Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 10

March 7, 2022May 26, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / Leave a comment

November 2021 – May 2022 – The Final Chapter… Until It Isn’t, I Guess?

TODAY – MAY 2022 – If you know me as a professional writer, then this late and months-long gap since the last post shouldn’t come as any surprise. On my best day, I will always delay the last ten pages of any project when really they should be the easiest and most celebratory. It’s my process. Maybe it’s my screwed up way of avoiding endings or goodbyes. I’m working on it. But turns out it’s the same for cancer blogs.

Fun as it is, that same writer work has led me to develop some nasty life habits. Due to a Clockwork Orange-like professionally repeated torture, I’m always thinking about where a certain event is happening on the “story arc” of my life. Or anyone else’s. Like I’m living my stupid life’s story as a film. It’s silly, but it’s kind of this bizarre Truman Show reality I’ve found between my personal and professional life. Is this the end of act 1 where our hero’s journey is just beginning? Is this the mid act 2 plot complication? Is this the end battle for the hero? That kind of stuff.

But life isn’t like that. I know. And life after Stage III cancer even more so. Life is messy and imperfect and not everything arcs. And some things arc a hundred times. Turns out there’s really only one rule for story – there are no rules.

So when it came time for this “final” blog on my cancer journey, I think I froze up. Considering how full of life I was feeling again, it suddenly felt like an ending I didn’t want to complete. For all the stress of treatment, I’ve never felt more overwhelmed than the last few months being 100% healthy.

And then I realized, that’s life in recovery. Remission. Survivorship. Whatever.

So there will be more posts here. Just maybe not the all-encompassing odyssey that this 10-parter has been.

If cancer is a war, survivorship seems to be PTSD. This post is for everyone who continues to fight, especially when it doesn’t look like one from the outside.

NOVEMBER 2021 – The physical recovery from the resection surgery in October went as expected – meaning it was easier than I thought in a lot of places and surprisingly slow and frustrating in others. This was the new expected norm.

*Leftover ostomy supplies that I dreamed of packing and donating the day I knew this was all behind us.*

My core stomach muscles couldn’t move a lot the first couple of days and I mainly felt it when I got in and out of bed, or from a seated position. I needed firmer support, but that all seemed par for the course by this point. I just couldn’t be more excited about waking up and not having that #@!$-ing ostomy bag on anymore.

Mignonne had to pack and repack my abdomen stoma wound every day for the first week. They sew most of it up after the resection, but it basically looks like a tiny hole from a Texas Chainsaw Massacre mini-golf course for a couple of weeks. It’s left open so the wound can drain and all that fun stuff. So to help get that moisture out of there, you pack in a few inches of this medical ribbon that wicks up the moisture. Pull it out and repack daily as the wound gets smaller.

I only say all this as Mignonne was the one who was designated to do it. (to her credit, Last Day Barb forcefully recruited and trained Mignonne for the job) I could barely use my stomach muscles to look down and do it myself. But she was a trooper and woke up every day and packed that thing like my own personal field medic. I was proud of her.

Turning my intestinal plumbing back on has been interesting to say the least. My surgeon referred to it as “getting to know the new you”, with a tiny smirk, and it kind of makes sense now. On one hand my system hadn’t digested anything in full for months, and definitely nothing too fibrous. On the other hand, the plumbing that’s down there is now also missing near 10cm. Not that I can feel it, but it definitely makes sense the way things are working down there now.

It was a 100% bathroom horror show the first two nights home without any reason to elaborate further. But on the plus side, I am no longer afraid of adult diapers in my later years. Bring it on, I say. Throw in a Zoom lifestyle and boom, you’re on easy street and always within a dash to the bathroom. Beyond that, it’s been testing lab of diet, moving my body more and letting things normalize for the first few months.

I don’t like to pin anyone to specifics but I eventually had to ask “is this more like a couple month-long thing or are we talkin’…“. Tony Stark Oncologist cut me off at our first follow up and said “It can take years“. Okey doke. And as of today, over six months later, we’re not out of it yet, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting pretty bright. I feel great, all things considered.

