The Big "C" and Why it Sucks

In case you aren’t sure what I mean by the big “C” I am referring to CANCER. It’s amazing how the diagnosis of cancer changes your perspective on things… I have watched friends deal with the dreaded “C” word with some of their loved ones, and have had a few close friends, my grandmother, and a cousin who battled this ugly disease. But it wasn’t until this past year that cancer slapped me in the face as it hit too close to home for me when my father was diagnosed.

I remember the day my gut told me something just wasn’t right. It was over last summer (2014). I was visiting my parents as I usually do on Sundays. My dad just looked wiped, as he had for some time. The man always burned the candle at both ends and could never sit still, always working 3 or 4 jobs at a time (apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, now you all know where I get it from…haha) I just assumed he was exhausted. He had also been complaining about a lump in his chest that he was convinced was a torn pectoral muscle. My mom kept telling him to get it checked, but, well you know, he is a man…

As September approached and we both headed back to work (we teach at the same high school) he just seemed off. I was teaching a community education yoga program on Wednesdays at the time and it was more convenient to just do a walk or run in town after work, shower at my parents and head to yoga from there, versus drive back to my house which was in the opposite direction. I was in their bathroom when I heard my dad come home and tell my mom “I am telling you there is something wrong… this is cancer.” I heard my mom urge him to get the lump scanned again but my father just argued that he didn’t want to ruin my sister’s wedding, which was coming up at the end of the month. I heard the door slam as he left to go work yet another one of his jobs. I don’t think he knew I was there and that I heard what had gone down.

We shipped up to Boston September 27th for my sister’s wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, and I had an amazing time treating my little cousin to a Red Sox/ Yankees game (she is a huge Jeter fan and we got to see his second last game at Fenway). Through it all though I could just see the exhaustion and worry in my dad’s face. I just knew something was not right.

We got home and he finally went for a scan. That Friday as I walked past my father’s classroom (he always picked up my mail for me to save me the long ass walk to the office) he pointed at his neck and said, “do you see this?” The man had a softball size lump on the side of his neck. All I kept thinking was “how the hell could I not see that!?” I asked if he told my mom to set up an appointment with him at his PCP, he said he had one scheduled for after school that day. Later in the day I passed by his room and noticed the lights out and a sign on the door that read “all Mr. Davis’ classes are to report to the auditorium.” When I got back to my classroom I called him to see what was going on. He said he got in to the doctor earlier. I asked what they had said and he told me “we will talk about it later…” Then he asked me if I could grab his laptop from his classroom and bring it over after school.

I decided to call my mom and as soon as she picked up I could tell she was crying. Before I could even say anything she said “it’s lymphoma.” She said she was leaving work and they were going to try and get him into the hospital that day to see a specialist. I hung up the phone and just sat there dumfounded. I had a class starting in 5 minutes… I just went on with my day. I cried a little at lunch to my friends that I ate with, but then just went about my day thinking, “this isn’t real, there has to be some mistake, it’s just a torn muscle or scar tissue and the scan was misread.” At the end of the day I grabbed my dad’s laptop and went to my parents.

When I walked in he was just sitting in his chair, mom was on the couch, tears still in her eyes. It was really weird, I felt this sort of detachment, denial I guess, and I just went into full blown scientist mode asking all the medical questions I could think of. “Did he get in with the specialist?” “Who is he going to?” What are they going to do?” “Exactly what did the scan show?” My dad just sat there cracking jokes, which scared me even more because although he is known to be quick witted I also knew, being his daughter, that much like myself he uses humor when he is nervous or scared. Seeing your father scared is not a pleasant thing. I don’t remember much else from that conversation, I just remember getting in my car and crying the entire way home. The official diagnosis came a few days later, stage IV nonhodgkins lymphoma.

