Cheeseburger in Paradise

A look back at the last three months of cancer content.

There’s a part of me that never thought we’d get here: By the time you read this, my wife and I will be somewhere tropical, possibly poolside, enjoying what could be the most well-earned vacation of our lives. Four months ago, when I was on my second blood transfusion in the ER following my first chemo treatment, I remember thinking: If I can make it through this we’re going to goddamn Hawaii, specifically Hanalei Bay, one of my favorite places on the planet. During that long night of the soul, I’d sometimes let my thoughts drift to that specifically amniotic feel of the ocean in Hawaii. Then I’d helplessly shit myself and a team of nurses would have to change out my bedding like a Nascar crew, and it would snap me back to reality. Those were some dark times! But here we are, on the other side of it. 

When I made the reservation, the hotel asked if we were celebrating anything special. Danielle encouraged me to tell them we were celebrating my cancer remission, but I was too shy. And besides, I doubt there’s any kind of standard greeting package for that sort of thing. Plus: It’s not just a cancer remission celebration. It’s also Danielle’s babymoon. We’re at the cancer remission celebration, we’re at the babymoon. We’re at the combination cancer-remission-celebration-babymoon.

Ahem. This is all a long way of saying that Healings is taking a week off, sort of. In lieu of a brand new post this week, I thought, well… At an old job, we had these things called QBRs, which stood for “Quarterly Business Review.” These would happen in big conference rooms on high floors, among groups of “stakeholders” who’d present “decks,” and already I’m starting to get the willies just explaining it. But seeing as how this email’s hitting your inbox on Sept 28, and we launched on June 29, let’s call this Healings’ first official QBR, a sort of recap of where we’ve been so far. After all, some of you have been here since the beginning, but many more have boarded the ride in the middle. Might as well catch everyone up. 

And so here’s a chronological list of everything we’ve published in the last three months. Big shout out to my anonymous illustrator “Abner Clouseau” for their tireless efforts with the illustrations, and to Tommy Craggs for editing and moral support. And of course thanks to my wife Danielle, who’s endured the vicissitudes of pregnancy while watching her husband “turn [his] cancer into a project,” something she assured me was not necessary what with the actual disease to deal with, but which I did anyway.

Aloha! 

Off We Go
“I’m starting this project as a way of exploring how I deal with shit, and also how you deal with shit, in the hopes that we can all better navigate how we deal with shit.”

Exile on Mane Street
“Pretty soon, little bald spots started to appear, then there was more baldness than hair, but still some hair, and so within a day or two I looked like Harold minus the Purple Crayon, with this weird, thin layer of fuzz covering my head. On top of this, all my beard hair fell out save for the patchy gray parts, so my face resembled an old sailor’s. Combined with my having lost 35 pounds in just three weeks, it was an extremely off-putting look, conveying to anyone who encountered me that I was indeed quite sick. Or at least that’s how it felt when I looked in the mirror.”

Needle in the Hay (And Also My Abdomen)
“You hear “masses” and you think tumor, and then you think the c-word. You think, “It’s cancer and it’s going to kill me.” You don’t think about survival rates or the remarkable advances in medical science that will hopefully, probably save your life. You think about dying, death—the d-word—about d-wording from the c-word.”

“Hey Bro, It’s Me, Mortality Here”
“I describe it as having a wooden stake of fear just driven through my heart. I don't want to diminish the love and care I got from my wife and my family and stuff, but ya know—you’re alone ultimately. There are certain places in life when you find yourself alone. Pain is one of them: You’re alone. You’re alone in your head.”

We Found C-Word
“I can’t tell the story of The Cancer(s) without also telling the story of The Pregnancy(ies). Navigating each on its own, let alone both together, has required the careful management of hope, a resource, I’ve discovered, that’s as precious as it is volatile.”

My Chemical Romance
“The history of chemotherapy is a history of turning poisons into drugs, of doctors and chemists and eventually politicians and philanthropists all working together—an effort that colloquially became known as the War on Cancer—to discover which combinations of drug-poisons, administered over what length of time, would produce the best outcomes.”

The Sounds of Silence
“If I was going to change my odds by taking a nonstandard treatment, I had to know, in my mind and in my heart, that if they said, “Hey, bad news, you rolled the dice and the treatment didn’t work,” I had to be comfortable with the idea that, well, maybe if I had gone deaf, I'd still be alive. And I got to a place where I was comfortable with that.”

Hell’s Bells
“The rows of recliners face each other, which means most of the time, I’m seated directly across from someone just like me, someone who’s scared but pushing through the fear, who may or may not have lost their hair, who may or may not be knocked out cold from fatigue, who or may not fully comprehend exactly what’s happening to them, just as I didn’t early on, and still mostly don’t.”

It’s My Party (And I’ll Cry About Butthole Pain If I Want To)
“A growing body of research suggests that women’s pain is historically more likely to be misinterpreted or downright ignored compared to pain experienced by men. This is especially true when it comes to women’s reproductive health. With endometriosis, the pain can sometimes be acute, but it can also be more generalized. Many people report pelvic or abdominal pain, and that can radiate to your hips, legs, and back. What this all adds up to is a situation where, on average, it can take up to seven to nine years for endometriosis patients to finally receive a diagnosis.”

To Be or Not To Be (In Remission)
“Pacing behind Garrett is DEPRESSION. Scraggly and overweight, Depression wears baggy trousers and cheap loafers, plus suspenders pulled over a dress shirt, the sleeves of which are rolled up to the elbows. Depression’s hair is slicked into a greasy pompadour, and his glasses are large and slightly tinted.”

Songs in the Key of Life
“After several weeks of worsening pain and nerve-wracking ambiguity, my official diagnosis arrived like a brick thrown through our window, with a note that said: “aggressive cancer.” Sitting there on the living room couch, with Danielle and our three dogs all competing to console/snuggle with me, I started making this playlist.”

“If You’ve Got the Part, Get It Checked”
“A cancer diagnosis is frightening and stressful for anyone,” says Nelson in the duo’s documentary Trans Dudes with Lady Cancer. “Being transmasculine and being diagnosed with a cancer that I thought of as a lady cancer added another layer of complexity and anxiety.” 

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This is the Healings Newsletter. It’s sent out on Thursdays.

It’s written by Garrett Kamps and edited by Tommy Craggs.

It’s illustrated by Abner Clouseau, whose pen name we apologize for.

It’s about illness and recovery, and comes with jokes. 

Healings is free for all, but if you subscribe, half of every dollar goes to charity, currently the Patient Advocate Foundation. The other half goes toward paying our contributors. This is the model for now. We reserve the right to adjust it but will let you know if we do.

If you have a suggestion for a story, would like to contribute, or want to chat with Garrett for any reason whatsoever, reach out: healingsproject@gmail.com.

 “Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” — Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor