Dylan's Brain Cancer JOurney

 Chapter 56:  Scanning It was November 29 th . Three months ago, I had completed my second cycle of radiation. I was doing well and had recovered from the extreme radiation fatigue. A scan from nine weeks ago was good and showed relatively diminished tumor burden. Today it was time to be scanned again. I was lucky enough to have 4 good days of skiing with friends leading up to the scan. My skiing ability was the same or improved. The day before, I completed some driving occupational therapy. The therapist confirmed that I was relatively safe to drive and that I was using coping mechanisms effectively. I felt reassured. These were good signs that would be incongruent with a worsening scan. Regardless, as November 30 th (reading day) approached, my anxiety grew like bacteria on an agar plate. I was on so many diverse treatments: I switched to a keto diet, I took pembrolizumab, I wore the Optune device. If these weren’t working, why had I endured the discomfort? And what e...

Chapter 55: Let’s go for a walk: “Fighting” is an easy cancer narrative. There is a goal: beat the cancer and live. And there is a way: suffer on medications and treatments and stay strong and stoic (if possible). But “fighting” is also a parasitic narrative: it invades our stories like the lancet liver fluke to an ant’s brain. Over many months, it had invaded my own mind’s home, left vacant by old dreams who hid now quietly in the basement. Cancer was my new goal and dream, an enemy to be beaten and subdued. Every moment was a battle. Travel assaulted the absurd. Good sleep preemptively struck against fatigue. Walking and skiing struggled to reclaim my body. Nonetheless, I needed a way to avoid bushwhacking through life. …   It’s early morning in mid-November morning. The sun shines at a particularly low angle behind the Eastern Wasatch mountains. She glances around the sharp, rugged peaks like a light through torn battlements. I stand on my balcony with a nearly finished cu...

 Chapter 54: A moment in Los Angeles:               When I was in college, my extended family developed a tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving early together in LA. My Aunt Elaine would host this year and she forbid from coming anyone who was unvaccinated. I was initially relieved because when it was announced I was immunocompromised and vulnerable to severe infection. Thankfully, at the time of our Thanksgiving I was no longer immunosuppressed. In fact, the new medications boosted my immune system. While an infection couldn’t proliferate unhindered, my immune system’s enhanced response still put me at risk for severe complications. The immune system is a blunt offensive shield predisposed to cause collateral damage. I was thankful for other reasons as well. Limiting guests by vaccine restricted many unsolicited opinions that had exhausted me. Family members who told me to avoid traditional medicine in favor of h...

 Chapter 54: Bidet and the Healthcare Beast:               The evening after I return Spencer and William arrived at my apartment; they were on their way to San Francisco and stopped for rest. The following morning, we stroll through Sugarhouse Park. The Wasatch mountains to the east are gorgeously snow-capped atop a sea of yellow and red deciduous trees, with long shadows cast by the low morning sun. The saturated and saturated colors of the landscape was a palette prepared for painting. Looking at the snowy mountains, I was determined to ski excessively as long as I remained functionally able. Ben, Spencer’s brother, had, in fact, already arranged ways to pull me up several mountains, in case the resorts had poor snow and I lacked the stamina for hiking, just so that we could ski together. Again, I’m reminded how great my friends are.              ...

 Chapter 53:  NYC I buy an emergency ticket to NYC while in the Paris airport after hundreds of American flights are cancelled. I would no longer stop in SLC but meet Spencer directly in NYC. At the hotel I realize I’ve mistakenly booked for the week earlier and quickly book another 3 days. Spencer arrives in the evening, and we excitedly go over the plan for my first time at Broadway. Waiting for Spencer, I reflected on the past few months. Just as cancer was a curse, it had also become a gift: It had rendered life unencumbered and discarded its frugal bashfulness. For years I had let an imagined future direct my present—like piecing together a large puzzle of square pieces by picture only. Every misplaced piece broke some imagined deterministic future and nucleated dread, regret, and anxiety that tore away at the present. Yet disease somehow untethered the present from the tug of the imagined future and freed me of the narrative paradox. I was sick, but I had become fr...

Chapter 52: Past and Present in Paris               Sometime in October I receive a text from Spencer asking if I want to go to Broadway in New York early November. Planning with Spencer is easy, so we quickly make plans for the first week of November and get tickets to both Waitress and Hadestown. We would be in New York in a little under a month.               A couple days later my aunt emails. She and my uncle are in Paris and invite me to join them for a week or so if I’m able. There’s a blank spot in my schedule in roughly one and a half weeks right before the now-planned New York trip. I confirm that the dates work and buy some surprisingly inexpensive tickets to Paris.               I learn later why my flights were cheap: they were operated by American. On the way there, airline r...