I can honestly say that the next two months were a blur. There seemed to be appointment after appointment and I was trying to help my family in whatever way I could. As I mentioned my dad takes on a ton of jobs… including running the S.A.D.D. and National Honor Society at the school. One of the biggest fundraisers the Honor Society does is the annual Powder Puff Football game. It is also one of the favorite activities for the seniors. My dad looked at me dejected and said, “I’m going to have to cancel the game, I just don’t think I can do it.” Seeing him feel terrible over disappointing the kids made me feel awful. I told him not to worry; I’ll make sure it gets done. So for the next two months I was coming in early twice a week to run the club meetings for him (which for those of you who know me getting to work before 7:09 is a chore) and then working a full day, doing my workouts after school and coming back to supervise powder puff practice from 7:00-9:00pm 3-4 times a week. Thank God the girls’ tennis season was already over because if I had to try and coach that for him that would have been a shit show since I know nothing about tennis. I’d just be there saying “hit it over that net thing in the middle, hit it hard!” “FOUR! – Oh wait that’s golf… LOVE or whatever.”

I learned very quickly during that time who my real friends were and who I could count on. I also learned that when most people say, “if there is anything you need or anything I can do to help just ask,” really meant “as long as it isn’t going to inconvenience me in any way I’ll do what I can.” I am very blessed that I have amazing students who really stepped up to the plate and did everything they could to make Powder Puff happen. I also had a handful of good friends who rallied behind me. I was so tired of hearing people say “oh you’re so strong, you will get through this,” yeah I know, I’m strong, I’ve been knocked down, I have gotten up again, blah blah blah… but you know what? Sometimes I just needed to be told “It’s okay to cry, it’s ok to be sad, and it’s okay if you don’t feel strong right now,” but very few people got that. Sometimes I just wanted someone to hug me while I cried.

I channeled a lot of my stress into running. I had taken a 21-day hiatus from running after completing a marathon on September 7th. I restarted running the day we left Boston from my sister’s wedding. I signed up for race after race after race, and set PR’s in a 5k and 5 miler. I felt like Forest Gump “I just ran!” It was one of my saving graces, although it caught up to me later with several injuries (we will save that for another blog post). Running has always been my outlet so I was grateful to at least have that.

Between the busy schedule of work, taking care of the clubs, running races, and trying to help my mom I really never gave myself a chance to face the real issue… my dad had CANCER! Even after his first chemo treatment I still didn’t buy into the fact that this was real. I mean the man didn’t even lose his hair after the first chemo, and the only day he took off work was the day he had the treatment. It wasn’t until after his second treatment when I went to visit him and mom that Sunday and I saw his hair coming out in clumps that it became more of a reality… My dad, …had cancer. That night I went home and I cried myself to sleep.

As the holidays approached so did my dad’s third treatment. It was Black Friday and my dad called to see what I was up to since I was off from school. I could tell by the sound in his voice he just wanted some company while he was getting his chemo. I just want to say that I HATE hospitals, even when my sister delivered my nieces and it was a happy occasion I still HATED going to the hospital to see them. But I sucked it up and headed to the hospital. It wasn’t a pleasant site to see, my dad sitting in a chair with all kinds of tubes and shit pumping toxic chemicals through his body. As a biology person and science geek I read up on all the chemicals and I knew what each one was doing, which was cool, but not when it’s your dad that’s receiving them. I stayed with him for about an hour, then headed to a beer running event where I decided to pump myself full of other toxic chemicals to try and cope with what I just witnessed.

The holidays were just okay. I was missing having all my family together. My sister Julie and her husband went to Hawaii to spend the holiday with my brother Kyle and his wife who live down there. It was actually supposed to be a family Christmas vacation but with my dad being sick and my other sister Ashley having her second child only a few months prior it didn’t quite pan out that way. It kind of sucked because I really could have used my siblings’ support through all this. Not that it was any of their faults, it wasn’t as if my brother could just leave his teaching job and come back to the mainland, nor my sister in Boston could just take time off from her job to come home for an extended period of time. And my other sister with two kids had enough on her plate. But it was hard. I struggled to hold it together for my dad, my mom, and myself. It was even more of a challenge for my mom who on top of taking care of my dad also has had to worry about the declining health of her parents. Despite having great friends I really just felt kind of alone.

