half of the drive in silence. 

I was thinking about our wedding and how we’d felt at the time. Getting married at 22 was all about showing the world how strong our young love was. Back then we were at the start of a great journey. Now here we were on that journey, sitting apart and driving forward into the darkness in silence. 

How could I make this up to her? I had promised her so many things and now I couldn’t even go to the bathroom like a regular person. I had to get back to health and full strength quickly, that was the only thing I was sure of. If I couldn’t get back to work, and get my life back on track, I would never be able to make her happy. 

***

When we got back to Ottawa, I had my mother meet met at the car rental place so I didn’t have to walk the 20 blocks to the apartment. I should have expected a confrontation after our last phone conversation, and it was delivered straightforward and calmly. Alissa was not good for me, and I needed to separate from her immediately and there were people in my life who were ready to help. 

To say I was resistant to the idea would be not doing it justice. I was outraged, insulted, hurt, and I let her know it. I felt like I was being called out as a weakling infant who needed his mommy to step in and handle my wife. How could she not see that I was dealing with everything that came my way and I was still on my feet? I wanted a pat on the back and this was a sweep to the leg. I took it very personally. 

This was my strongest supporter, after all. If anyone knew how I was dealing with things, it would be the one person at every appointment, with me every minute of treatment. My mother was the only person outside of the medical community who knew my current blood counts, red and white cells. She basically cared more about me than any other person on the planet. But I couldn’t agree with her or do what she was asking me to do.

I had just faced the biggest challenge of my life, and she had been there every step of the way. I was fighting to preserve not only my life but my marriage and my commitments, and she was basically telling me to pack a bag and walk away from it for my own good. My pride just wasn’t going to let that happen, no matter who was insisting it was the best thing for me. As I saw it, it was the worst thing. 

We fought in the car for about 20 minutes, her pleading with me to get out of this toxic relationship and me telling her it was my decision and I would tell her when I was ready to leave. If she wasn’t going to help me in the way that I needed her to, then she was welcome to stay the hell out of it. I stormed out of the car and went up into the apartment. 

I wouldn’t speak to my mother for the next two weeks. It wasn’t like I had any more treatments; my next appointment was at the end of September. It was hard not to tell Alissa what my mother had asked me to do in the car. I was short on supporters so in this instance my wife would have to do. She had been quite close to my mom and was very hurt by the situation. 

***

Things seemed to be a bit more stable – if you can call it that – over the next couple of weeks. It felt more like the 3rd hours of a flight in a holding pattern. Alissa would go to work at the video store, and I would stay at home and recuperate with TV and video games. My mind was slowly coming back to me as the drugs cleared out of me. I had a complete meltdown one day over drugs, and I threw them into the garbage and down the chute in the hall. I was tired of how all these drugs made me felt, I’d rather go back to the cough from the tumours.

*** Note: In hindsight, I’m really sorry I didn’t take it back to a pharmacy like you should. But seriously, it was a cathartic moment and the closest place was like a 15-minute walk. ***

I only had two dates I was looking forward to: Returning to work at the beginning November, and the Julie Doiron show later that month. Oh, and I had another CT scan and follow-up appointment booked. I guess. For now I was trying to focus on the good things, and the list was short but good. 

Alissa did not want to go to the show, of course. She was more into 80’s Night kind of scene. Dancing and drinking and various sugary concoctions disguised as shots with vulgar names. I guess sitting on the floor listening to beautiful music isn’t everyone’s scene. I pity those people, sometimes. The rest of the time I just go to great shows like this one and enjoy them.

The club held about 200 people, but was basically divided in thirds by the bar area. So just about everyone was crammed onto the small dance floor in front of the stage. By using black-lights as the main lighting and black paint on almost every surface, it covered up how dirty and run-down the place was. At the time it was my favourite place to see live music, and I had even graced its stage with a few of my failed musical groups over the years. 

I had seen Julie play this venue several times already. The last time she was about a year earlier when she was very, very pregnant. She had bused in from Montreal with nothing but her guitar and a small amp. Her music is gentle and soft and is quite lovely. It was hockey playoffs, and while she was on stage the bar staff were actually drowning her out with their cheering. I am all for respecting one’s country, but please keep it down while the pregnant lady is singing. 

This time the crowd and bar staff were much more respectful, and it turned out to be a great show. She had no accompaniment as the last few times she had played Ottawa, so it was just her and the audience. She played for almost an hour, and in her unique fashion never looked at the crowd once but interacted and joked with us repeatedly. It’s as if she was terrified by stage fright yet driven to perform and be delightful while doing it. Simply put, it was worth looking forward to.

She stayed afterwards to sell the few records she had brought with her. I already owned all of her albums and once again she didn’t have any other mercy but I went up to speak to her any way. She was always friendly and smiling when talking to her fans, and I waited for a chance to speak with my favourite artist. I was nervous and couldn’t find any words in that moment. When everyone else who came up to the stage had left, I finally managed to blurt something out. 

“Hi. Um…” I stuttered. “…I- I really want to thank you for your latest record, and this show. It’s really helped me through a bad time.”

“Wow, thanks so much!” She replied warmly. I stood there awkwardly mute while she smiled and talked about recording the album and how the tour had been. I wanted to tell her why her music had been so helpful at such an unfortunate time in my life. But in my head it just seemed weird to tell someone that their album helped them deal with Cancer. I thanked her again for the show and she thanked me for coming out to the show. I let her get on with clearing the stage. As the DJ started into his first of many alternative rock hits I headed for home. 

All in all it had been a really great experience. I felt like I had been silly trying to talk to Julie Doiron but in the back of my mind I was trying to make sure that if this was the last time I was going to see her in person I thanked her for making such beautiful and meaningful music. Now that it was done I felt like I could at least scratch something off my bucket list. 

As I headed homeward I decided to walk. The night was a cool late-September evening, but it was only 11 o’clock and I had been feeling more physically able. I walked the ‘scenic route’ from the Market to my apartment, taking me past the Parliament Buildings. It was a cloudless night, and the wind was keeping things just cold enough to conjure up thoughts of the coming Winter. 

I was heading back to work in just over a month. Alissa and I were doing alright. I had my next appointment with Dr. C next week to learn my status, and my fate. I was pretty sure that the Cancer was gone, but I had no medical proof of that yet. Until then I would just have to believe that my body was fighting the good fight and keeping me alive for the time being. 

When I got home Alissa was already asleep. I crawled in to bed and embraced her. She curled in to me and I fell asleep for the first time in weeks without hours of tossing and turning or 2–3 of my little white pill friends. It was a good day. There would not be any of those for a while. 

When I went out with “the guys” (a revolving band of friends, co-workers and acquaintances), I could just relax and do what guys do best: Drink, consume questionable quantities of meat, and admire the female form. Sometimes sports entered the conversation, but I rarely had anything to contribute. I could occasionally recall some score or trade I heard on the radio to sound like one of the crew. I was never part of any boys’ clubs, ever (just ask my four closest friends before Alissa: Mariel, Ange, Adrian, Stina, and Andrea).

Most of the girls at Hooters were very friendly, and very good looking. As we sat in between rounds of beer and plates of wings, the evaluations would pass the time. Some were ridiculously good looking, but some with a critical flaw that would make her less attractive. I usually didn’t find the same waitresses attractive as the group. I apparently have a very peculiar way of deciding whether or not I find a girl “hot” or not. I think it’s mostly just the energy and personality, but there are certain physical qualities that can benefit a nice cheerful disposition. 

Ultimately every once in a while my Cancer came out during our wing sessions. Sometimes the guys would use it to get the waitresses to hug me. I kind of liked to see the variety of reactions from different girls. Most were sympathetic and were very nice about it, others’ eyes went wide with horror. Cancer, was that contagious? If that’s not what they were thinking, why did they stay away from my side of the table for the rest of the night? 

It was just any other day for the rest of them. They probably had way more interesting lives to go back to. I had to go back to that apartment. I had to try to talk to that person I loved. The pills, the TV, and the bed. If I wasn’t to drunk I would be able to probably run around Final Fantasy Online for a bit. I was staying up pretty late at this point, reverting to my natural night-owl hours of sleeping from 3am until at least Noon, but more like 2pm on a good day and 5pm on a bad day. But from about 5pm until Midnight, I had the will and the energy to do just about anything. 

Right now, it was just me and a group of guys drinking and chatting. At midnight I would turn back into Travis Gobeil: Cancer Patient. Treatment #7 was just around the corner, and after that there was just one more round. Just thinking about the chemo started to make my stomach churn. Or was that the beer? Sweet, delicious beer. Who knew beer was super amazing? Now…I couldn’t really “taste” at this point, but when I was super parched on those Summer days, that amber mana really hit the spot like no other beverage had ever before. 

I never ate quite as many plates as the other guys, or drank as much beer. But I always left the Hooters with a full stomach and a swimming head. I was just not an experienced drinker, especially with beer. I usually left earlier, too, and no one lived in my direction. Wanting to keep some of my manhood intact, I would stumble out onto Dalhousie and meander up the sidewalks to the bus stop. 

My ride was only four stops, and most times it was just a quick 5-minute run without incident. Other times—I’m loath to admit—were not so successful. A few times the bus jerked awkwardly up the street through traffic, and it was hot and packed with drunken youths. By the time we got to my stop I usually got off just in time to throw up in the trash bin. Once I ended up throwing up in my hands and shirt, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. The 5-minute walk home was awesome. 

It was worth it, all things considered. Being able to get out and get drunk like a regular 20-year old made me feel normal for a few hours. Despite the sometimes violent repercussions, I made sure to get out at least once the week before each treatment. It was my weekend pass until I had to get back to my “regular” schedule. 

I crawled into bed and waited for Alyssa to come out of the bathroom. It was only 10:30pm and she wouldn’t be out for at least another half-hour. I had no intentions of peeing in the sink (there were dirty dishes in there anyway), so as long as she came out within 30 minutes we could avoid talking. I tried to clear my head but my thoughts inevitably turned to the list of procedures I was going to get. My breathing increased and my head started to wobble. Here we go again.

Panic attacks are hard to identify if you’ve never had one. I was completely frozen in place but sweating and racing heartbeat like I was fleeing for my life. I couldn’t breathe all I could do was let my mind swirl and my blood race. I soaked my half of the bed before Alissa came to sleep. I took two Ativan and tried to calm down. They were getting stronger, and harder to calm down. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take. 

I wanted to distract myself. I wanted to feel normal. I was a 23-year old married man who likes designing and playing video games. As a married man there was one distraction that was quite good, and also kind of the worst thing ever. Yes, it’s time to talk about how my sex life was going. 

Graphic Content Warning: Please skip to the next series of *** if you just don’t want to possibly be scarred for life (but it’s more pathetic and sad, than graphic)

***

Alissa and I were basically virgins when we met five years earlier. We were each other’s first sexual partner, and over the course of our relationship, our sex life had gone from great to almost non-existent. The first few years of our relationship were filled with sweaty afternoons and lazy mornings. Then things cooled off, and then froze over almost completely. For the first six months of marriage—the so called “honeymoon” period—we had sex only a handful of awkward, uncomfortable times. I thought that planning pregnancies would re-ignite some fire in the bedroom. The wood was very dry, and there was no spark. 

Having Cancer certainly was not the libido booster you’d expect. The uncertainty of our future and the physical stresses on my body were basically enough to make sexual relations an afterthought. But the longer we went without having sex, the louder that thought became. After a while, it started shouting from behind the cloud of drugs.

For the first week after each chemo treatment, I was not allowed to have unprotected sex because of the toxins in my system. Not that it was ever an issue; during that “drugged out” week I couldn’t even get an erection. It was like a damned Ken doll down there until the middle of the second week at least. By the third week, I was well enough mentally and physically to not only want sex, I down right needed it.

You know that part of “Fight Club” where he’s listening to the woman speak at the Cancer group. She’s so close to the end and all she wants is to get laid. That’s exactly how I felt, and it didn’t make the slightest difference to how my wife treated me in the bedroom. If she was in the mood, she would allow me to have sex with her. Otherwise it was useless to even bring it up; it would just start a fight. The rejection and the added tension weren’t worth the risk most nights.

Some nights I would push my luck. She wouldn’t be in a bad mood, and with some coaxing she would agree to some kind of sexual foray. Always the same sequence of operations, though, and always making sure she was enjoying herself. It wasn’t like I wasn’t enjoying myself, but the lack of variety started to bother me more and more the sicker I got. It actually occurred to me that I might to die without ever getting to enjoy any sexual positions other than our “usual” two. 

I wanted a “sexual” partner. Or, I guess I just wanted my partner to be more sexual. She was when she wanted to be, but never when I wanted her to be. I got to bask in her sexuality as long as I didn’t “demand”anything of her. I might have been able to put up with that for a long time, but what did a dying man have to do to get some doggy style once in a blue moon? Never. Ever. Ever. Don’t even ask. 

It was sort of like the lottery, only with admittedly far better odds. Every day was a new opportunity for her to be “the day” where she’s in the mood an instigates sex. On any given evening, after however long the bathroom, she would emerge from her readings wearing nothing but her finest birthday garments. She would come into the doorway of the room I was in and lean against it seductively for a few seconds and smile at me. Then she would go into the bedroom. If I was in the bedroom I would get a nice sultry walk-in entrance. 

Having sex was the only time I felt “normal” during this period. For the half-hour or so between arousal and climax I got to be a regular 20-something guy doing what us regular 20-something guys do best: Poorly servicing young 20-something girls. 

Afterwards, we were a young couple, embracing in the heat of battle against something that could quite possibly actually lead to the “’til death” part of our vows. I wasn’t “dying” yet. She was barely holding on ignoring the problem and acting like I wasn’t as bald as an eight-year old from head to toe. Would she leave her shift early to see me off at some hospice centre? Would she even acknowledge that I was dying if she couldn’t acknowledge my illness? 

“My thoughts were so loud” would echo  Modest Mouse in my head as I tried to drift off to sleep with Alissa in my arms. Tomorrow was another day of Cancer, but right now was just another night with my wife in bed. 

***

My treatments were affecting me more and more, and that was coming out in different ways. I was always bored, and looking for something to do, but could never focus on anything. Puzzles that seemed to delight the seniors at the hospital confused and confounded me now. Television was just a blur of images and sounds. I couldn’t handle a complex game like Final Fantasy, even. Timing and numbers just didn’t stay in my brain. 

The one game I could play—and played relentlessly—was an obscure Japanese game called “Katamari Damacy”. You were a tiny prince, and all you had to do was roll a ball around an environment and gather up stuff to make a bigger ball. That was the objective of every level. You started gathering pins and buttons off a floor, and by the end you were rolling up people, cows, cars, and even buildings. I don’t think I have ever played a simpler and more hilarious game before or since.

(If you have played the game, you are now hearing the theme music. You’re welcome.)

Playing the game gave me some sense of accomplishment and joy in a time that seemed to be devoid of such things. If I couldn’t have a career, or a happy marriage—or even sex—I could still roll up things into a ball like a boss. It was colourful and musical and happy. It felt good to have some effect on the cosmos, even if it was just contained inside my television. My little prince could do great things, and make awesome balls of stuff. A small bright star of joy in a universe of unease and discomfort. 

Whether it was sex or video games, I needed distractions. My treatments horrified me now. The three days of anti-nauseant pills were basically enough to get me over the worst of it, but the dizziness and fatigue persisted for well into the second week. I was weak, and sore, and my joints made it feel like I was walking in sand with weights. My chest ached constantly—evidence that the chemo was working—or so they told me. I thought at some points I could factually feel the tumour in my chest breaking up, but that was probably just gas. 

More than I needed sex, I really needed my wife to come to my treatments. I needed to hold her hand. I needed her to tell me everything was going to be all right. On the surface she was the devoted wife, taking care of her ailing husband. Just below that thin crust of marital complacency I saw nothing but a void of emptiness. We didn’t talk about it, and we didn’t talk about the Future anymore, either. Our entire relationship seemed to be on hold while we waited to see if I was going to be alive to continue with our master plan. 

That was the reason why I was fighting. I was fighting to be able to fulfill the promises I had made to Alissa—to hold up my end of the bargain. I wanted all of those same things: the car, the house, the dog, the kids. I certainly didn’t want to die. It just wasn’t part of the plan. I went to school. I worked hard. I got a job. I got married. I did all the things they told me to do. I was going to beat this thing, simply so I would be able to have what I had the success and happiness I had rightly earned. 

Right? Didn’t it work that way? I certainly felt that from Alissa. Her resentment started to come out in the latter part of the Summer. It was my fault I got Cancer, after all. She married this guy in a city she didn’t even like living in. It was too far from her family. But she agreed that once he had a successful career she could have babies. She had earned it, hadn’t she? 

I tried to see it from both sides whenever we fought about money, the apartment, the dishes, the laundry, the bathroom, the cats, her smoking, my hair on the bed, living in Ottawa, not living somewhere else, not having kids, her job, sex, not having sex, not talking about sex, not desiring the other person in any way whatsoever or else you won’t see what’s under these pyjamas for a month…. You know, normal couple stuff.

We were both trapped in this situation. Stuck in this apartment with a dwindling bank account balance and nothing to do but sit here and try to get along until we figure out whether or not I was going to be alive to continue to play. Fun, right? No, not fun. Not any kind of fun. 

It was the idea of the family I wanted that was most important. I wanted to build a family with her, and all of that was pretty much fucked now. I had made a lot of promises and worked very hard to get where I was, but it wasn’t good enough. It certainly wasn’t good enough for Alissa. Was she really only with me for the practical, physical outcomes? The house where she wanted, the kids she wanted to name, the car she wanted painted pink. Where did I figure in to her plans? 

Alissa was mostly working day shifts during the week, which gave me the apartment to myself for the few hours I was active in the afternoons. I couldn’t handle anything creative; I just didn’t have any will to make anything. I mostly just sat around watching home improvement television. When I had the mental focus I would fire up whatever video game could give me the greatest escape. 

I used some of the cash that my coworkers had given me to purchase Final Fantasy Online that had just come out. It was the first “massively multiplayer online” game for the Playstation 2. You could create any type of character you wanted, and go on adventures in a gigantic virtual world. It was a great escape for anyone with real-world troubles. 

I spent most days running around the game, killing small creatures and exploring dungeons and learning to fish. With just my thumbs I was riding around on a giant bird in search of treasure and experience. I could meet people from all over the world and we could team up against larger, more powerful monsters in new and dangerous areas. I had a group of regular friends I would meet online for adventures throughout the day. None of them knew I was a Cancer patient, slumped on his couch sideways. To them I was simply Phaedra, the Elvaan Monk who was in search of fame and fortune. 

For a while, this escape was completely viable. But as with most games, once I’ve figured out the basic mechanics and probabilities, it becomes a grind. Even in a massively multiplayer online world, I quickly grew tired of standing around waiting for enemies to spawn so I could kill them for a 0.02% chance to get the leather pants I was so desperate to find. (Seriously, my character didn’t have pants until level 9, and it really bothered me)

Something about the endless “grinding” for experience points, gold, and loot just wasn’t enough to keep me interested. Investing so much of my time into a virtual character seemed to be a waste of what I felt was a very limited amount of time left. If I was going to die, did I really want to spend the remainder of my time waiting for killer rabbits to appear in some virtual cave? 

The deterioration of my physical condition was becoming hard to ignore. I was sore, everywhere, all the time. I was emaciated, pale, hairless, and I looked about 20 years older. I slept 16-18 hours a day, though I wouldn’t really call it “sleep”. I found it more and more difficult to get a good restful slumber. I couldn’t relax my mind or my body, and I tossed and turned, never really falling completely asleep but never being fully awake. I would get up every few hours to go to the bathroom, get some water, or just pace around the apartment. 

This is when the frustration started to really come out. I felt trapped and confined. I didn’t have anything to do but relax and get better, and that was the one thing I couldn’t do until they stopped filling me with chemo drugs. The fear and anger combined inside me and crippled my already weakened mental state. The stress was starting to tear down my last barriers against complete hopelessness. 

***

My physical deterioration was slow and steady. Every day I stayed in bed a little longer, ate a little less, and retreated further into my isolated world. To my close friends and family I was dealing with things as well as could be expected. I had a dark sense of humour that everyone said was going to get me through this. Inside was growing more bitter and resentful by the day. 

It was unusually hot, even for mid-July. The Sun and humidity turned our apartment into a giant white oven. We had a small air conditioning unit in our bedroom but it only made that room bearable. The rest of the apartment stayed hot and humid for most of the Summer. I had spent most of last July inside a wonderfully cold office building. I only had to tolerate the heat going to and from work. This year I was spending every single day inside this apartment, sticky and sweaty and dizzy and nauseous. 

One particularly warm day I woke up to find that we needed some groceries. Alissa had already gone to work so I phoned her and asked if she wouldn’t mind bringing home some cola and snacks. I was a couple weeks since my fourth treatment so I actually had an appetite. She flat out refused, and started to get upset with me. She said she was having a busy day and just wanted to come straight home after her shift. I didn’t bother to ask her what she planned to eat for dinner if one of us didn’t go shopping. I put on some clothes and my “bald guy hat” and set off to the store across the street from Alissa’s work. 

Everything was fine until I got about half my items scanned at the register. I started to grab the bags and realized that I had probably bought too many items to comfortably carry by myself. Four full bags plus two packs of pop would have been a challenge for a healthy body, and here I was sizing up how I was going to get them home. I considered putting some items back but we didn’t really have any proper food in the house and I wasn’t going to buy myself Coke and not get her Pepsi. I grabbed my purchases and waddled out the door into the afternoon Sun. 

It was only about ten city blocks; the walk usually took about 15 minutes. I was walking slower than usual, and the weight of the bags and drinks quickly started dragging me down. I barely made it one block down the street when I had to stop and take my first rest. I started to break down the distance into small manageable waypoints between here and the apartment. After a few minutes I picked up my good and proceeded to the next place I planned to rest. 

I wondered at the time if the chemo was really the worst part of this. I was sweating so much it was going into my eyes and blurring my vision. I couldn’t wipe my face with no free arms, and I became locked into the pacing of my slow walking. I just looked down at the ground and kept putting one foot in front of the other. After what felt like miles, I looked up to discover I was still less than halfway home. This was going to be much worse than I thought.

I never really felt like I was going to faint or fall over. I just felt overheated like I had just sprinted a marathon. My chest was so tight and my breathing was short and laboured. The sweat had soaked through my clothes as if I was walking through a thunderstorm. The throbbing pain of my head started to become unbearable as I strained to keep moving forward. Another eternity later I was about four blocks away. 

I put the bags down and sat down for a few minutes. I took stock of my day and how it was going. My wife couldn’t be bothered to bring home groceries, and my disappointment and frustration had already turned to guilt. She had a point, it wasn’t like I was doing anything important today. Maybe getting some fresh air in the Summer Sun was was just what I needed.

I needed to get home. I started to consider my options. The bus would only take me most of the way home, and I didn’t buy a bus pass that month anyway. A cab was right out: too expensive. Perhaps if I just held my hand out someone would notice the nice fellow with Cancer and offer him a ride home? I sat there for another few minutes before setting off again down the street. 

It went like this for some time. I would walk a bit shorter each time, and rest a little longer. By the time I turned the corner and was within sight of the apartment, I was barely able to get a few feet without having to put the groceries down. I think it took me over an hour to walk home. When I finally got in the front door I dropped the bags and headed into the shower. I crumpled like paper into the bottom of the tub and laid there while the cold water poured over me.

I felt sort of good. Even though all I had done was get a few grocery items, the ordeal and the accomplishment made me feel like I wasn’t so weak or broken. The resentment of Alissa’s refusal to help had become pride in being able to do something myself. I didn’t end up in the hospital and here I was with melted ice-cream and warm cola to celebrate the moment. 

*** 

My first CT scan as a full-fledged Cancer patient came and went without incident. I was an “expert” at this point; I basically didn’t even wait for the technician’s instructions I simply hopped onto the table, pulled my pants down to my ankles, covered myself with the provided bed sheet and put my arms above my head and waited. The giant doughnut-shaped machine spun to life and the lights above me started to flash as the procedure commenced. 

The little happy face blinked green as a monotone voice spoke “Hold your breath”. It was actually a little easier to hold the air in my lungs this time. I remember the first scan they needed to do a few extra passes because I couldn’t keep myself from coughing. Now I simply passed back and forth through the circular passage a couple times, and then the machine powered down. I hopped off the table, pulled up my pants, and threw the sheet into the used linens bin. The technician came out to say the scan looked good and I was free to go. He was about my age, with tattoos on his arms and an obvious “rock dude” swagger. My age finally became of use in this place, and I managed to convince him to let me see my scan—for science!

It is important to note that the medical technicians, nurses, and janitors are legally not allowed to make any medical diagnoses whatsoever. They would be instantly fired (or worse) if they said anything like “looks good” or “uh oh”. But you can weasel your way into the computer room and have them show you if you tell them you’re only looking because you think it’s cool. 

It was cool, but that’s not really why I was looking. I watched the screen intently as it zoomed through my body top to bottom. I saw my throat and vocal chords, then my lungs and heart. I saw a distinct white shape appear between my heart and thorax. It grew to the size of a small golf-ball, and then shrank away as the scan moved downward. When the scan moved upwards, I looked extra carefully at the lungs and didn’t see anything scary. Did that mean the Cancer was retreating? I knew better than to ask my new friend, and I thanked him for letting me see the scan. 

***

I got the results at my next routine appointment with Dr. C. She came in as she always did and asked me how I was doing. I was here with just my mother, again. I felt like the walking dead and my whole body ached. I did my best impression of me coping well. I probably even smiled. She calmly flipped through papers in my medical file, which by now was at least three inches thick. After I was done bullshitting, she began to go over my CT results and where we were at. 

“Well the mass has shrank about 75%.” I sat forward in my chair with excitement. “The treatment has been very effective. The metastases in the lungs are not showing up on the scan or the x-ray. We are doing great.” 

“So what about the other 25%?” I asked, eternally optimistic. 

“We are going to give you two more treatments of chemo.” she always spoke in terms of “we” and not “you”. “The we’ll do another CT scan to see if the mass shrinks any further. It could just be dead tissue, but if it’s not we may want to do radiation therapy.” If it was 2014 and not 2004, I probably would have had something known as a “PET” Scan, which would definitively rule on whether or not the Cancer cells inside me were still “active” or not. At the time the closest PET scanners were Hamilton or Montreal, and the waiting list was too long to be of any use to us. 

So my chemotherapy ‘sentence’ was extended by two cycles; six weeks more fun fun fun! Now I was finally glad to be on short-term leave. There was no way I could have worked through any additional chemo. It would be tight, but my 16 weeks of paid leave would run out exactly four weeks after my 8th treatment. If I didn’t have to get radiation on top of that, of course. 

***

Money was the biggest stress factor at this time. I was unable to work my day job, and also unable to take on freelance jobs on the side. I had one regular client that I only laid out two publications a year. I had turned down all other work. My wife was getting a steady salary, but when it all added up we just weren’t able to keep treading water for much longer. It wouldn’t have neen so dire if the back and forth with the company’s insurance hadn’t delayed things for so long. 

By late July I had been out of work four weeks. The initial payment was being processed—finally—but I hadn’t seen a dime in almost six weeks. Our bills were all behind and we were starting to get those “friendly” phone calls from various creditors. If we didn’t get some money by early August our cable and phones were next. What would I do without my home improvement shows in the afternoons? This was becoming a real problem. 

Almost nine weeks without any income from me and it finally happened. Just after my 6th chemo treatment I saw a deposit come into our account online. It was back-pay for the last 6 weeks (they didn’t pay anything for the first 2 weeks of my leave, because of reasons). I paid all our credit cards and the cable and phone bill, and I finally felt some stress leave my body for once. It felt good to not have to worry about something, even if it was just financial.

Alissa and I were basically just going from fighting to avoiding to just sitting in the same room not talking. Of the time she was at home, I would guess she spent two or three hours a day in the bathroom. She claimed she was just reading a really good book, but with only one bathroom and my compromised bladder it led to some awkward confrontations. That was probably the most we interacted on any given day. We didn’t talk about my condition. We didn’t talk about what might happen. We just didn’t talk about anything other than what was on TV or her day at the video store. 

I wanted to talk about things with her. I felt such guilt for marrying her and then not being able to deliver on all our promises Then there was the anger; because I couldn’t even talk about what I was thinking with my own wife. She just didn’t want to address it. It was apparently my problem to deal with unless it made her look good to be the “supportive spouse”. She would slip into random fits of loving and kindness every once in a while, and I thought that was the “real Alissa” coming out through all the cloud cover. It was the Alissa I wanted her to be all the time, not the person she really was. I was really good at deluding myself by this point, though. 

