Category: Uncategorized

A mutilated BIG toe and congenital heart defect have made me no stranger to the wonders of modern day medicine. With the musculature and face of a Roman God, I’ve been told that this was the way that the universe had to reach equilibrium so have since come to terms with my bionic heart and WACK foot.

I’ve learned that in life there is little rhyme or reason for why things happen to people (however good or bad they believe themselves to be). Now, 5 years since my heart surgery- I can vividly remember the full range of emotions, from immersing myself in self-pity by declaring the injustice to the world to accepting my fate as one of Gods chosen “warriors”– a turbulent flight to destination X. Obviously, by virtue of this blog I was able to charge past this roadblock and had derived a sense of comfort from the trauma. Why? I was able to naively convince myself that this would be my one and only test of morbidity and that I had in some way paid my debt to the world and reset my karmic counter from adolescent “misconduct”…

If you’ve been able to follow the trail of breadcrumbs, you’ve realized that I’m likely in the midst of something new and presumably unwelcome. Doesn’t get more unwelcome than cancer – leukemia to be specific and Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia to be exact (Band-Aid is now off). Today marks 30 days since my diagnoses and day 20 of subsequent induction treatment which I am now prepared to journal.

At the risk of sounding like a cliché survivor commercial, what hasn’t killed me, made me stronger and I expect that this will be true of this current earthquake tremor

I will because I need to and I can because I’m meant to. En route to destination Y.

Better late than never.

We work, we breathe, we eat but do we actually live? I find myself asking if I’ve really been able to relish in the true meaning of life or whatever that means in a Ghandi-esque context. This degree of introspection is usually the result of a road block that has forced me to challenge the auto-pilot that I was allowing to control my life – it’s time to turn it off.

Before I jump into my experience, I want to prime the blog by letting you know that I have an amazing family, supportive friends, loving wife and baby on the way. In retrospect, I live a very happy life though society has a way of highlighting its flaws -conditioning me to focus on the next 15 instead of living in the present. I’ll be presumptuous and assume that most people are similarly diseased, unable to achieve genuine satisfaction for FOMO or not keeping up with the Johnstons. I guess it’s easy to stay stuck in that loop until your next 15 isn’t guaranteed, when your own mortality becomes the ubiquitous reminder that you’re time bound and forced to fight for an extension. This is where I am…

“I’ve been so many places in my life and time
I’ve sung a lot of songs
I’ve made some mad rhymes
I’ve acted out my life in stages
With ten thousand people watching
But we’re alone now and I’m singing this song to you”

Like most people, I have had varying degrees of both good and bad news in my life but nothing will ever overshadow the joy I felt in hearing that my wife and I were expecting our first child. They say (who, I’m not quite sure) that God equips us with what we need to overcome adversity and inject meaning into our lives. I must say that I’m convinced and I believe that our miracle is the muse for this writing and ammunition for my war…