My job wasn’t helping either. I was super stressed with trying to keep my kids on pace to cover all the material for the almighty “common core” and make sure they were prepared for the life determining keystone exam. And can I just say that teaching the mitosis unit and what happens when the cell cycle goes out of whack and causes cancer was not exactly a walk in the park when you were dealing with what I was dealing with. My only saving graces were my running and the fact that I had amazing students, who even when I acted out of character, they understood why and always did their best to make things easier for me.

As the New Year approached I knew my body was in need of taking a break from running physically, but mentally I could not stop. I normally like to take a few weeks off after a hard racing season but against my better judgment I signed up for a spring half marathon. This wound up presenting even more stress as trying to get training runs in with the brutal winter we had was not exactly easy. Thankfully with the cold came snow, and with the snow came snowboarding and snowshoeing which provided some much needed cross training as well as time with my ski and board club peeps who could always make me laugh.

Before I knew it my dad was getting his 5th treatment. They took blood work and said if the blood work and screening comes back good he would receive one more treatment and be put in remission. When the tests came back clear I finally felt like I could breathe. He received his 6th treatment but was supposed to have the port kept in his chest until his 6th month scan, which would be this July. Unfortunately he had a clot develop in the port, which after multiple attempts they could not clear, so they recently decided to take it out. This makes me feel on edge because if his scan shows any reappearance of cancer in July he will have to have the port put back in, which is not a pleasant procedure. So for now we wait…

As I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, the “C” word really changes your perspective on things. I see it with myself and I see it with my dad. This entire situation has taught me that I really need to value the time I have with the people I care about. Not that I ever take people for granted, but it has taught me to live more in the present and enjoy the moment with people. It has taught me that even though we think we have all the time in the world to tell people and show people we love them, we don’t. We need to cherish them and tell them we love them while they are still here with us. I sometimes regret not taking my MCATs and going to medical school, but I have learned the universe has an uncanny way of giving you what you need when you need it. Had I gotten into medical school I may not have stayed in this area, I may not have been around to help out and spend time with my family. I may not have had supportive people like my friends and my students to help see me through this.

Further more I have learned that living in fear sucks. I have decided that this summer I am going to try to conquer some of my fears and to also not be afraid to try new things. I have already challenged myself by picking up a baseball bat (which I have not done since I was a freshman in high school) and went to the cages shrugging my shoulders and saying “I may make as ass out of myself but I am going to have a damn good time doing it.” Oddly enough I actually hit 70 mph baseballs and had a blast. I have decided to give horseback riding another go, go off roading in a jeep, take on kayaking, try paddle surfing, and long board surfing, do a shark cage dive, and take whatever other opportunities come my way… I will be sure to blog about them all, if you don’t hear from me, well then I guess you can put two and two together and realize that perhaps that activity did not end well…

As for my dad, I have definitely seen a change in his perspective as well. As much as the man still works his tail off, he has started to take time to relax a little more. Some of my quirks that used to drive him crazy like dying my hair unnatural colors, getting tattoos, and attempting crazy things he doesn’t seem to fret over (well except for base jumping and climbing the Haiku Stairs, he still isn’t on board with those two ideas). But I have noticed that he has been a little more supportive when I tell him about the things I want to do, I guess he sees that this entire cancer thing has kind of shaken me and he knows I gave up a lot of other opportunities to work and try to be independent and that I have some regrets about that. I think we both have learned that while work is important because it pays the bills, it is also important to live. He always used to tell me that I shouldn’t work to make a house, that I should work to make a life. That debt will always be there, something is always going to break, something is always going to need to be updated, so if I want to treat myself from time to time…do it. Not going to lie I may have been a little gung ho with the retail therapy lately, but as I said to my one friend “what are they going to do? Are the debt collectors going to show up at the gates of hell and say ‘sorry Melissa, you still have a balance on your credit cards so you don’t get your pitchfork and thus can’t roast marshmallows for s’mores’”?

So in closing I leave you with this quote “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” I think both my father and myself would agree that this is the most valuable lesson we both can take away from the past few months.

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