I guess this was around the time my panic attacks started. They would trigger whenever I thought about my treatments, or the Cancer centre, or smelled that “sanitizer” smell… or even saw the colour orange. That sickly dark orange colour would make my stomach invert and my whole body start to panic. Panic attacks for me were the complete loss of physical and mental control. Complete overload. Rapid breathing and heart rate but otherwise an almost complete state of catatonic shock. Frozen in place and terrified. 

Lorazepam was becoming more of a crutch than a tool. One every night quickly became two, and then four was needed to really relax me. “May cause dependancy” written in the fine print, but it was pretty darn necessary at the time. I was asked by some why I never smoked pot during this time. I was almost 24 years old and I had honestly never taken a single puff up to that point. I was a “straight-edge”, right? No extra chemicals in the system was my philosophy. Of course, now I had all of the chemicals in my system. I didn’t want to add something else into that mix, I was “high” enough as it was. 

I don’t think anyone ever specifically put a lit cannabis anything into my hands during this time. I don’t think I hung around with the right crowd for that. Either way it just never became an option or an opportunity. Perhaps it would have helped me a bit, but I don’t think any burnt plant matter could have helped me get through what I was going through. Maybe after, you know, for science. But now? No. 

I had survived six rounds of chemo, and I had two to go. I was on the long road of trials, like in those Greek tragedies. I didn’t need any distractions as I plodded forward on my quest to not die. At least for now, I was just fine being “drug-free”. (and a bit of a self-righteous ass about it, if you knew me back then. Sorry about that.)

The worst drug in my menagerie was “Prednizone”. It was the fourth member of my “CHOP” therapy, and it definitely cut me down (I’m really sorry about that pun). It was actually a type of stereroid taken as a pill for the first few days after each treatment. I think it sort of “supercharged” the other chemo drugs, but the result was my head was swimming. Basically take the world you see, tilt your head sideways about 45-degrees, and now go about your day. If you wear glasses, rub them with dirt/oil to simulate the foggy, distorted vision I was experiencing. 

Doing anything pleasurable for the first few days of the cycle was basically pointless. I couldn’t focus on anything like a video game, and sex wasn’t even physically possible and actually hazardous to Alissa’s health unless I was using a condom. My whole body and its fluids were swimming with radioactive and poisonous substances. I spent my sick days in front of the television, mindlessly watching the images of home repair and remodling on HGTV. Somehow watching people improve their lives with a nice renovation made me hopeful that I was doing the same thing internally. 

It was already May and after three treatments I thought I had the process down. With every treatment cycle, however, I was more and more fatigued and less quick to bounce back. My sick days and vacation days were almost all used up and still no word whether or not I would be getting disability leave through my work insurance. There was always the option of government medical leave, but it paid less and we were already falling behind financially. 

Trying to maintain some sense of normalcy was easier as long as I was working. I had even joined the company softball team to get out of the house and do something that wasn’t related to my Cancer. Any opportunity to feel “normal” like any other young adult, especially if it was jovially referred to as “beer league”. I was welcomed to the team and I tried to play as hard as I could. To be fair, I wasn’t very good at baseball even at peak physical form. 

Most games were very low intensity. When enough of us showed up to form a whole team, games were a mostly about drinking. Most of the players were younger married guys trying to get out of the house for a few hours, and I was no exception. Alissa and I were getting along on the surface, but underneath that crust of civility there were a lot of things left unsaid. 

One game went above and beyond seven innings and beer when you got around to home. At some point in the game, one of my coworkers had lost his platinum wedding band in the outfield. It had just slipped off when he was removing his glove, and his wife was going to kill him. While some of the guys looked for less than ten minutes and fucked off home, I decided to stay until he left or we found the ring. 

Hours went by without any luck. We even went to the nearest mall and I purchased the last two metal detectors at the electronics store. We were pretty sure they would detect platinum, and I even charmed a jewelry store employee to let us test our new hardware out on a few wedding bands. We combed over the field in the dark until almost midnight before declaring our search a failure. 

I was so tired I don’t even remember how we got home. It must have been bus since neither of us had a car. Finding the ring was going to prove that I was still capable of affecting positive change in the world. My only memories of what happened next are how I felt. I had failed. I was a failure. I would not get another chance. The ring was gone. My legacy of saving this guy’s marriage would be another unfinished chapter in my abridged life story.

****

For almost three months my Human Resources manager had been fighting the insurance company on my behalf, trying to get me the benefits that would allow me to take some time off. She had used every tool and tactic available to her, and kept me updated as to her progress. They had agreed to give me prescription benefits early on, which was good because every three weeks I got another $300 loot bag of pills with my chemo party. It only covered 80%, but compared to zero this was a fantastic discount. 

Medical leave, however, was another issue. They had denied me short- and long-term disability benefits because of my “pre-existing condition” discovered during my probationary period. Without those benefits the numbers just didn’t add up, even with government medical disability. Our financial situation was tenuous even before I got sick, now we were slowly sliding backwards. If I couldn’t work or get benefits, we would probably lose the apartment. 

Imagine having moved out on your own to go to school, only to return after getting married and a great job in a growth industry. It was definitely not something Alissa was even considering, but I was the one who kept on top of our finances. She was never a horrendous spender or anything; she was mostly happy to have money for cigarettes and the occasional DVD box set of ‘Friends’. She trusted me to manage our budget to pay off our debts and get us the car and house that we planned for. Of course, all of that was on hold while I worried where the next credit card or cable bill would come from.

I needed to keep working for the rest of my chemo treatments, that much I was sure of. I needed the distraction to keep my mind off other thoughts. But after almost 3 months it was getting harder and harder to get to work at all, let alone my traditional 15 minutes late. My responsibilities since the launch of the new website had only increased, and I was letting all sorts of jobs slip through the cracks. My manager was fighting people off as best she could, but even she couldn’t protect me from the inevitable. I wasn’t going to be able to work through this.

Thanks to one of the best human resources managers the local tech scene ever saw, I wouldn’t have to work much longer. After months of letters and appeals, the insurance company decided to give me the 16 weeks of short-term disability in my original contract. They were not so generous with my long-term benefits, which they once again denied me coverage. It was a partial win, and that was enough for me to decide to take a leave of absence from work. 

***

My fourth chemo cycle was almost routine, if one could consider that a good thing. Alissa was working and my Dad travelled regularly for his job, so it would be just my Mom and I. As I handed my red card over to the ward clerk, she took out my charts to look over my blood work. Before each treatment you had to get your white and red blood cell counts done. This is to ensure that you are healthy enough to actually receive the chemotherapy. If your white cells were too low your appointment could be rescheduled, resulting in a delay of treatment. It was critical to keep the maximum levels of toxins in my system for as long as possible to kill the Cancer. 

“And I see you brought your wife with you again. How nice of her to support you.” The clerk smiled at my mother, who was equal parts shocked and flattered. She did look younger than most women her age, but did I really look old enough to be her husband and not her son? Did I really look that bad?

I shuffled over to the waiting area before I got called in to the abattoir down the hall. Two elderly women were energetically putting together a large jigsaw puzzle that must have had over a thousand pieces. I wondered if they started it themselves or were just moving it along during their time here. They seemed to be enjoying it, so it hardly mattered I guess. We sat in silence and I tried to guess which one of them was sick and which one was the supporter.

It was during this treatment that I started to notice when my nausea actually started to set in. Oddly enough it was well before they even finished putting the IV in. In fact, this was the first time the nurse didn’t nail it on the first try. The veins in my hands they had been using were starting to deteriorate—another fun side effect of the caustic chemicals being pumped into me. I was looking at the row of IV poles and bags going down the back wall of the treatment unit, and that’s when my stomach started to do belly flops. I was developing a pavlovian response to the mere sights and smells of the Cancer ward.

By the time the nurse had the needle in and the chemo drugs were brought over, I was almost throwing up. My body knew what these bags of liquid were going to do to me, and it was reacting violently. They gave me an anti-nauseant—right into the IV—and some Ativan to calm me down. I tried to relax and think happy thoughts, but all I could think of was how many CC’s of medication I had left before they would unhook me from this infernal machine.

Friday’s are by far the worst day to get treatment. Everyone wants to have the weekend to recover, and they are always at least a few hours behind schedule by the time I would arrive in the late afternoon. If my appointment time was 3pm, it was not unusual to be there waiting and getting treated until after 7pm. By the time I am dropped off at home my head is swimming and I can barely stand from fatigue. It wasn’t a choice at this point, there was just no way I could keep working through this.

***

The decision to leave work once I had at least some financial cushion was the easy part. I had only pledged to my employer to work “as long as I possibly could” but I remembered his words of advice. In the six months since my first contract I had seen people hired and fired for all sorts of reasons. I didn’t expect any special treatment, but deep down I felt like as soon as I was out the door someone else was going to come in and steal my seat.

My present status as an employee was actually quite good. I was the only graphic designer in the building, and I had also demonstrated that I knew more about HTML and CSS code than even the most senior developers. It was definitely beneath their skill levels and they were happy to give most of the front-end coding work to me than dirty their hands with such a simple markup language. My years of schooling and personal improvement had made me a valuable member of the development teams. I had finally “made it”, and now I was walking away from it all just because of a little Cancer.

I felt weak and powerless. Once word got out that I was going to be taking a leave of absence I was flooded with last-minute work requests. Occasionally someone would also enquire how I was dealing with everything, to which I almost invariably replied that I was doing fine, just tired. I was far from fine, but I wanted everyone to think that I was going to be back at full strength before they had a chance to miss me. 

I don’t know if it was confidence or ambivalence, but I was tasked with finding my own replacement for the four months I was going to be away. I only knew of one designer that I would have wanted to hire. He was one of my closest friends in college, and a fair bit more creative and talented than I saw myself. However his coding skills were almost non-existent, and I knew if I suggested him that it would come back to haunt me. 

I didn’t want to find a replacement that was better than me, but I didn’t want the person to completely fail, either. I wanted them to trust me, and if I didn’t find the right person I thought it was just another strike against me if and when I came back. On some level, I wanted to find someone worth of carrying the torch for me if I didn’t.

By the time my last day at work arrived at the end of June, the answer to my replacement came in the form of two people. My friend did end up getting hired on my recommendation, and they found someone to handle the coding duties that he couldn’t. It gave me a small ego boost knowing that it took two people to do the workload I had been handling, especially during treatment. I was reassured by all my superiors that I had a seat waiting for me when I got back.

It was company tradition to have lunch every Friday. Summer weather meant barbecue on the back patio, and I wanted to enjoy my last free lunch for a while. At this point I couldn’t even really taste food due to the side effects of the chemo. I constructed what looked to be a delicious stack of meat and condiments in a bun, but in my mouth it just tasted like eating old newspapers. I sat in the Sun and tried to enjoy the company. 

The word had spread that I would be taking some time off, and some of my coworkers had gone and put together a “survival kit” of things to help me during my leave. The best gift of all was the $400 they had collected from everyone around the office. The bill money we didn’t have was now in my hands, along with enough left over to get a game or two to entertain me. It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, and I was overcome with emotions. I mumbled some gratitude to everyone as I tried not to cry in front of my employers and coworkers. 

My final hours at work were spent getting the last few odd jobs off my desk, arranging and backing up my files and cleaning up my work area. Just before I left to go to the Cancer centre I was furiously trying to line up everything on my desk at perfect right angles like a German game show. I wanted everyone to think that I had everything under control, and as a result I almost missed the bus. I took one last look at my workspace, turned the lights off, and waved good-bye to my manager. A few people came out to give me best wishes, and I could only look down at the floor and mumble responses to save myself from breaking down in tears again.

That night as I was waiting for the chemo drugs to take me to Nausea Town, I tried to focus on the positives. For the first time since I was 14, I didn’t have to go to work or school. I didn’t have to do anything. All my doctors and nurses said to do was “rest and get well”. I made a list of activities and goals for my time off. I thought about doing some “bucket list” items, but I was still trying to be positive so I just decided to be as lazy as possible. I would sleep as much as I wanted to, play video games and watch TV.

It was the worst of times, but at least I didn’t have to be at work on Monday.

End of Part 1

As I sat in my manager’s office, we went over any last-minute items I had to take care of. It was just like before going on vacation, except I was not going on vacation. We sat for a while, chatting. She had the supportive air of a big sister, and she was both sympathetic and encouraging. I was glad to have someone like her in between myself and the Boss Man. Everything was set up so that my presence wouldn’t be missed for the next few days. 

I spent the morning pushing out a collection of banner ads for various online sites. I worked methodically through the various sizes and file requirements, and for a little while I was able to be a normal, 9-to-5 grunt, working for his daily bread. When I had finished outputting all of the files, I sent them on to my manager to spread them around the Internet. My mind returned to the afternoon’s appointment. 

Just before lunch I started to clean up my desk and arrange my files into something resembling order (i.e.: 90-degree angles). I would be back on Monday, but I somehow felt the need to make sure my work was sensible to others should I not return. I wanted them to think that even though I was gone, I was still able to make meaningful contributions to the company.

My Dad picked me up, and we set off to the hospital. His job as a sales force manager took him all over Ontario and Quebec, but he made sure that he could be in Ottawa today. We talked about my expectations for the treatments and I did my best to be optimistic about my outlook for a few minutes. 

My “cycle” was three weeks. The first few days were supposed to be the worst of it, so I planned out my remaining sick days such that I would take two or three days off per treatment, usually coinciding with a weekend. This way our finances wouldn’t be affected unless I stopped working entirely.

I walked up to the reception desk and handed my red card over, as a solider reporting for duty. To my chagrin, I had been transferred. I was told to go to another section of the hospital for my treatment. There was construction in the Cancer Centre itself. I would have to wait to see what the newly completed Cancer Treatment Ward looked like. 

The room I was directed to was like any other hospital room in any other ward. It was a few floors above ground, and the day was sunny and bright. My Father and I stood around talking for a few minutes before Alissa came in. She was incensed by the change of venue. She took up her position in a chair beside the bed and I started playing a game on my laptop. A young man in a white coat came in and introduced himself as a pharmacist. He was here to go over the drugs that would be put in my today, their side effects, and the various risk factors for each of them. I wasn’t very engaged in the conversation as I tried to solve my digital puzzle. I think he was there for about half an hour, detailing about a dozen different medications. 

The main brew of drugs I would be receiving was known as “CHOP” therapy. This apparently stands for: Cyclophosphamide, Hydroxy Doxorubicin, Oncovin and Prednisone. All those letters and they come up with a verb used by axe murderers. Doctors are really good at picking comforting names for things. 

I would be injected with three of them today, and the fourth one in pill form to take home in a goodie bag. If my Mother had been there, she probably would have taken meticulous notes. Unfortunately due to some uncooperative coworkers she was unconventionally late. As he began to list the various side effects, it sounded like the worst commercial disclaimer ever.

“…….heartburn…..”   “….fever…..” “…blurred vision…”  “white/red blood cell loss” “….blood clots…..embolism….brain…..” “constipation” “…migraine….insomnia…dizziness…”  “…hair loss…” “…..heart failure….”  “….water retention…”  “mouth sores”

I don’t know why they bother to try to educate patients on the side effects of chemotherapy. The guy should just walk into the room and say “You’re fucked!” and run away laughing. Under side effects just list “All of them”. 

After explaining all of the risks associated with chemotheraphy, I wondered why we didn’t just leave it up to the Cancer. That’s when I started to see the entire medical industry in a completely different light. They weren’t here to make me better, they were here to kill the Cancer—and if I was lucky—not me. It wasn’t about “health” it was about outliving the death that was inside of me. They were going to put enough poison in me that I could actually die from the treatment. I always thought chemotherapy was a “wonder drug” that saved people’s lives. The reality was that the medications were like giving a homicidal maniac a bomb and hoping he blows up only other maniacs. 

I was not only not in control of my own body, I was beginning to doubt whether or not the doctor’s were. This is really the best thing medical science can come up with? Sure it kills the Cancer cells, but it also kills hair, blood, sperm, and all kinds of other GOOD cells. What is this, the dark ages? 

The pharmacist continued to outline the medications that would be used to counter some of the side effects of the chemo drugs. He produced a small yellow pill and explained that it was called “Zofran” and it was one of the most powerful anti-sickness pills available. I would only need three per treatment and that turned out to be a good thing; each pill was $22. My pharmaceutical salesman Father was even a bit surprised at the price of those. 

In addition to traditional over-the-counter medications that counter constipation, I was given some industrial-strength options. One was a brown pill called “Senokot”; it actually looked like shit. I got a viscous orange liquid called “Lactulose”. He warned me not to take it “unless you were going to be sitting on a toilet in the next half hour.” Powerful shit.

Then there were the sleeping pills. More than one of my medications were apparently notorious for causing insomnia and restlessness (because I didn’t have enough of that already). He gave me a bottle of tiny white pills labeled “Lorazepam”—hey I actually knew this one! It was my new friend that had helped me forget my troubles when the cough was at it worst and answers were still a long way off. Now it would help me get some much needed rest when my body was at its lowest. 

He put all the medications and information papers into a small brown bag. The total cost for these pills was over $300. I was still two weeks from the end of my probationary period; I would have to pay for this one out of pocket. We thanked him for his helpfulness. He wished me luck and went on his way; probably to deliver more expensive drug regimens to other patients.

My mother came in shortly after the pharmacist had left. She was frazzled by her coworkers’ unsympathetic behaviour, but I told her it didn’t matter now that she was here. I tried to outline what had just been explained to me, but I could only remember the various red flag warnings and high-risk side effects. She went down to the pharmacy to get me a dossette; one of those plastic containers that divides pills by time and weekday. I thought those were just for old people that couldn’t remember their meds. She got me the one with several compartments for time of day, so I could remember to take some with breakfast, some with dinner, and some before bedtime.

After what seemed like far too long, a nurse came in to start. I had never had an IV put in before, but I had given blood dozens of times so it wasn’t much more traumatic.

She hooked up all the various hoses and leads, and then I was injected with a very small needle directly into the IV. One down, four to go. Next, she brought in an IV bag of bright orange fluid. It looked just like the concentrated “orange drink” syrup you get for large parties. This was the one that was going to make my pee change colour, which was both fascinating and terrifying. 

“Don’t hold your pee too long if you don’t have to,” said the nurse as she engaged the pump machine. “This stuff can really burn up the walls of your bladder.” 

Everything they told me was either bad news or scary. I didn’t feel anything yet. I asked her how soon it would be before my hair fell out. 

“It usually happens about three weeks in.” she said. “It will be sudden and terrifying.” Something else to look forward to. 

While the IV bag slowly emptied its corrosive cargo into my body, I was playing my game and passively participating in conversation. The man next to me was on his last treatment, and he was detailing some of the harder points of treatment for him. He looked to be in his 60’s yet he spoke with an enthusiasm that made me feel old. Other than the IV bag in his arm you really couldn’t tell he was sick. If he could get through this unscathed, what was I so worried about? 

The first treatment was actually not the worst experience ever. After all of the shock and awe of discovering that I had Cancer and learning about the months of treatment ahead of me, to actually sit in the hospital and receive chemo didn’t seem that bad. All of the side effects were, of course, hours off. But I didn’t know that at the time. For the moment I was just sitting there watching my game and listening to the sound of the various machines buzz and ding around me. 

The longest part was the large bag of clear fluid (the “O” – Oncovin, or vincristine). This one seemed to take over an hour, and at several points during that time my head started to ache like I had just eaten too much ice cream. My sinuses and frontal lobe puffed up and burned cold, like taking a deep breath outside on a freezing cold day. The nurse came in and turned down the speed of injection, and the burning subsided. Another eternity later, they unhooked me from the infernal machine and sent me on my way. 

On the way home we stopped to get some groceries for the next few days. We stocked up on all the usual things for illness like ginger ale and crackers. I grabbed a few luxury items like cola and chocolate. Alissa bought some cigarettes. My dad dropped us off at the apartment and we headed upstairs. That was when the nausea started. 

I wanted to immediately lie down, but I remembered what the nurse had said about my bladder so I went to the bathroom first. It definitely felt different, and when I looked down the stream of urine coming out of me was bright orange. Not just a bit orangey, I mean like bright fucking orange. The combination of alarm and illness pushed me over the edge, and I threw up for the first time as a chemo patient. 

Alissa came up after her smoke; she had started smoking outside in front of the building a few days ago. She asked if I was feeling okay, and I told her I had just puked while pissing orange. I took my medications for bedtime and stumbled off to bed. As soon as I was lying horizontally, the world started to rotate around me. Gravity became indecisive and I spun around as if the bed was a carnival ride. I couldn’t concentrate on anything in particular, it was all coming too fast. My medications, my treatment plan, my chances of survival. I wanted Alissa—or anyone—to come in and comfort me, stop me from spinning off into space. I eventually fell asleep, the world rotating around my closed eyes. 

***

The first few days were all about learning new boundaries. Things that I used to consider trivial—like going to the bathroom—were now huge obstacles. In fact, my body reacted differently in almost any given situation. I couldn’t eat the same, I couldn’t sleep the same. I couldn’t even walk the same. I had no less than twelve prescriptions; some I take after chemo, some before, some all the time. I had four lines of defence against nausea and digestion issues. It’s was a long week of figuring out what works and what doesn’t and trying in vain to settle into a new routine.

I spent most of this recovery time trying to relax in front of the TV, which was basically impossible considering the drugs I was on also caused restlessness and aching joints. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, either. It was like my whole world had been turned to the side about three degrees. My vision was slightly fuzzy, too! It seemed to be caused by the fourth chemo drug, the Prednizone. I tried to make the best of it, but to be honest daytime television sucks and I didn’t have the brain power for most video games.

The one thing that became very apparent is that I was no longer in control of anything. I didn’t like that and I wasn’t ready to accept it at the time. I was pretty much an existentialist; I had always been able to control myself and my life and figure out the cause and effect in any given situation. If I have a migraine headache or stomach cramps, it’s probably because I ate or drank something I shouldn’t have. Now I struggled to maintain the most basic daily routine, and I found myself losing the more I tried.

One perfect example of this was my bowel behaviour. I had always been a pretty regular person, and I had never felt constipation on this level before. Unfortunately, my regularity was being affected not only by the chemo drugs but by some of the pills to counter the side effects of the chemo drugs.

The morning of the second day without pooping, I decided to try the orange-flavoured fluid in the large white bottle. I swallowed hard and laid down on the couch. Sure enough, less than thirty minutes later I was running to the bathroom as fast as I could. I will spare you the gory details, but I spent the next two hours having a most extreme evacuation of colonic proportions. I would try the small brown pills next time and see if that did the trick without the screaming and panic. 

The pain in my chest was terrifying. It felt like someone was sitting on my chest all the time now, but there were new sharp pains all over my body. I had no idea what was going on and I was so fixated on the “blood clots” the pharmacist had mentioned that I ended up in the Emergency Room. I have never gotten through triage and into see the doctor so quickly as when I said “I’m a Cancer patient, and I’m having severe chest pains.” Three hours and a chest x-ray later, I learned what heartburn and anxiety do to a person with Cancer in their chest. Ranitidine and Lorazepam and I was on my way. 

This was only the beginning. The first treatment was never the worst, it’s almost always a few treatments in that you really start to be affected by it. I was going to get as many as seven more treatments over the next 23 weeks, and I doubted that I’d be able to maintain this pace for very long. Short Term Disability was definitely going to have to be used, assuming I even qualified. If the first week was any kind of warning for what was coming over the next six months, I knew I was in a lot of trouble if my coverage was denied.

After a few days my head began to clear, and the world re-aligned itself. I still couldn’t focus a thought but that was nothing new. I made up my mind to get back to work and get as much accomplished as possible. I was going to be like that old guy in the hospital room: confident and unshaken. I put my best fake smile on and tried to not think about the road ahead. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. How long would that last?

My return to work was unceremonious. My salad dressing container had leaked while I was on the bus and I smelled like greek dressing. I had only technically missed 2.5 days and my manager made sure that I wouldn’t be missed during that time. I still had my hair and I didn’t look or feel that sick. The morning of the following Monday I was back in her office, plotting out my deliverables until my next treatment in two weeks. She was very compassionate, and we had a very low amount of pressure from on high for the moment. I was mostly just doing banner ads, and once you have the concept done you can just space out and format the rest. Spacing out was becoming my default setting. 

As for outside of work, I didn’t get up to much. You’d be surprised how having Cancer can polarize your personal network. Many of my friends were very supportive and told me all about how they would be there for me and anything I needed. All bullshit. Some of these people I had known since High School. I had bands, relationships, with these people. Never seen or heard from again. 

Other friends didn’t know what to do or say, they just wanted to be supportive. They took the time to listen and gave me the same “if you need anything” speech, but they actually meant it. There were only a handful of buddies that stuck around for the long haul. Among them was Josh, my work friend, and Darryl, an old friend of Alissa’s from back home. We had quickly bonded the first time we met, shortly after Alissa and I had moved in together. 

At the time, he was still in school in London. but taking internships in Ottawa. He never let anyone give in to their own whiney bullshit, and it was one of the best things about him. Among his other qualities was the ability to make anywhere he was the coolest place to be. It wasn’t any particular confidence or charisma—he just has this ability to have fun in any situation. This made him the best and worst person to be around. Did I mention he also introduced me to excessive drinking? 

I was in no shape to consume alcohol during the first week of treatment. By the middle of the second week—about ten days in—my appetite finally started to come back. Before that I had consisted on a diet of lemon water (like water…with lemons) and salted crackers. When Darryl took me out during the third week, I was not only hungry, but I was thirsty. He took me for all-you-can-eat wings at the finest establishment we could afford. Hooters.

(In our defense it was $9.99 all-you-can-eat wings, and the view was merely added benefit to cheap wings.)

I was never a big beer drinker before this. I had only really started drinking in earnest when I was 20, and three years later I hadn’t quite graduated from Hard Lemonades to real alcohol. I couldn’t tell if it was the heartburn or the tumours around my esophagus, but something in the back of my throat was like “Dude, beer me.” To everyone’s shock and amazement I ordered a pitcher of IPA from the bubbly brunette waitress. Gentlemen, let’s fucking do this. 

In a situation like mine, sometimes it’s really the smallest things that can distract you. In the course of a few hours a few of my friends would consume an inordinate amount of chicken wings. I wasn’t a big eater but in their presence I felt compelled to at least make a show of it. Most of them were able to put away five or six dozen, and I was able to chow down four dozen and almost a whole pitcher’s worth of beer. For a few hours, I was just another loser eating chicken wings, drinking beer, and staring at…the scenery… 

***

The morning of my second treatment, there was a buzz around the office. Everyone was to be an “all hands” meeting later that day in the boardroom. No word of what was to be announced. We could be the next big .com or we could all be fired. I was new to the “start-up grind” as it’s known, but it was eerily similar to the last dozen or so medical consults I’d had. Let’s just go into the big, poorly lit room and see what the man says.

Disney Land. 

The company had such a great year that the Boss Man was going to send the entire company and their families to Florida for an all-expenses paid vacation. 

To Disney Land.

For a second I was completely overwhelmed. This guy wasn’t scary he was awesome! He was rewarding everyone’s hard work with a free vacation! Then I sank into my chair as my dwindling white blood cell count popped into my head. What was it my doctor said about flying and public places? 

With almost no immune system the last thing I needed was to get on an airplane or go anywhere with large groups of people, especially children. Flying to Disney Land got a very resounding “HELL NO” from just about everyone I asked for approval. Only Alissa supported the idea, but in then end I did the “safe” thing and politely declined the trip. 

Disney Land would remain in my “not done” list. What else would I miss out on? 

***

My second treatment was much more “relaxed” at first. I knew the four drugs that were going into me. They spelled a horrible name (“C-H-O-P”). The IV went in easily and the first two drugs were in me fairly quickly. My mother and father were having pleasant conversation and I think we were actually enjoying each other’s company for the first time in ages. Alissa was standing next to me, holding my hand and rubbing my hair. At the time, it was just your average mop about 2-4 inches long. All of a sudden, she recoiled. 

“Your hair. It’s…” she just held her hand in front of me. It was full of my hair. 

I reached back and grabbed a clump of hair. With no effort, I pulled the entire tuft out in one yank. I held it in my hands for a minute before I let it fall in front of me. I pulled more hair out. It was absolutely painless and coming out in as large clumps as I could grab. I was equally horrified and amused. 

