The Cancer Diaries

Preamble

It all started with a tummy ache. Who among us hasn’t had one? But as the one became plural, and then a multitude, I started going through the checklist of easy changes to get myself right - consistent probiotics, switch up on snacking (I’m a grazer), stop snacking altogether, intermittent fasting, eat more meals every 3 hours, more water, less water, more fiber, less fiber, then vegetarian, then something approaching keto. Every change I made worked for a day or two - I thought I had it figured - and then right back to the same symptoms…hard abdominal cramps. Hard, and lasting. Like doubling over cramps. Sometimes I had to roll up in the fetal position.

It was September. I was 51 at the time. Other than a short list of athletic injuries had always been healthy. I worked in public through the lockdown and first few years of the pandemic unscathed…in fact my personal safety protocols got me fired from the bike shop I was running, as the company jackasses wanted (needed) to ‘open up to the customers.’

There was no sense that the pain was anything but transitory. Something I had to manage while figuring it out. I didn’t know shit about shit about cancer.

Three weeks before the pain started I signed a big book deal. I had 18 months to write 90K words for an imprint of PRH (I ended up writing 220K, another story for another time). But there was no time to be sick. The advance was already a quarter spent.

I managed and started research. For Thanksgiving my oldest and I went to Louisiana for the Jackson family reunion. Of course because of Heart of the Night we stopped down on the Pontchartrain before making our way to town. Real nice spot…massive fresh caught platter.

That night I didn’t sleep. We really ate a lot…that must be it. At one point I got up in the middle of the night and saw that I had lost a pretty significant amount of weight…

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