I got my CEA numbers back after the LAR surgery too and it was finally at a 2.0 and the first time in the “normal” range during the whole treatment. It fluctuated a bit as you can see, but nothing near as dramatic as where we started. Otherwise, that’s a long-term stock I’m choosing not to follow closely if I can.

*Tale of the tape over sixteen months and slowly getting – and staying – out of the red.*

My Tony Stark oncologist had a funny habit of never using terms like “NED” (No Evidence of Disease or #NED as it’s known to all the cool millennials). And like I said, we never spoke of my staging and at best he bemusedly entertained my attention to my CEA numbers as a mark of positivity. They can fluctuate, ergo don’t get too excited nor too bummed. Tony was measured and level-headed. And after a while I realized his genius – it’s not about any of that. It’s about getting to the end of it. It’s about getting rid of it. Forget the acronyms. Forget the markers that aren’t perfect. Just do the work as you can and get the cancer out of you. If that’s not a life philosophy, I don’t know what is.

Tony, being the tech-loving billionaire he is, also has me on a CT-DNA test regime. It’s basically a blood test that can detect certain cancers a year earlier than other blood tests, tracking the cancer through its genetic/dna code. How cool is that? That’s like Jedi midichlorian level stuff.

Anyway, that test has come back three times since totally negative for any signs on a genetic level. (super loosey goosey medical terms there) As with all the scans and future blood tests, I’ll continue to do these every few months and the more negatives in a row, the better prognosis it is for the long term of all this and the further apart the follow ups get. I’m already at a year for chest scans and close to that interval for abdominal scans.

When he messaged that this CT-NDA news was “TERRIFIC NEWS” in all caps, it was not lost on me. We’re headed in a pretty good direction.

So do I completely change my life now? Change my diet? Never return to drinking craft beer or margaritas? My chemo-induced aversion to savory food triggered a sweet craving akin to an 8-year-old in a candy store. All I wanted was Fun Dip, Hot Tamales and Sour Patch Kids for the better part of a year. What does that mean for me now? Do I keep painting rocks or change the type of projects I do? Am I selling toys or telling stories? Or does any of it even matter when you can just get cancer and the whole thing’s over anyway?

I don’t know. I’m still taking it a day at a time for now. Heck, I might even make it a habit.

*I was not joking about the Fun Dip thing. And please send any “sugar causes cancer!” advice directly to the Nobody Asked You Dept. and go worry about something that really matters.*

I have moments and waves where stuff still washes over me. Sometimes it’s tangible and real – like a weird physical pulse that thumps over my whole hand from the neuropathy or numb feet after standing for too long. I still walk into my office and forget why I went in there. And for a former shorts-in-April guy, I still get cold at the drop of a hat now.

Sometimes it’s just a mix of an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion trying to get back to normal. Or the feeling that you just nearly got hit by a train or in a bad car accident. Those moments that make you flinch just thinking about how close you came. Sometimes it’s a feeling of guilt for having survived it all (I know that one’s a classic), but I also feel guilt for having the amazing support I did, and the health care that we received when so many others don’t in similar (or worse) situations. I’m trying not to get lost in those moments, but it’s hard some days. So I combat them with trying to really notice the good ones too.

It’s only now that a lot of my loved ones are admitting how rough I looked at times and how scared they were. So that crops up a lot in my head, usually like a flurried montage of the last year flipping by in a blink of an eye from an outside perspective. Same with finally sharing my story with friends and reliving it real-time in the process. It’s too much to take in at times, and I can feel everyone around me decompressing in their own ways. Some just want to get back to normal, others want to relive how much we’ve been through, and some still just don’t want to acknowledge it all. They all deserve their perspective and way to move forward.

I said it too many times during treatment, but the writer in me just kept seeing how cancer wasn’t a disease. Wasn’t even an illness. Anytime I tried to pinpoint and get mad at it, logic and humility pulled me out for whatever reason. It was constantly undercutting any complaining or self-pitying I would do along the way.

To me, cancer is a metaphor. It’s a metaphor of life itself, holding up a big mirror to you when you’re going through it. (Yes, I’m rolling my eyes too) And I know it’s very writer-y and all, but it made sense to me. You want to know how you deal with life? Deal with cancer.