We added “buying hair trimmer” to our list of things to do in what I hoped would be a repeated “not totally fucking sick” period for the first two hours after the treatment. You’d be surprised what you can pack into a couple hours when you know you’re going to be bedridden for the next 24–48 hours. 

That night when we got back to the apartment, Alissa finally agreed to stop smoking in the apartment. The rooftop patio wasn’t open yet, but you know she was just good enough to go downstairs for a few weeks. I cut open the plastic packaging of the electric hair trimmer and sat down in the middle of our dining room and shaved my head of what remained of my hair. You can wait to go bald, or you can do the dignified thing and just avoid shedding on everything and everyone for a week. I never liked my hair, it never really did me any favours and I wasn’t sad to see it go. I thought about people who really liked their hair, like my wife. How would she react to losing her own hair? How would I? 

I swept up my hair just in time to take my first anti-nauseant and batch of sedatives for bed. I passed out before the sickness had a chance to take hold of me, and I was happy to sleep out the first few hours of my sentence. 

***

It was all about adapting to the new routine. After two complete cycles I had a fairly good idea of what to expect. Every three weeks I would go from “fine” to absolute zero and then slowly crawl back. The first week was bad. Nothing was right, mentally or physically. The second week was bearable. The third week was actually kind of “normal” other than being basically on a permanent hangover. I thought if I just maximized my sick days, holidays and weekends that I could just barely make it to the end of the chemo treatments. 

A friend at work had heard about my not being able to go on the company trip. He was getting married that weekend, and thought his new marriage would go smoother if he attended the ceremony as planned. He also politely turned down the trip. When I returned to work mid-week, he was kind enough to invite me and my wife to his wedding. It was where Alissa and had planned our “ultimate dream wedding” and probably my favourite place in the entire region: The Museum of Civilization in Gatineau (or “Hull” as it was known then). 

The morning of my third treatment was coincidentally the departure date for the company trip. My office at the time was in just the right spot to enjoy everyone waiting for the airport shuttles and chatting about how much fun they were going to have. A few of the people milling about outside my office were kind enough to wish me luck on my third treatment. I told them to have a great time for me and bring home lots of stories of how drunken Canadian developers defiled the Magic Kingdom. 

The third treatment went mostly the same as the first two, except this time I had no hair and one less supporter. Alissa was a full-time manager and we couldn’t afford to have both of us missing so much work. Since I was the one getting injected with chemicals she would go to work. My Mom and Dad sat and had polite conversation about the weather and my good spirits. I was happy to be able to work during my treatment and grateful to be working somewhere I was willing to work through Cancer for.

As the third part of my therapy entered my veins, the feeling of brain freeze started to ramp up like it had the first two times. This time, however, the pain was much more sudden and acute. It was as if my body was reacting stronger now that it knew what the drugs were going to do to it. The nurse adjusted the IV drip and the pain abated. As I stared at the machine pumping away, my stomach started to churn in time. I looked down at the floor and tried to tune in to my parents’ voices. 

The hardest part for me during this time was the numbers. I found it hard to avoid doing the math for how long I would be at the Cancer centre. I used my previous treatments as baselines and estimated my time based on the number of nurses and patients, the amount of fluid going in to me per hour and the time to clean me up and discharge me. The new flow rate was going to add up to an hour; I sank further into the padded salmon pink chair and tried not to think about anything. More numbers swirled in my head, trying to find some mathematical equation that would get me out of here sooner.

***

Less than 72 hours later I was getting ready to attend my co-worker’s wedding. I was putting on my “omni-suit” (the one suit I owned and therefore used at job interviews, funerals and weddings) and watching Alissa get ready. It was a rainy May afternoon and she wore a very formal black dress that complimented her red hair. She had it professionally dyed and styled by a friend. She was wearing just the right amount of make-up to accent without dramatizing her features. 

I had hoped we might have some “marital relations” this evening, but my stomach, head, chest and everything else were already advising me against any more physical exertions beyond sitting up right and not vomiting. She looked beautiful, and almost always wanted me after a few drinks. Of course, it wasn’t really up to my mental desires. I knew my body wouldn’t physically perform even if I’d wanted to. I decided to try to enjoy the evening in good company and go home early. 

We had a short cab ride from our apartment to the Museum, and we went down to the waterfront to the tent for the ceremony. Afterwards we were taken inside to the largest hall (the gorgeous one with the totems and huge windows) where we were presented with the open bar. I was told that I should under no circumstances consume alcohol right after treatment, and my stomach didn’t need any more reasons to hate me. My wife had it covered, however, and made sure to drink for the both of us. 

Of course, by dinner time she was basically shit-faced and barely standing herself. Three drinks was all it took to get her pretty intoxicated, and when she started drinking other people’s drinks and demanding I get doubles, I sort of knew where this was going. The “Fun Alissa” that I once delighted in had now become a liability at a co-worker’s wedding. Maybe if I’d been drunk I wouldn’t have cared. Luckily the dinner and dancing portions of the evening went by without any incident from either of us. We must have been quite the amusing couple to our table, but everyone was having a good time. 

The more Alissa drank, the more she wanted to drink and dance. I was basically like a 60-year old man trying to date a girl his granddaughter’s age. Following her around with glasses of rye and ginger for her and regular ginger for myself. By the time the dessert buffet was brought out I made it clear I was looking for my bed. Then her face turned on me and she huffed about wanting to dance more. I sat at my table alone and watched her dance in that great black dress and beautiful red hair.

I understood why she wanted to stay, and I decided to stay until she wanted to leave. When she had danced her fill around 11pm we stumbled up the escalators to a cab. I wasn’t sure who was in worse shape but I knew who had drank more and had more fun. It was a challenge to get her into bed, even. I don’t even remember undressing her or myself we just collapsed and passed out until late the next afternoon. 

It was almost like old times, except it wasn’t at all.

I was called into the examining room. It led around the back of the reception area in a dark, snaking corridor. The room was only comfortable for about three people, and already I was surrounded by Mom, Dad, and Alissa. Maybe the Doctor would see the numbers and decide she didn’t want to be a fifth wheel. Too bad, sorry! 

A nurse came in and did all my numbers. Weight, Blood Pressure, Temp: all within normal ranges. I was perfectly average in every way, except for the tennis-ball in my chest that shouldn’t be there. She wrote everything down in a very large binder that was already about half full of multi-coloured papers. I guess I wasn’t so average after all. She smiled and said the doctor would be in shortly. We waited in silence.

There were many more posters in this room than at the other clinics. They were packed with type and I could barely make out what they said from across the room. Most of them seemed to be info sessions for various support groups. There was a printed calendar that was full of times and rooms. 

March 1st, 3pm – Room B153 : “Coping with Cancer Stress” 

March 2nd, 1pm – Room A113 : “Stepping Stones”

March 3rd, 4pm – Room C405  : “Next Steps: Preparing for the End of Life”

I looked over at Alissa. She was looking down at the floor avoiding eye contact. My parents smiled encouragingly. The door opened at the doctor came in. 

Dr. C (a.k.a. Cancer Doc) was a Hematologist: A blood Cancer specialist. Solid tumours are where “Oncologists” work; Lymphomas and Leukemias were her trade. She was dressed in a white coat over top a black business dress with matching heels. As she began to introduce herself she spoke warmly and calmly in a professional voice. 

Everything about the “blur” and “tunnel vision” of receiving this kind of news is true. I didn’t react, I was completely still as she detailed the situation and my prognosis. 

According to the biopsy (biopsies–plural) results, I had an aggressive form of Cancer massing in my chest and spreading throughout my body. It was a sub-type of Cancers that attack the lymphatic—your immune—system known “Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma”. The biopsy had ruled out the more positive diagnosis of “Hodgkins Lymphoma.”

Great. I got “the bad Lymphoma.” 

The doctor continued to explain what was to be done with me. My CT scan had revealed the enemy’s position. There was a large white blob about the size of a large orange growing around my windpipe, and several metastatic tumours growing in my lungs. 

“Meta-whatic?” 

It wasn’t Lung Cancer, it was Lymphoma cells spreading to other places. Typically Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is “good” because it spreads in a somewhat predictable pattern. The “Non”-Hodgkin’s Lyphomas did not behave predictably. Sometimes they start in the neck, sometimes the groin. Other times they were “mediastinal” or “in your freakin’ chest”. When the alien was large enough it would burst out and spread to other vital organs in the body. In good cases, the stomach, or maybe liver. In worse cases…my lungs. This was not off to a good start.

My supporters were silent, except for my stepmother who asked most of the questions. I tried to nod and respond appropriately. I was thinking about a million things at the same time. The doctor’s calming voice faded into the background as she went on about large B-cells and White Blood Counts. What was I going to do now? 

With Cancer, the best chance for survival we know of is to remove as much of the bad cells as possible. In my case the “mass” wasn’t really a “mass” at all, and it was around in a very hard-to-reach area of myself. The next logical step was chemotherapy, which is a really nice way of saying “poison we hope kills more bad cells than good”. Fantastic. When the doctor outlined my treatment plan, she started talking in months, then years. 

My battle with chemotherapy would consist of six “rounds”—like a boxing match—at three week intervals. Each treatment was a powerful cocktail of chemicals designed to seek out and destroy all rapidly-multiplying cells in my body. Unfortunately, this meant as many good, hardworking cells would die: blood cells, hair cells, and sperm cells. I would be sterile for about a year, and possibly forever. I would start chemotherapy in three weeks, giving me time to bank sperm.

“You mean he won’t be able to have kids?” Alissa broke her silence. Her voice resonated my shock. I grabbed her hand tighter and she looked at me; her eyes reflected my fear. We had talked for three years about what we’d do once I had a job and could support having children. I didn’t have a backup plan, and I could see that she didn’t either. It was time to see what “in sickness and in health” really meant.

“We have good results with this treatment and we’re confident that given the disease’s aggressive behaviour that will increase our chances.” The doctor explained that it was like two freight trains colliding: the faster they are going the more damage they will do on impact. Of course, there would be some collateral damage. 

The side effects would be almost as bad if not worse than the current effects the tumour(s). It wasn’t the Cancer that was going to wreak havoc on my body, it was the medicine that would be overseen by a doctor and administered by a registered nurse. Fatigue, Nausea, Dizziness, Constipation***, Loss of Appetite, Insomnia… These were the drugs sent to help. 

My red and white blood cells would suffer the worst of it, depleting my energy and immune system. My hair would fall out by the end of the first month, and in her words it was going to be “sudden and terrible”. I would not be able to get Alissa pregnant for at least 3–6 months after the end of treatment. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to have sex with her for a few days after each treatment my system would be so full of the poisonous chemicals. I was going to be radioactive, man! 

I tried to ask intelligent questions, but I didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on. I knew I had Cancer. It was in my chest and in my lungs. It was slowly choking me to death, and if it didn’t stop growing it was going to kill me. I was going to spend the next six months getting chemotherapy and if I was lucky that was it. 

“What are his chances?” my Mother asked from beside me. She was also visibly upset and her voice cracked when she spoke. Dr. C explained that she doesn’t like to frame things in terms of stages or odds of survival; they prefer to deal with each patient as an individual person.

“Good. His chances are very good” the doctor spoke as one mother to another. Her bedside manner was spectacular. “He’s young and the treatment responds very well to aggressive Cancers. We’ll do four rounds of therapy and do another CT scan to assess his progress.”

“So what stage is he?” The doctor smiled at Alissa’s inquiry. Again with the stages. 

“I guess based on your current condition it would be a Stage Four.” See what she did there? I’m starting to like her, and not just because she is my best chance for survival.

“How many stages are there, ten?” she asked. I too, was ignorant. 

“Four.” Please be the good four… please be the good four…

“And Stage Four is….good?” I spoke, going almost full falsetto; almost begging.

“No. Stage Four is bad.” Dr. C was patient and informative. “You’ll probably want to take up to a year off after–”

I froze. What about work? I was a month into working for the next big dot-ca, and it was going well! I was knee deep in banner designs, website code fixes, and marketing materials. My desk was awash in paper printouts, half-eaten meals and cough drops. What was I supposed to do, just stop going to work? I had only been a full-time employee there for a couple months! 

All other medical jargon and timelines went out the window. If I had to stop working, I’d lose my chance to get on the rocket ship! I had stock options! I was going to make Internet millions and raise babies on my yacht! The minute I tell Boss Man that I’m this sick he’ll replace me and get the next hot shot kid in line. I barely know what I’m doing half the time. I found that if you say ‘yes’ and put in the hours you either succeed or you fail upwards. I was good at saying yes and had pulled more than a few rabbits out of my hat in my short tenure. 

I had just gotten there. I had just made it. We were right where we had always talked about being, but around us was a storm threatening to dismantle our embryonic family. 

“Get your sperm banking done and we’ll see you in a few weeks.” Dr. C stood up to leave, and my parents thanked her. I tried to thank her, but I just held Alissa in my arms. She was crying and so was I. We left the room and walked down the aqua-green mile towards the parking lot. I would be back soon, and not just as a visitor. I would be a patient.

***

Researching was a bad idea. The doctor made it sound so manageable, like when you look down off the top of the play structure and go “it’s not that high” and jump. When I entered the search terms this time I had a better idea of what I was looking for.

With most types of Cancer, the overall survival rate over 10 years is about 50%. That means after ten years half of people diagnosed with Cancer will still be alive. 

Half. 50/50. One in two. 

I’ll let that sink in if you’re not acquainted.

Now, silver linings are never something I have been a fan of. Don’t kick me in the stomach and tell me “at least I didn’t shoot you in the face.” I know it could always be worse. There are worse things than a 50% chance of survival (like 0%). But that doesn’t mean that you should feel grateful that something horrible happened. Humans just don’t work that way. Some things just suck, and the fact that there are worse things doesn’t make them suck any less.

According to some data, my particular Lymphoma was actually one of the most treatable Cancers. Generally if it didn’t spread to far outside your lymphatic system and you were under the age of 60 you were okay. Some statistics showed that the five-year survival rate for my age group with my cancer was as much as 96%. So this would be hard, but the data said I would probably live. There was some hope for survival.

How much would this disrupt my life? My self-worth was so tied up in professional success for so long I could barely see anything but my work. I couldn’t take a year off work; I couldn’t take a week off with everything going on. I was a valuable member of the team! …or so I perceived myself. How quickly could they replace me if I die? 

