Paul Blais

And Then It Was Thursday

Hey friends. I think it is obvious that I have taken a long break from writing here. I kind of needed a break from cancer. It had kind of been consuming my life. I mean, I had the two original surgeries, and then the recovery, and then the stent removal... That was a tough day. I wrote about it back in April in a post called Sunny and Dark. Cancer had returned. It was spreading around my bladder. A beautiful spring day full of bright sunshine clouded over with emotional storms of frustration and fear. And the funny thing is that it happened on a Thursday.

Isn't that an odd day for anyone to discover that cancer had returned? I mean, the weekend is just around the corner. Thursdays are time to kind of start the gearing down from all the hustle and bustle of the work week. Just one more day left to the family fun day, the weeds in the yard, sweeping the garage floor, and taking the dog for a long walk. Plus a Thursday is right after hump day. Monday through Wednesday are the days most people are in the thick of it. Working the fingers to the bone is the norm. Watching the clock and anticipating the tick and the tock of the march toward that glorious moment of quittin' time. But that is the anticipation of that part of the week. Thursday is supposed to be that day of hope. We survived thus far, and it looks like we are going to be making it. We can hold out one more day. Hope wells up. Friday's a comin'!

So you see why that is an odd day for bad news. Give me that bad news on Monday, for crying out loud! Then you can say, Typical. What do expect for a Monday. Tuesdays are perfect- I just knew it. I just knew it. Yesterday was too good to think this was going to be a good week. Anything can go wrong on a Wednesday- I knew I wasn't going to get out of this week alive. Fridays through Sundays we are too distracted to really notice and all the doctors have taken those days off any way, so it is nearly impossible to get too much bad news on those days.

But I digress. I try to click away on these black keys of my computer trying to make light of the fact that cancer had returned. And the simple fact was that it was a dark day for my soul back in April. In fact, that darkness continued on for quite some time. Don't get me wrong, hope abounded. A fighter I would be. Get up and do what is needed. Go through the next treatment.

My doctor told me that this treatment is amazing- Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, BCG for short. Funny thing is nobody used the full name of it. When I asked my doctor what BCG stood for, he kind of wrinkled his brow and tried to say the name and then just he couldn't remember even though he was constantly having the treatments administered to his patients. Stink, I had seven installments of the stuff into my badder and I still had to do a Goog search (misspelling intentional for effect. Trying to sound cool even though I am well past the age of cool) to find the full name of the treatment. And the stuff just kinda works. It seems to strip away the lining of the bladder wall and put your body in hyper infection fighting mode and punch cancer in the face. I say seems because nobody really knows how it works. I watched a video from the maker of the stuff and they readily admit, "We don't know why it works..."

During this time I was basically off work. I had back-to-back surgeries that put me out for 6 weeks at a time. Then I got into the BCG mode which puts you out for about four to five days a week. The whole process was essentially a little over five months long. That is a long time to go with out a real paycheck! Can I add a couple more exclamation points here for added emphasis? !! I am self employed. That meant no unemployment insurance. That meant no money coming in. That meant financial turmoil.

During that time I started to think of a way that I could make a living even if my body wasn't going to be available to help. So I started Doubt the Doubts. The idea was ( and I won't go too deeply into this here, but...) that I could help inspire others to go after their dream, while building a platform to produce an income that doesn't take my body being in tip top shape. If my brain is good (Okay. Just stop the wise cracks right now!), I can work. That was the idea. And the show has been a huge success- not financially ($65 so far), but in terms of impact... Literally the number one podcast in iTunes for eight weeks (the max length of time that iTunes allows) in the New & Noteworthy section- and that was out of over 15,000 other new podcasts! The show is a hit. But an income from it is still a ways off.

So I put all my extra effort and time into building Doubt The Doubts. So PaulBlais.blogspot.com was put on the back burner. I stopped doing the Friday Flicks. I stopped writing articles. I stopped just about all of it and went full throttle on Doubt the Doubts. I've rarely even been on Facebook. If I have extra time, I spend it on the new venture because, well to be honest, I didn't know how long cancer would be gone or if it would even come back. I just knew that I was already in financial ruins so I had to act. (BTW- If you haven't already, would you please go to iTunes and give Doubt The Doubts a 5 star rating and a short review. That favor from you makes a huge difference in my little life. If you do this for me, please conclude your comments with "Pulling for the show." That way I know it is from this article. Thanks in advance.)

I had a full three month break after the BCG. It was glorious. No dumping things into my bladder. No feeling sick. I could go about my life and put in the normal sixty-hour-work week. And I felt fine. Except for a side ache. It never has gone away. It feels like my kidney is bruised. Doc has looked and tested and all is good, but still... Then there have been the constant phone calls from bill collectors (five months off work), the pressure to get cash, meet everyone's expectations, the inability to catch up, the feeling of deep despair, the heart attack...

Did I ever tell you about that? It was about a month ago and I woke up in the middle of the night with intense and horrible chest pain and was rushed to the hospital. I thought I was going to die as Jennifer drove me to the hospital. The last place on earth I thought that I would go to meet Jesus was in front of Safeway. But there I was looking out the window groaning and clutching my chest and Safeway was right there.

Turns out it wasn't a heart attack, or at least they don't think it was. I was supposed to get some tests done, but I refused to go deeper in debt just to get bad news. I mean a trip to Hawaii would be worth a little more debt. But a stress test? Just don't see the value in that. Plus I already knew I was under a lot of stress. And my side still hurts.

This past Wednesday marked the end of my three month hiatus from cancer treatment. That was another stress. One of the last things the doctor said to me before my treatments were completed was, "You've got an eighty percent chance of the cancer coming back." What!? Kinda takes the fun out of all the sickness from the treatment knowing that it might not even work. That anticipation kind of added to the overall stress. So Wednesday the doc did a new scoping of my bladder. Then sometime soon my BCG would start back up again.

The thing is, we saw a new tumor. Clear as day. Growing with gusto. Cancer is back. And it was a Wednesday. Just what you would expect for a Wednesday. And I tried not to cry... again. Bit my lip. Talk matter of fact. "Well, looks like we gotta do something." (shaky voice mixed with confidence). I don't think the nurse nor the doctor bought it. He informs me that it is time for a new surgery. Then recovery. Then new round of BCG. Taking time off work. Something that I can totally afford (tongue in cheek).

I left the room and found Jennifer waiting for me. She saw it in my eyes. "What's wrong, Paul?" "The cancer is back." "We'll get through this. You're a fighter. We'll be fine." How does she find such strength? Wow.

I woke up that day after Wednesday. A heaviness in my little world. Facing a new mountain to climb. And then it was Thursday.

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Toughened

I grew up with a big brother. Kirk. We were just two in the mix of six kids in our household. Three boys and three girls. I was the middle boy and fourth down from the top. Kirk was the second born. He was a pretty good big brother. All the neighborhood kids used to play football on the lawn of Crestview Elementary School across the street from our house in Vista, California. If one of the bigger kids was picking on me, Kirk would put an end to it. I was off limits to bullies when Kirk was around. But I was not off limits to Kirk.

Before we moved to the house across the street from Crestview School we lived on Spires Street. At the end of Spires Street along side of Melrose Drive was a gully that ran the length of the road. For most of the year the gully was dry and full of weeds. But part of the year the gully would flow with water. A favorite activity during this run of water for the neigborhood kids was to get rocks and mud and make a dam across the gully. The water would back up and we would get this little pond of gutter water going. Then we could float sticks in the pond and pretend that they were battleships and tankers and aircraft carriers. If we were extra enthusiastic, we'd "recruit" a few ants to be the crew members of the ships.

With sticks set adrift and each stick having a full compliment of crew members scurrying about their decks, the battle could begin! Each kid would gather their weapons and then chose a vessel to attack. A hand full of gravel and sand thrown side arm was like gun fire from an airplane and a rock became a bomb. The little kids, like me, were limited by our strength in the size of the bombs we could drop on the fleet, whereas the big boys could wield the bigger rocks and drop the A-Bombs that would destroy entire fleets. Usually we took turns dropping the bombs. Splash! and a ship was destroyed and the ant crews were plunged into the sea. They tried to swim to shore, but we'd just drop more rocks and dash the hopes of those little ants. Eventually the pond surface was covered with the carnage of motionless ant bodies bobbing up and down up the ripples of the pond.

One particular day I was in the water setting things up. Kirk was standing on a wood plank we had laid across the gully for better bomb dropping. He was holding the biggest rock he could carry over his head. His wobbly little elbows were straining to keep control of his ultimate A-Bomb. He yelled at me to move, but I paid him no never mind and went about my business. He told me he'd drop that rock on my head if I didn't move. Again, I kept to my task. I just knew he was bluffing. I mean, who would drop a rock on someone else's head? Kirk would, and he did.

The rock landed on my head and I went straight to the bottom of the pond with the rock settling on the top of my head. Kenny Gunney and Robert Hall jumped into the water and pulled me out from under the rock. I came up from the water coughing and bleeding and crying. Meanwhile Kirk was defending his actions from atop the plank, "I told him to move! I told him I was going to drop the rock on him!"

So I was fair game for Kirk's bullying, which I am sure is true for the world over when it comes to big brothers. What I didn't know was that all that picking on was prepping me for bigger battles.

As Kirk got older his interests in playing football across the street on the lawn of Crestview School began to wain. He found other things that caught his interests so football was now played on my own. The Blais brother team had split up, which in turn resulted in me being fair game to the bigger guys that wanted to throw their weight around the field.