Oh why me!!
(Why not you? Why are you so special, slick?)
It’s so unfair!
(What is unfair? That you have to die? I hate to break it to you dude, but…)
I want to be cured forever!
(Tell me one thing in life that is 100%… other than death)
It’s so hard!
(Like it isn’t for everyone else?)
I can’t control it!
(You think you’re supposed to be able to?!)

I think I’ve landed on that it’s not about what happens. A lot of stuff happens to a lot of people. And thankfully most of it not to you or me. And cancer is definitely some of the worst of it. Family, love and friends are the best of it. The only thing I found I could control is how I reacted to it. If I deluded myself by thinking I could control more of that or deserved any more deference than any other human being because of that, well that was on me.

And now I’d like to think I know who I am because of cancer, and not in spite of it. It’s made me stronger in a weird way, slower in places and more impatient and driven in others. I’m at peace with some things that kept me up at nights before this. And I’m actively moving to change a few things that I was neglecting as well.

I now know without a doubt that the core of my true family is unflappable, and even stronger when faced with adversity. A tumbleweed family of blood, friendship, and life experience that I’ve been lucky enough to see grow over my life so far. And dangit if that isn’t a proud thing to realize you’re a part of. I love all of them.

I’d probably write this all completely differently in a year from now. Even in a month. We didn’t even get to the cannabis pills, the therapy sessions, the healing power of Canadian snacks, therapeutic Pokémon plush, or what it was like to try and make cartoons during all this. Maybe next time. I’m gonna go and look for some beach rocks for a bit.

And for the record tho, not to brag, but this was written quite comfortably at my standing desk

The well-used rock painting table after six rounds of chemo infusions, 1200 pills, three surgeries, hundreds of ostomy bags, an 8 cm tumor and 10cm of colon lighter, along with 137 painted rocks. Not the end, just the time to start a new canvas, I think.

(Insert Marvel post-credit scene teasing future awesome posts)

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 9

March 4, 2022March 4, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / 2 Comments

October 2021 – That Last Surgery & Nurse Barb

*I ain’t afraid of no ghost. Or butt cancer, if you’re asking.*

In this week’s chapter, Cancer Kev is feeling good. Perhaps a little too good. And about to get a refreshing dose of life back on the outside. To start at the beginning and see how such a common-sense-oriented man could ever get to this point, click here.

I’ll be the first to admit I was a little cocky going into the final operation. It was pretty much the tortoise and hare syndrome. I was the hare, and cancer reality was the tortoise. Stoma Stu was behaving, I was eating pretty well, sleeping pretty great and otherwise felt like I was on the upswing again and feeling that unstoppable vibe of being in a groove.

Then about two days before I went under, it suddenly occurred to me – I was having another major surgery. It hit right around the time that I realized there was an entire prep for this surgery like any other one. The whole thing was my fault and quickly became every bit of those woke-up-late-unprepared-for-an-exam nightmares that still hit as an adult.

“OH MY GOD! TODAY IS THE SURGERY AND I’M NOT PREPARED!!!!”

Thankfully that reality hit well enough in advance that it just straightened me out and focused me on the prep of eating and doing all those anti-bacterial showers and stuff beforehand. There was no bowel prep as I had the ostomy bag, so I chalked that up as a win before I even left the gate. But I had been looking at this as the same type of appointment where you get your teeth braces off. In retrospect, I now fully realize it was a little more than that.

The procedure itself was as straightforward as expected. I walked in with a different attitude this time. It wasn’t so much “cocky” but considering the tour of duty I had been on, I just felt like a seasoned veteran of the system. I was comforted to have been able to predict the flow of the morning check in and felt prepared and on top of it all as it happened as expected.

*Before the reversal surgery. I mean, come on, look at that man’s smug look of over-confidence.*

Mignonne was feeling better about it all too. I could see it in her face as I waited for the wheel up to the operating room. Or at least that’s what she wanted me to feel, in which case, touché girl. It worked. She had a mild panic attack I think the first time I was wheeled away for the big LAR surgery. There was a scope and severity to that one that really hit a peak at that moment. You trust and know in your heart you’ll see each other again, but son of a gun if there is a tiny nugget of anxiety at the core of it all come go-time. But this one had a logic and tangible scope that seemed to pull us through the moment.