My thoughts turned to my personal situation. We’d have to put off getting pregnant for at least a year, that was pretty clear. What if we couldn’t get pregnant even after that? Would she wait around when all she’s ever wanted was to be a Mother. The Wife part seemed almost optional. Her mother had raised her alone and she had no knowledge of her biological father. How quickly could she replace me if I died? 

Alissa had been decidedly quiet since the appointment. She sat on the couch with the cats, smoking a cigarette and watching TV. She had barely comforted me at all, and I was in serious need of some love and affection. I stood in the entrance to the living room, not entering the space that was filled with her acrid smoke. 

“Do you think,” I began. “Maybe while this is going on you could smoke outside?” 

She considered my statement for a second and then replied “It’s too cold, and they haven’t opened up the rooftop patio yet.” 

So there was that. I considered putting up a fight but I was too depleted from the day. I went to the bedroom and collapsed. As I tried to fall sleep, I thought of all the places I’d never visit. People I’d never meet. Money I’d never earn. Children I’d never have. For the first time in years, I cried uncontrollably until I fell asleep. 

***

Preservation of Fertility is pretty important to someone under the age of 30. Most people who get Cancer have either had children already, or they never wanted them. In order to ensure little Travis Jr. could some day say “I love you Daddy” I had to do the unmentionable. I had to go above and beyond the call of duty. 

I had to jerk off into a cup. 

It gets better. We didn’t have a fancy pants sperm bank with nice clean rooms with adult magazines in Ottawa at the time. The lab’s procedure was for you to “produce a sample at home” and transport it to them within 60 minutes. Also, you have to keep it in your pocket so that the “sample” (a.k.a. your jizz) stays…warm. 

I didn’t have a car, and I was not going to ask someone to drive me and my 20 million friends to the sperm bank. No, it was OC Transpo for me. 

Do be able to obtain enough “good sperm” in one “shot”, you have to abstain for seven days—that’s a whole week—without any ejaculations of any kind. Master of your domain. If you so much as have a nocturnal emission because of Dream Cindy Crawford (you had to grow up in the 80’s), you cannot go through with banking sperm. I’ll let all the men think about that for a minute. 

It wasn’t overly difficult. Our “newlywed” period was long over and the recent circumstances had put a distance between us. I kept having half conversations with her, and then retreating to my office to do more research (avoiding 98% of the Internet). The only close encounter we had was the night before I was going to the bank. While I was cleaning up after dinner, Alissa came out of the bathroom in a sheer red lingerie getup. She had my immediate, undivided attention. My wife did a slow, sexy dance for me while I dried the dishes. She removed her tiny coverings and brought me into the bedroom. We hadn’t had any sexual congress in weeks, and here she was going the extra mile when I was least able to participate. I couldn’t remember the last time she was this aggressive or aroused. She wanted me and I definitely wanted her, but had she forgotten where I was going tomorrow? 

I resisted, she pouted. By the end of our encounter she was satisfied and I hadn’t been in that level of pelvic discomfort since my first girlfriend at 16. What did she want out of that? To ruin our chances of having children after this was over? Or did she hope to get pregnant now? I didn’t know how to approach the situation, so I just rolled over and went to sleep.

Early the next day I’m sitting on the bus with a urine test jar full of my own semen. I have about 45 minutes to get downtown, and barring unusual traffic, I should get there with about 15 minutes to spare. I looked to the old lady sitting next to me and couldn’t help laughing under my breath. I resisted the urge to share the joke with her. 

There was a short walk from the bus stop to the lab, and it was an unusually cold day for this late in March. I was worried that my tiny soldiers would freeze before they ever got to their frigid destination. I walked a little slower with my hand in my pocket, cradling the microscopic cargo. 

When I opened the door, I was greeted by a very nice woman who introduced herself as the doctor’s wife. She was very professional, but the questions she asked were among the most personal I ever had to have written in a medical document.

“How long did you abstain before producing the sample?” she asked.

“Seven days.” I timidly answered. I thought about last night and the red lingerie.

“Where and when was the sample obtained?” she continued.

“At home about 45 minutes ago?” I replayed the last hour in my head. Definitely a memorable one. 

“Did you keep the sample warm during transit?” she smiled as she looked up for my response.

“Yes.” Yes, that really did happen. I had a cup of sperm in my pocket on the bus. It was the best day ever. Can I go now?

“Please have a seat” she pointed to the waiting room. “The doctor will verify the sample and we’ll let you know if it’s viable.”

I sat down and waited to hear if I was going to be making any deposits today. After about ten minutes she came back out and told me it was good. I put my coat on and headed to work.

I repeated this process again the following week, and as before it was largely uneventful. I made it to the clinic with only about 10 minutes to spare, but as before there was no problems and they sent me on my way. I had deposited enough sperm for about a dozen inseminations. When the time came they would be injected into my Wife who had been taking hormone injections for up to 45 days prior. My Wife hated needles. If she was serious about having babies, she would have to get over her fears. 

***

There were several more appointments before the “big day”. Each time I was brought in and examined by any number of doctors and nurses. At this point, I was still of the thinking that my body was my own. I was not in control of my body any more, the Cancer was. In order to remedy that I had to admit my body was now theirs, to do with as they pleased. I was like a prize pig being raised for the county fair, and a blue ribbon meant survival. 

The worst part was being examined with other people in the room. It’s one thing to have a doctor examine your genitals for evidence of Cancer in the testicles. It’s an entirely different situation when your doctor is instructing others how to do the exam. But as an educator myself, I couldn’t say no when they asked to perform the same exam again. I was of no use to myself any more, but perhaps I could help them learn their craft. If that meant a extra strangers grabbing my junk, I guess it was a small sacrifice in the same of Science.

Each appointment I would go back to work and try to block out what was happening. I wanted to be a good employee, and a valuable contributor to the team. I needed this job. I needed my benefits. I pressed myself to get as much work done as possible in the days leading up to my first treatment. The site had been live for more than a month and the “crunch” period was winding down. I had a great manager, probably the best I would ever have. She let me skip as much work as I needed, and she made sure my deadlines were always achievable. Every morning I would go into her office and we would discuss what needed to be done versus what could wait. It was hard work, but I managed to get enough done every day that I didn’t attract the ire of the Boss Man despite my absences. I was holding it together, for now.

One day I was called in to see the head of Human Resources. She was an older woman who’s experience and wisdom predated even computers, let alone the Internet. She was warm and grandmotherly, but also feisty and quick-minded. It was by her extraordinary efforts that I would keep my job and finances in check throughout this ordeal. 

I had spent a lot of time in her office over the last few weeks. I was keeping her up to date with all the test and treatment plans. I had told her about my intention to take some time off to deal with all this, and she began applying for long-term disability on my behalf. I didn’t want to stop working until I absolutely had to; I didn’t think I’d have a job to come back to otherwise. We had worked it out so that I would take limited sick time off for each treatment so that I could ride out the worst of it at home. When I was out of sick time I could go on short-term or long-term disability, and I would get to keep most of my current salary. We wouldn’t be as well off, but we wouldn’t be destitute either. 

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.” she began. “As you know, you are within the 3-month probationary period, since you only became a full-time employee in January. The insurance company has decided that because you were officially diagnosed within that period, you are ineligible to claim benefits under the plan. They are calling it a Pre-Existing Condition.” 

My heart sank. There goes another plan out the window. If I couldn’t get sick leave benefits, how was I supposed to take time off and still pay our bills? I could apply for government assistance, but it paid fair less than the employee benefits I had been paying for the past two months. The numbers started to spiral and arc around me as I tried to figure out a way to make it all work. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m going to fight this for you. I’m going to get you as much of your benefits as I can. You just leave it with me, and concentrate on getting better.” The compassion and sincerity got to me. I cried in her office for about 15 minutes (not for the first time, either), then I went back to my desk. I tried to concentrate on work but I was too busy trying to figure out what to do about this new bombshell. I already wanted to work to keep my career, now I needed to work to keep my apartment. What if I became to ill to work? What then?

As I stared at my desk, Josh came up behind me and gave me a strong pat on the back. It jolted me back to reality and I turned to thank him sarcastically for the greeting. He had joined the company only a few weeks after me, and we had become fast work friends. He was my age and this was his first job out of school. Josh was one of the few people that knew I had Cancer from the beginning, and he hadn’t treated me any differently. We got up and went out for lunch.

While waiting in line to order our burgers, we were talking about my situation. Sperm banking was mortifying but it was successful. I didn’t even have kids, but they were already costing me $300 a year in rent. I started chemo in a few days and had a ride and my recovery time blocked out. I was talking about my preparations in the face of the unknowable tide of shit that awaited me, when the man in front of us turned around.

“You have Cancer?” he asked. 

“Uh…yeah?” I replied. 

“That’s awful. My uncle had Cancer.” Just as quickly as he had joined our conversation, he turned back and ordered a combo meal. What the ever-loving fuck? Josh and I exchanged confused expressions, and continued chatting in line. Thankfully, no one else had any pearls of wisdom and we ate our lunches in peace.

It was nice to be able to talk about things other than Cancer, and Josh was good about steering the conversation away from medicine and chemo and to current events and appreciation of the female form. We had a few laughs and headed back to work.

When I got back to my desk, I was told to go see the Boss Man. I had hardly interacted with him since the website had gone live, so I assumed I was doing okay. Was he going to fire me for all the hours I had missed recently? Could he even do that now? I slowly went upstairs to the executive offices, and poked my head in. 

His office was dark, and he was sitting behind a desk with three monitors and more paper than even this designer had. A few plaques and photos abounded but it was mostly a mass of stacks of paper and enviable computer technologies. There was a couch and seating area off to the side, and he motioned me to sit down. He got up from behind his desk, walked around to the front, and leaned back casually.

“I have heard that you have Cancer.” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I hadn’t officially told anyone I had Cancer, but for a company of 50 employees word had apparently reached the top.

“I just wanted to tell you that I don’t think you should have told anyone.” He wasn’t mad at me nor was he going to fire me. He was…disappointed? 

He went on to explain that his father had also had Cancer. He fought it for years and he never let on that he was ill. It was obviously something he admired, so I guess he felt the need to try to curtail my forthcoming nature when it came to my illness. Was this his way of showing support? Or did he not want me to become a distraction to the work environment? Or was this about being “a man”?

He wasn’t the first person to give me unsolicited advice, but he was definitely the richest and most powerful person I knew at that time, so I tried to put his motives aside and listen to what he had to say. It was a warning that everyone I share my illness with is another person who will see me differently. This would affect my life in ways I hadn’t considered, so he wanted me to think about it. I genuinely thanked him for his words and as I went to leave he reassured me that I always had a place here and it would be ready for me when I came back. It was the most we had ever spoken, and it was the nicest he had ever been.

As I walked back to my desk I did see my workplace and my coworkers differently. I hadn’t formally announced anything; I had only just found out what type of Cancer was trying to kill me. What were people saying around the office about me? A few people had come up to me to see if the rumours were true, most of them adding the most helpful phrase ever:

“But you don’t look sick!” 

Maybe I didn’t look sick, but inside I felt like I was dying. Technically, I was.

The night before my first treatment, we watched the new Dawn of the Dead movie. I found myself laying awake last night contemplating the much more likely fundamental breakdown of civilization itself. Whatever the cause, zombie or otherwise, I couldn’t get over the thought of being besieged by the very end of humanity. I stayed up all night, planning and re-planning what to do in case today was the end of the world. I worked out a rationing plan, where to get supplies, how to barricade myself inside our apartment, and even how to round up others from the building to aid in our quest for survival.

Around the time I started working out which people in my apartment building I would most want to help and whom I would throw off the roof, I decided this event was verging on insanity and promptly stopped. Unfortunately by this point the Sun had started to rise. Oddly enough I found myself hoping a zombie would bust my door down so I wouldn’t have to get up and go to work.

I hadn’t driven a car for a couple years by this point. Since deciding to “strike it out on my own” a year into College, I had given up the comforts of automotive transport for more “public” options. The company had two cars that were designated for certain employees to use, and for whatever reason that day someone came along and handed me the keys. 

Around the office it was no secret I wasn’t feeling well. My co-workers frequently asked me about my cough, and the ones near my office were probably quite sick of me by this point. My morbid sense of humour started responding in the most ironic way possible: 

“Don’t worry it’s just Cancer.” Hilarious, right? Of course, if you’re reading this, you know how unfunny and ironic that “joke” would become.

This was my fourth doctor visit since my cough had started. To recap, up to this point it was either Bronchitis, Allergies, or “Walking Pneumonia”. This doctor asked the same questions, and ran the same tests as her predecessors. Then, something different happened. This doctor decided to send down the road to get a chest x-ray. Cool, more driving! I drove over to the medical imaging clinic, got the x-ray, and went back to work. 

New Year’s Day came, and Alissa and I celebrated the End of Birth Control and the beginning of our new family. 2003 was set to be the last year as a “couple”, and I was going to enjoy trying to make that happen. We sat and talked about baby names if we had a boy or a girl. 

“Anastasia Josephine if it’s a girl” she said, pointedly. I liked Anastasia, but when I suggested both of those names might be a little bit of a saccharine mouthful, her mood turned ugly. After a short argument I gave in to her demands. No, it was going to be that name if it was a girl. If it was a boy, perhaps I would get to suggest something.

For Alissa, I always felt that her end-goal was simply to become a Mommy. I was starting to wonder if the man who made that happen for her was really that important to her. In a lot of ways I felt like a means to an end, and the “easiest” solution to how to get what she wanted. She only truly started resenting me when I had put a hold on our plans for kids until after I had my career settled. That’s when the real fights started. 

We were just two kids that got married too young, and it showed. We fought about money—mostly—or lack thereof. Spending habits needed to be reigned in if we were going to get our financial house in order in time for a child. I figured if I had this job for at least a year we could get a car, and then maybe a mortgage. In the meantime, she would work at the video store, making decent money with benefits. She hated the job, as any sane person should. But her inability to do anything other than complain about it was something I took issue with. 

If you don’t like your situation, change it. If you don’t like your job, get a new one. If you’re unemployed, go wherever you can, and search for something better. Fourteen months of job hunting after graduation had taught me that you can’t just sit back and wait for the job to find you. I know laziness is a harsh word, but at the time I just found myself getting more and more agitated with her attitude. She would never really do anything to improve her situation, but she never accepted it either. It was everyone else who had to change, not her. The Universe would align for her, and she could just sit back and complain until it did. It was how she saw the world, and there wasn’t anything I was going to do to change that. 