Charlie Mineir was a year older than me and bigger by a good twenty pounds. For some reason he had got a burr under his saddle and was gunning for me. He was on the opposite team and at each line up he made sure he was lined up with me. With each hike of the ball Charlie threw his body at me and tried to run me over. I was intimidated and tried as best I could to avoid the rough collisions. Eventually I just got mad and mouthed off at Charlie. Charlie took that as a challenge and came at me with knuckles flying.

One thing that ought to be explained about Charlie is that he was a first born. Timothy was his younger brother. Timothy was a scrapper. A year younger than me and fearless. Nobody scared him. Why should they? He had Charlie prepping him for the worst by being the worst. Charlie took his physical size as being all that was needed to win the fight. What he didn't take into account was that I had been trained by Kirk.

So onto the ground Charlie and I landed. We rolled back and forth on the grass while all the other kids gathered around and yelled encouragement to hit and kick. Not a lot of punches were actually thrown, but the ones that were came mostly from me. When the battle was finally over, Charlie was bleeding from both nostrils and his eye was swelling up.

I've thought about that fight for many years. Partly to glory in my fighting skills, but mostly wondering why I could win when the odds were against me and I was out gunned. I have come to the conclusion that the difference was the training of a big brother. Having big brother problems toughened me up while Charlie was just the big brother of another. Life becomes less scary when you know the challenges can't be all that much worse than what Kirk trained me for.

So here's one for the big brothers. Cheers to you and thanks for making life a little harder. All of us little people just thought you were picking on us when all the while you were actually helping us develop. I'm sure it was all part of your over all plan. Y'all toughened us little guys up and helped us to become a little more scrappy, a little more able to take on the bigger challenges. Because of you, the little guy can win. I am stronger because of my big brother, Kirk.

Peter

Now I get it. When I was younger, I didn't understand Peter. He was funny. He was adventurous. He was brave. But... I just didn't understand his way of thinking.

When I was a little guy, I was always looking forward to the next stage of life. Elementary school was looking forward to jr. high. Jr. high was looking forward to high school. Looking forward to driving. Looking forward to driving without an adult. Looking forward to graduation. to moving out. to college. to a job. marriage. house. kids. better car... The adventure of living and moving on was so great I always had my eyes set on the future.

But not Peter. He liked being young. He liked being a kid. He liked the adventure of now not next year. And he stayed there in the forever now and never grew up. Fighting pirates and flying above the trees and befriending mermaids and caring for the lost boys. The older I get the more Peter seems to have found something very special. The older I get the more I realize it is just a story- a fairy story complete with its own fairy, Tinker Bell.

I am middle age. In that limbo age between young and old. It isn't like middle earth that Tolkien wrote about. Middle earth had mystery and adventure and drama and Hobbits (little guys with big hairy feet). There is no mystery to middle age and the adventures are meeting the bills and life gets filled with habits (little behaviors that that perform a brainless feat). This is the time of mid-life and that crisis that compels some to get a Harley or a Corvette or a brunette. It's a grasping for Peter's hand. To be pulled back into perpetual youth.

Interestingly enough, Peter Pan was written by a middle-age man. J.M. Barrie was well entrenched in his 40's when the play came out, and had just crossed into his 50's when the novel was produced. I wonder if he could have written the story line in his 20's when his future had more distant horizons than his past. Was Peter perhaps a longing of his own heart to capture a little more life than was allotted to him.

There is a tipping point in those middle years when you look to the horizons of the past and future and you see the latter is closer than the former. A realization settles in that you just don't know how far out that future horizon is. If anything goes wrong, then it could be closer than we think. A clogged artery, a mistake while driving, or (in my case) cancer and that horizon could suddenly be upon us.

I think the mid-life crisis is a symptom. I don't even know if it is grasping for perpetual youth- it would be nice, but who really wants to live through acne again. No, I think it may be more symptom of what one in my age group has not come to terms with- an expiration date, the lease is up, our mortality. That's why we have a crisis. We are not settle that we are really going to die. Yes, we middle-aged folks have know this in theory all our lives. But practically? I don't think so. It isn't settled in our minds as of yet. It is to be avoided. Run from. Delayed. And that encroaching horizon is intimidating. So we have the crisis of fear.

I imagine that those that are living the sunset years have their mortality more settled in their minds. The crisis has passed. Acceptance is the norm. So they have a bucket list. Much different than a mid-life crisis which is rooted in fear. A bucket list is based on the love of life. It has at its core the idea that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away; time is limited, so let's live. I like that. It has hope rather than dilemma. I like that a lot.

I think I'll go ahead and skip the crisis. I am going after the bucket list. Peter can have his forever now. Today was worth leaving yesterday for. And for tomorrow I will gladly leave today. I am even warming up to getting settled in with my mortality (which is still way out there!). I may end up with a lot of the same things on my bucket list as I did on my crisis list, but it will be based on the love of life rather than the fear of losing it. Life is good, let's live.

My Bucket List:
Eat ice cream with Jennifer in Italy.
Walk my daughter down the isle.
Tell stories to my son's children.
Publish a book.

It's short, but there's time to add to it.