The prospect of children changed her demeanor toward me somewhat. I was finally following through on our “plan”, and I could finally take some pride in being a “good husband”, and with luck a good father. I had taken it all quite personally, during the year I wasn’t able to find work after college. Some kind of youthful pride that died out in me years ago was telling me that I wasn’t good enough for her or this life if I couldn’t deliver on everything I had promised. 

***

The day I went back to get my x-ray results was the same as the week before: grey and dark. It was a typical early January day, one where you could look out at the cold white expanse and know that it was going to be like this for at least two more months. It wasn’t the kind of day where you walked outside, took a deep breath, and thanked some invisible deity. It was the perfect day to find out my true fate, and the cause of this relentless cough. 

I was in a really good mood, too. Last week I had been given the notice that I was to be made a full-time, salaried employee, benefits and all. The money wasn’t great, but it was more than I’d ever made, and it validated the five years of schooling and effort that it took to get here. 

The doctor’s office was as generic as any walk-in clinic could produce. The walls were off-white grey, without any posters or ornamentation of any kind; not even the illustrations of internal organs or what an eye looks like when it gets infected. There were a few office notices printed on various coloured papers on the back of the door. I always get great pleasure in reading these kinds of memoranda; they are almost always created as a reaction to some office worker’s perceived “unreasonable working conditions”, or the actions of some aggressive asshole. These were fortunately printed in Calibri, the standard Microsoft Office font. They were fairly ordinary.

“Please have your health card ready.”

“Aggressive behaviour or language will not be tolerated.”

“Please use the hand sanitizers provided.”

I sat there for about 15 minutes waiting for the doctor, having no particular anxiety or stress about it. I questioned going through the cabinets for interesting gadgets or tongue depressors, but I decided against it. I just sat there doing nothing except listening to the voices songs in my head. The fluorescent lights seemed a bit low for a clinic. Sure enough, when I looked up a couple of tubes had burned out. Those ceilings were a bit unusually high. I guess the employees here would rather complain about loud patients than change a lightbulb. Hmm…perhaps I hadn’t come to the right place. 

The doctor that had seen me the other day walked into the room, looking down at the chart in her hands. She asked me if my condition had changed since the other day. Nope, still coughing uncontrollably all day. She asked me if I was feeling short of breath or if I had trouble getting to the top of a flight of stairs. This was a new line of questioning, and I started to wonder where she was going with this.

Honestly, the next part of the conversation was about as dramatic as your dentist going over your average-looking x-rays: No cause for alarm, just a few things we should deal with. She began to tell me that the chest x-ray had revealed “a lymphoma”, and she would have to refer me to a Thoracic surgeon to see about removing it. Like finding out you have a mole or extra flap of skin, it wasn’t anything to be worried about.

She continued to explain my situation, and I sat there having almost no idea what she was talking about. I’m a Designer, not a Doctor! The poster behind her was set in a combination of Arial Bold and Times New Roman, but she was speaking in Greek. She seemed very positive about my “prognosis”, and if you had to get this, this was the one you wanted. 

I sat there, trying to follow her terminology and tone, and determined that I had some kind of growth called “a lymphoma” that would have to be removed. Well, that seems quite straightforward! The entire time, the doctor only used the singular “a lymphoma”—like “a mole” or “a hernia”.

I thanked her for finally making some progress after three months of this god damn cough. I didn’t get a prescription, just the name of the surgeon to whom I was being referred. I got back in the company truck and headed back to the office to finish my day.

When I got back to the office I was in a pretty good mood. I finally had something to report back to my Mom! Progress was better than nothing. I met my supervisor in the narrow hall leading to our area and she asked me how my appointment went. 

“Great! I have…a lymphoma?” She immediately burst into tears.

Tears. This woman who barely knows me is crying. Not good.

“Travis.. I’m so sorry.” she coaxed out with a bit of effort. A person I don’t even know just grabbed me and hugged me, pulling me in as if I’d just lost a loved one. Definitely not good. After some pause we resumed our professional stances. 

“If you need anything, just let me know. When you’re ready go talk to Carolyn.” She walked past me and headed to Human Resources. Behind her two office mates were standing silently in their doorways. I felt like I had just shit my pants at the school dance. I kind of felt like shitting my pants just to bring some levity to the situation. Why the fuck is everyone so upset—for—me? 

“I’m fine. I just got a consult appointment that’s all.” The two coworkers retreated back to their offices without a word. I took off my coat and sat down in my office. I logged into my computer, and pulled up Google:

— Search: [Lymphoma] GO —

“Lymphoma is a type of blood cancer that occurs when…”

“Lymphoma kills 500,000 people a year…”

“Warning signs and symptoms of this Cancer include…” 

“Learn more about Lymphoma cancer on…”

I closed the browser window. I should not have googled that. 

***

The next few weeks while I waited for my consult were cold and dark, and it snowed almost every day that January. No blizzards or anything dramatic. Just slow, soft flakes that turned to mud almost immediately. Usually in Ottawa we get an unusually warm week in Winter; a nice break. This year we had one warm day in early February…and it rained. 

The bus was always slow in weather like this. Packed full of tech sector workers, we slowly ambled through the narrow, snow-packed streets, taking twice as long as it did back in July. It gave me time to think about my situation. 

All I knew was that a group of cells in my lymphatic system had decided they didn’t want to die. They kept multiplying in my chest until they started to create a mass around my windpipe. That was why I was coughing. I was slowly being choked to death by my own immune system. What a douche. 

What had I done to deserve this? I wasn’t a smoker…but I did live with one. I didn’t do drugs at all, even to the point of hubris. I was 23 and I had smoked about 1/3 of a cigarette, and I hadn’t even tried pot. Heck I didn’t even take Tylenol with most headaches. I was what was known as a “Straight Edge”. I never even got drunk until I was 19! My rebellion to the high-school system was to not do what my peers were doing. College, marriage and job hunting didn’t leave a lot of time for drug habits. I drank on weekends but all in all I guess I lived fairly “clean”. Lame, I know.

It’s not that I disapproved of drugs, I just didn’t want to “pollute the system.” It mattered to me to accomplish my goals, and to do so I had to keep my body and mind focused. Drugs were a distraction I didn’t allow myself to have, and I was happy with my choices. What had all that pompous bullshit gotten me? Fucking Cancer. 

I did everything I was told. I listened to the stupid song about good and bad drugs. I went to school, got married, got a job. Now I might die before I get a chance to enjoy it. It wasn’t fair. Most of the people on this bus were older than me. The guy sitting next to me has a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Why couldn’t he get Cancer? 

“Why Me” is about the only thing I had at this point. Technically we didn’t even know what type of Cancer I had. The consultation was supposed to rule out whether or not it could be removed surgically. Until then, I had a prescription-strength cough medicine (useless) and a constant supply of cough drops. There was only one brand that could give me temporary relief from my now extremely painful, hacking coughing fits. It was a very good friend to a cold fish such as meself.

Alissa had been very positive and supportive, but had broken down several times both in private and with me. I was very apologetic, I felt so guilty. I had promised to put a baby in her and now I had Cancer inside me. It just wasn’t fair. 

***

The Thoracic Surgeon’s office was on a high floor of the Ottawa Hospital. My mother and I arrived and waited for a short time. It was a very bright morning; I was enjoying the light on the magazines when the doctor called us in. 

This was the first doctor I met that wasn’t working for a walk-in clinic or my family doctor. She was a specialist in all things Chest. Her bread and butter is the heart, lungs and esophagus (which is an absolutely horrible metaphor please forget I said that). Based on her analysis of my chest x-ray, I had a mass about the size of an orange in my  growing behind my lungs and heart. It would be quite the operation to just go in and remove it. She requisitioned a biopsy to confirm the type of Lymphoma, and suggested that the best treatment would likely be a combination chemotherapy and radiation.

Wait a minute, how many types of Lymphoma are there? I hadn’t done any more researching since my initial search revealed that this was no mole or cyst that could be simply removed and forgotten about. All I knew was that there was something inside me that was not going to go without a fight. 

In fact, no one knew exactly what was growing inside me. The biopsy would reveal the type and aggressiveness of my Cancer, and then they would be able to finally start treating me. I felt so completely powerless. When the medical professionals start guessing and ordering tests, you really start to feel helpless. 

The biopsy appointment was in a section of the same hospital. It was under construction at the time so waiting room space was very tight. My wife, mother, father and step-mother had all come to support me. The three women found seats and my father leaned against the wall.

My parents had gotten divorced a decade ago. It had not been amicable, but in the ten years since they had broken up the family they had both remarried and become a lot less angry in general. They had barely seen each other other than to pick up or drop off us kids. I kept imagining one or the other saying something off-hand and it turning into a full blown fight right here in the hospital. Luckily, they were completely cordial, and even seemed to engage in friendly conversation once or twice. My parents being civil toward each other was just one of the many oddities of my new situation. Just about everything was different, but my parents getting along? This was really unexpected. 

I changed into a hospital gown and went into what can only be described as an operating room. There was a large screen next to the bed that was attached to a sort of floating “arm” anchored to the ceiling so they could move it around at all kinds of angles. Then I saw the table full of comically large needles. Each needle was the length of my forearm, and one was decidedly thicker than the rest. They moved me on to the bed and made me comfortable. Then they strapped me down and began to move equipment around me.

The doctor came in and described the procedure. My fear was temporarily put on hold as the inner geek in me listened with interest. They were going to use an ultrasound image to guide a needle through my heart and lung to get a tissue sample of the growth. The needle had an inner core that, when the “gun” (his words) was fired, would make a small “popping noise” and it was important to not react or move. 

“There is a small chance that you may start to bleed into your lungs,” he continued “so we’re going to have to get you to stay in the recovery room for about an hour after we’re finished.” My inner geek just shit his pants. 

Wait. What? Small chance? How small? A million terrified neurons were firing all at once. You mean I could die before we even know what kind of Cancer I have? Can I please get off this ride now? 

“Can you call it something other than gun? How about device? Apparatus?” My tenure at Laser Quest had impressed upon me that the word “gun” was to be avoided. Guns were bad, they hurt people! Now a doctor was about to fire a gun—a needle gun—into my fucking chest. 

“Are you ready to begin?” asked the doctor.

“Can I see watch the screen while you do it?” 

“You want to see it? Of course!” and he angled the ultrasound monitor to reveal what looked like a heart and part of a lung. Neato. Except that’s my heart and he’s about to shove a needle through it. 

He put on some blue gloves and leaned over to examine my chest. He poked a few parts here and there, and decided on his point of entry. The largest and scariest of all needles and began to insert it slowly into my skin.

Can I say how grateful I am that we don’t have nerves inside our bodies? I am no fan of needles, but once you get past the intrusive entry the length and size doesn’t really make a difference to me. I watched the screen as the bright blue line of the needle went steadily deeper down. 

After some time he stopped, and the monitor showed that the needle had gone through my heart and top part of my lung, and the tip was resting just beyond it.This would be really cool if it wasn’t me, right? The surgeon let the remainder of the needle go for a few seconds. It swayed back and forth for a few seconds like a metronome. 

When he turned back, he was holding “the gun.” He grabbed the end of the needle that was not currently compromising major organs and attached it. He ‘primed’ it a couple times by pulling on part of it, then he told me he was going to take a sample. I held my breath and laid completely still. It’s pretty easy when you’re immobilized by fear. 

*click* 

Then the doctor retracted the “inner” part of the needle, leaving the outer part still inside me, like a tunnel to my insides. It waved back and forth slowly and I tried not to laugh. I had a giant needle inside me and everyone around me was ignoring me like it was no big deal. Sure, they see this all the time. I have a freaking needle in my chest, where is the concern?!?

They repeated and took more samples. The satisfying click of the gun was actually kind of cathartic after the third time. When they were done, the surgeon carefully slid the large, scary-looking needle out of me. There’s not much to do after so small a puncture. They just put pressure and gauze on me and sent me out. I tried to breathe lightly while my remaining “good” cells went to work to repair the man-made holes in my lung and heart. That’s no metaphor; I had a hole in my heart.

From where I was in the “recovery” area I could see my mother and father having what looked like a pleasant conversation in the waiting room. Alissa and Sylvia must be out for a cigarette. I waved and they smiled and waved back. I laid back and tried to relax. There were nurses and hospital workers going in every direction like blue worker bees. 

I spent my hour trying to assess and diagnose the other patients in the room. Were they sicker than me? How many of them were dying? There were no children or teenagers. Just old, sick-looking people. I didn’t belong here.

They did a final chest x-ray to make sure I wasn’t bleeding internally (oh good). I got dressed and went out to rejoin my family. A few minutes later they gave me the green light and we left the hospital.

We said our good-byes to each other, and I left with my Mother. I had to get back to work. I had to finish the new website I was working on. They weren’t going to wait for me to work out my health problems, and I needed that job. I was only a few weeks into full-time employment and I didn’t want to get fired before my benefits even kicked it. Something told me I was going to need them.

***

Several days later, I got a call from the hospital. They needed me to…come back in and do the biopsy again? I was prepared for “you’re a deadman” but I was not prepared for “please let us stab you in the chest again.” Apparently all of that medical technology didn’t tell them that the sample size was too small and couldn’t make a definitive diagnosis. 

“Great. Fine. When?” I asked the woman on the phone.

“Two weeks?” she replied. I almost burst into tears, instead I went into a coughing fit. Did I even have two weeks? Who knew? Not the doctors, that’s apparent.

The second biopsy was just as much fun as the first, except knowing what was going to happen meant it no longer interested me as much. No, this time was all about wondering if they were doing it right this time. There was a new person in the room this time. She was sitting at a desk with a microscope and a bunch of other equipment so I assumed she was the one verifying whether or not they got enough sample tissue this time. Why they didn’t do this every time, so that people didn’t have to go through this more than once? Don’t they know people have jobs?  

No empathy for the dying, I guess. This is their job why would they care about my circumstances? 

This time, my recovery was not so uneventful. Apparently it’s normal to have some blood in your lungs at the end of the procedure, and my cough caused me to spit up blood a few times. The agitation and embarrassment at attracting their attention made me visibly upset. The nurses gave me something to calm the cough, and a tiny pill to put under my tongue. They called it “Lorazepam”, and I already knew what it was for. It was some kind of sedative; but I only knew this because I played the hell out of Metal Gear Solid for the Playstation. 

Before the pill took effect I was thinking about a million things and then- nothing. Peace. Just…sitting here, and everything is just…cool. I like this feeling. I spaced out and didn’t really think about anything in particular. When I awoke I was ready for my x-ray check, which I was relieved to pass. I would not be drowning in my own blood today. I can go back to work! 

I had been a full-time employee for almost six weeks now, and my stock was literally (sic) on the rise. I had just been given “stock options” which meant some day I could be part of an “IPO” (which is the Internet Pot Of Gold)! If I suck around long enough, I could be one of those “high tech millionaires” like the Boss Man! I didn’t have time to be sick, I was too busy living the dream!

As the only graphic designer in the company, my projects quickly diversified in all sorts of directions. I was doing product branding, website design and coding (which I barely knew how to do when I got hired), and all of the collateral advertising and marketing materials. By early February I was working 10-12 hour days, getting home around 8 or 9pm most nights. There were almost a dozen people working on the project by now, and I was working closely with everyone to get the website launched within the month. We were all going at a frenzy pace to have the entire company in order. 

It was the most work I had ever done, and it was the most fun I’d ever had working. I was creating a new Internet company from the ground up! 

In addition to the biopsy, I had many other tests during this time. Blood tests, x-rays, and my first encounter with the giant technological doughnut known as the CT Scanner. It wasn’t the kind that involved being injected with radioactive dye. I just had to hop up onto the table, pull my pants down past my knees, hold my hands above my head and wait. 

I laid there, staring up at the ceiling. The machine spun to life around me and I suddenly felt like I was about to travel in time—perhaps to the Future—to when this was all over or I was dead and everyone would just leave me alone. A yellow smiley face with a robot voice instructed me to HOLD MY BREATH. I inhaled as much as I could without coughing. You had to not move for up to 30 seconds, which in my current state was next to impossible. They had to redo the second pass a few times. I apologized profusely, put my pants back on and left (not the first or last time, mind you).

The only symptom I showed at any time was The Cough. It was constant, deep and coarse. I had even been moved to an office way off in the corner of our area that provided some buffer space from the noise. I did my best but it was getting to the point where I was losing my control over it. From time to time, as new people were hired and introduced to the company, I would have to explain my unending, cubicle-shaking cough. One evening, we were rewarded for a successful launch with a Sens game in the company box. As we waited to go into the arena one of the new Marketing hires decides to engage my coughing fit head on as best she can:

“That sounds terrible,” she said. “You should get that checked out.” I had replied to this one a bunch of times, and tonight I couldn’t stop myself from being an ass about it.

“Oh I’m fine it’s just Cancer.” Just like before I knew it actually was Cancer. 

“That’s not very funny!” she started to get really upset. 

“No, he really does have Cancer.” My manager had come to my rescue and the new hire apologized. I apologized for the bad joke and we went awkwardly up to our box. My coworkers knew I was sick, but no one knew quite how sick. I didn’t even know. How sick was I? 

Several days after the second biopsy I was received a letter in the mail for an appointment at the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre. It gave me instructions to arrive early to go through registration. It was official; on March 15th I was going to be an official Cancer patient.

I felt more than a little scared as I took three sick days in a row. My growing reputation in the company as “that guy over there who can help you with that graphic” was making me feel more hopeful about staying around after the twelve week contract expired. I would have to work extra to make up for the lost usefulness. 

On the third sick day, I made my way to the walk-in clinic near our apartment. I gave the doctor my symptoms and he told me I probably had a viral infection and it would go away on it’s own. Drink lots of fluids, stay in bed—the usual stuff. A few days later I was more or less back to full strength. The only thing that lingered the next Monday was this annoying hacking cough that started a few days in. I steeled myself and headed to work. 

The next several weeks were a blur of work. The senior designer who handled the rest of the company’s departments suddenly quit and I found myself suddenly taking care of the entire company’s design duties. About a week before my contract was to expire I still hadn’t heard if I was going to be staying on. When I asked my manager about the situation, she seemed surprised it hadn’t been dealt with already. A few more days’ waiting and I was told my contract was extended another three months. I was determined to become a full time employee, and I had until January to make myself “indispensable” to the company.

***

The pressure to perform was substantial. Alissa wanted to have kids immediately, but I had sold her on me finding a job in my chosen field, us getting a car, and down payment on a house. When I wasn’t able to find a design job in Ottawa—even after a year of searching—the stress started to take its toll on my budding marriage. Getting engaged at 20 was silly, but deciding to get married at 22 was just naive. On top of student loans, credit cards we already had a consolidation loan for a previous “do-over”—20-something financial decision making at its finest. 

We got married three days after Christmas. It snowed gently most of the day. In some grand effort to subvert the whole event, I had my Bachelor Party the night before. My brother and several of my closest friends made me wholly incapable of imbibing Goldschlager and Jagermeister. I was the most hungover I had ever been— I’m no doctor but I think I actually achieved mild to moderate alcohol poisoning. As if it were a Mark of the Damned, I had a boot print on the back of my white pressed shirt (we never did identify which of the people that dragged me into my bed knocked over and stepped on it). The wedding was very standard, and the buffet was quite excellent for the Chimo Hotel. It was a giant compromise at best. Having been funded entirely with credit the wedding actually put us even further from being able to get all the things married couples were supposed to have. 

Suffice it to say, I didn’t quite feel like I was delivering on Sara’s fantasy of The Strong Capable Father Figure. I did the best I could to give her what she wanted, but I was just some kid from the suburbs and I felt like had no idea what I was doing most of the time. Most of the time I think she loved me, but I think she had her idea of how life was supposed to unfold, and was merely looking for the male vehicle with which to make her dreams come true. She was just never happy with anything but her ideal vision of reality, which was very hard to anticipate and fulfill. Reality was about to get…well…Real. Her Knight in Shining Armour had a chink right around his throat. 

I felt that I had a responsibility to give Alissa everything she wanted, but she was starting to resent not being pregnant and living so far from her family. Our financial situation meant we couldn’t afford a car or a house yet. She had been set on having kids as soon as possible; most of her friends back home already had kids. I had convinced her to wait until “the time was right”. In my mind, kids were supposed to wait until you had housing and transport. As always, I wanted to make her happy, so— as with our wedding date—I let her reproductive activities jump the queue.

***

*cough cough cough … cough cough cough** 

***COUGH COUGH COUGHHHHH WHEEEZEEEEE cough…cough…cough–

***AHCKKCKKCHTTT
PPPphH
KKKKOUGGGGHHHH
GHHHUUGHHhh

…wheeeeeeezzzeee
ee *****

On…and on…and on….

Days turned into weeks….weeks turned into a month. What….the HELL. 

I had never had a cough last this long. I remember having bronchitis when I was eight or nine years-old. I was coughing my guts out on a pharmacy bench while my Father filled a prescription for anti-biotics (banana flavour, but not “real” banana…the “yellow” flavour…). THAT was a bad cough. This? Was something else. 

My work situation accelerated considerably, so my Health was pretty far down my list of priorities. One day I was pulled into the boardroom with the Man Upstairs and one other employee. The company was starting a new web venture, and we were the first two team members! As the only one in the building who could turn a Photoshop mock-up into website code, I became an invaluable resource overnight. I started to see permanent, full-time employment just around the corner! Things were finally starting to work out! All my hard work had finally paid off! 

…except for this damn cough! 

Between November and mid-December I visited three walk-in clinics. They had the following to say about my unending, hacking cough:

Bronchitis!

Allergies!

Walking Pneumonia!

Nobody dug any further than a few breathing tests, some throat examination and a couple questions. I was just another young adult with a lingering infection…or allergies…

Being invincible—as most 23-year-olds are—I kept on working long hours. The new team had been moved to their own area of the building to start to develop the launch site. I felt like I was finally part of one of those big “start-ups” that everyone talks about. As the only Designer I had to create the branding and apply it across both Print and Web. I was surrounded by Developers with years of start-up experience, and I felt like a very awkward fish in a large pond. I tried my best to just put in the time to get the necessary work done on time. It didn’t leave a lot of time for waiting rooms.

As December approached, Alissa and I “made the decision” to go off birth control in the New Year with hopes of being parents by next Christmas. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to—I wanted to be a Father—but we had some serious fights, and our “sex” life wasn’t exactly conducive to procreation, if you catch my drift (…we did not have a lot of sex). We were not even a year into our marriage, and it wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned. What if babies just made it worse? Did I tell you my parents divorced when I was 12? No worries, everything was going according to plan. Except this damn cough…

The day of our first anniversary, I went to see another doctor near my work. I even got to borrow the company truck! Had I known where it was taking me I would have driven as fast as I could in the opposite direction. 

Only six weeks ago I was working at Blockbuster Video, stocking shelves, dealing with idiots, customers, and “managing” employees (If closing duties are done and the return box is empty, there will be Halo time). All that and 10 free rentals a week gets you about $9.75 an hour, and 40 hours a week if your Manager likes you gets you enough to live off. (If that sounds like paradise to you, we may have a problem.) To me, that job was literally Hell on Earth, and no one was happier than I when the whole business model went the way of 8-track tape.

Just before Canada Day I had started working for a local high-tech startup. It was exactly the sort of thing a budding young Graphic Designer like me would see as a golden opportunity. The job didn’t pay much, but after 14 months I was desperate to start using my diploma. Plus, the money would help my Wife and I get ourselves “back on track” financially. It had been a pretty rough “newlywed” period for us, having funded our wedding the previous December almost entirely on credit cards.

I was working for a small high-tech startup in the South End; I had a three-month contract to redesign a website for one of their departments. Due to a complete and total fear of the Man Upstairs and a bit of overzealousness on my part I had completed the project in just over four weeks. Since no one really had the time to figure out what else I could be useful for, I was sent to wait in my office for something to do. For the past two weeks I had been popping my head into my manager’s office every morning when she arrived.

“Hello!” I would say cheerfully.

“Oh, hi Travis! What can I do for you?” she would reply.

“Just wondering if you had anything I could do for you today. No pressure, just free if you need me for anything!”

“I’ll just get some things off my list and I’ll come over and talk to you. Thanks, Travis!” or some other form of “not right now but I’m glad you’re eager” I guess. She was a pretty good manager, but 10 days running, she had not given me anything to do.

“The Pit”—as our area was known—was probably the coolest office setup I would ever work in. Almost everyone in our small group had their own “office” (which in business land means a door, sometimes glass if you are more important). My office was 23 year-old Valhalla: A door with lock – space of about 4-feet by 5-feed, a desk and a lamp. I had streaming radio, and nothing to do all day but play Rocket Mania. It was awesome. I had finally arrived. All I had to do was impress them and make myself useful in the next 6 weeks… or it was back to emptying the rental bins.

The Office Admin was directly in the centre of our Pit, so she was the only person who didn’t have an office. She and I had direct line of sight, and she was my age and even married to a local musician I knew. While she wasn’t being bombarded with calls and requests, we would chat about indie bands, local music, and work stuff. We would kill time evaluating new bands like Mates of State and Minus the Bear on Internet radio stations.

***

On this perfectly average Thursday I have followed my new routine of Work > Rockets > Music > Lunch > Rockets > Music to a tee, but at 4:14pm everything goes black.

It’s August 14th, 2003, and my day just got interesting.

My whole area of the building is dark. There are alarms going off in the distance, and I can hear people shouting something about cooling the server room. Neat. I go for a walk and talk to the couple of people I know outside my department. Apparently everything in the building is down, and they’re rushing to get a gas-powered generator to power the server room’s air conditioning. They have something like 14 minutes of back-up power before everything on our network goes black. Cool.

I’m told that I might as well go home, this looks like it could be a while. The road behind the building is quickly filling up with cars, and I start wondering about my zombie preparedness skills… I pack up my “survival bag” and head out to catch a “survival bus” (OC Transpo) home to my Wife to wait out the coming Apocalypse. I feel like my whole life has been leading to this point.

Turns out, I am terrible at survival, and two hours later I am only about two kilometres from where I started. I thought I could out walk the non-air-conditioned metal deathtrap known as “the bus”; only to see it whizz past me as soon as we got above Meadowlands. Fuck.

I hopped the next bus that came along and I got as far as my old Blockbuster. I stopped in to see what the situation was, and my old co-workers rewarded me with as much ice cream as I could carry. Another bus ride and I was finally within walking distance of our apartment. We lived downtown in a nice-enough apartment. The rent was still low from when I’d lived there as a student. I trekked the eight flights upstairs and entered our apartment; dark, of course.

My bride was nowhere in sight, just our three cats looking up quizzically as cats do. She must be upstairs getting a good view of this blackout. I went to put the ice cream in the freezer, but it had miraculously filled itself with ice cream already. We still had water and pressure to flush the toilet. I would have filled it but our youngest cat had recently peed in it (again). We would simply have to live off warm soda and melted ice cream until civilization rebuilds.

I headed up one more set of stairs to meet Alissa out on the rooftop patio of our building. She was there in a cute pink sundress, smoking a cigarette and talking to some of our neighbours. I held her in my sweaty, stinky arms and kissed her. She handed me some of the daiquiris that someone managed to make (to this day I will never know how) and we talked about our experiences with the blackout thus far. Her Blockbuster stayed open a couple hours into the power outage, doing rentals on paper by flashlight.

We spent a good long while looking out at the darkened city. As far as the eye could see was without power…oh…except that large city just across the river. From where we lived we had a perfect view of the powered ville de Gatineau. We debated going to the Casino with some other people, but I argued against it. Too many people trying to win cash for the coming End of Days. Alissa and I discussed how raising children would be different now that we would have to hunt for our own food. This would definitely disrupt our plan to have kids by 25, but at least we wouldn’t have the worry about debt any more! We went back to our black cavern and prepared for the first day of the New World.

Of course, later that night our power came back on, and the Apocalypse was put on hold.

It was a pretty exceptional day to what I had considered up to this point a pretty average, “on track” life. In 22 years I had gone to school, then college, married a pretty girl and gotten a sweet job in high tech. Sure, our debt payments barely kept up with our idiotic 20-something spending habits, but we had each other, and we had plans. Cars, houses, kids by 25, it was all worked out. All we had to do was work menial jobs to stay on top of our debt and limit our spending for…two or three more years.

I wasn’t a huge Lennon fan at the time; I blame my 90’s “alternative” years. Years later I would come to appreciate not only the man’s music, but also his feelings about Life and Plans.

Little did I know it, but Life was about to kick my ass.