In lighter news, I had changed into another new stoma bag that morning. I didn’t need to, but it felt akin to putting on a nice suit to fly on a plane or something. Classy like, y’know? I had actually sketched a tombstone for Stoma Stu on it as a joke to lighten the mood in the operating room, not that I’d be awake when it happened. Turned out it was a huge hit and there are apparently cell phone photos that have been shared with other surgeon friends worldwide. I don’t care. I’m just glad it made some people laugh for a second before they sliced me open. And yeah, I glossed over the whole cell phone pic thing too.

*Re-creation of the infamous Stoma Stu ostomy bag as a gift for my surgeon.*

The stoma reversal and (re)burial of Stoma Stu went smoothly. The other bonus of this day was that I was finally taking out my chest port. I was so thankful to it for its service, but damn it was time for that thing to get out of my body. Because of some extra weight loss, it felt like you could read the serial number through my thin skin at times. I could feel all the lumps and shapes of it. It itched a lot. And all I wanted to do was rub the area it was implanted in. It was driving me nuts. Again tho, all relative.

It was the first thing I touched when I woke up a couple of hours later. Even with a small bandage, it was amazing to feel the flat skin again. Then I felt my abdomen. It only took the last ten weeks to naturally anticipate the plastic stoma bag crinkle and a general sense of “tread lightly” in the area. But not this time. There was a bandage, sure, but there was nothing else. All I wanted to do was lay on a soft carpet and roll back and forth with my arms over my head.

We ended up staying only one night as planned. Once I was in the hospital room it took them hours to realize I hadn’t been fed. There was a bunch of confusion to start about what meds I was taking and when. I was never upgraded to a low fiber diet and was on soft post-op food the entire time – popsicles, broth and white rice. I ended up walking myself around the room when no one showed until 11pm for a physiotherapy walk. We had to wait six extra hours to be discharged, only to have a 30 second conversation for the sign off. And do you know what?

It was glorious.

*The low-residue meal tray that just… kept… coming.*

I know everyone says (and I believe it) that “every patient is a top priority here at ______ Hospital”. But I can tell you there is a remarkable difference in “he has stage IIIb cancer and we just found it” to “he just got sewn up and seems to be on his way to being cancer free” and the way you’re subsequently treated. It’s not in anything formal like a hospital mandate, but when you’re someone like me who hates being tended to or cared for, you REALLY notice when people do so, and are then re-comforted when they all ease back a bit. It comes through in not “what” people say but usually “how” they say it. It’s that extra look of concern, or that extra bit of the natural impatience you can let come through when dealing with the rest of humanity and you got a million of your own problems. Either way, it was inescapable. I was definitely on the other side of this. The only way I could mess up this moment was if I was looking for that attention and help. But I wasn’t. I was looking to get back to my normal life.

And yes, the staff were all fantastic. I had nurses who guided me through a meditation for pain and mental management, had nurses who shared their own medical stories and families with me, hummed songs as they worked and nurses who were blessed with the charm to get me to do whatever they needed without me feeling ordered around. I am a fan of nurses and will be so my entire life.

And then there was Barb.

Last Day Barb the day of discharge. Barb who said she only worked two days a week and didn’t laugh when I said “every day must be a Monday or a Friday then, huh?” (a solid but not repugnant dad joke, I’d think, but not defending it) Last Day Barb who made me realize by the end that maybe the two days a week wasn’t exactly Barb’s decision. Barb who says she has to “babysit” doctors and interns and feels the need to correct everything anyone else does. Don’t get me wrong. Barb no doubt knows her stuff. Maybe she was having an off day that just happened to make her personality seem like she had always been like that. I’m not judging. Just kind of observant.

*Waiting the six hours for discharge on the last day. Appropriate self-torturing with the Food Network on TV*.

But it was also Barb who gave me the biggest goodbye when it was time to leave and my wheelchair finally showed up… just in time for us to sit in rush hour Friday traffic. Probably because I was one less thing for her to deal with, but nonetheless, the joy of the moment wasn’t lost on me. It felt like I was going home for good. Or so I wanted to believe. Kind of like that brief moment on New Year’s Eve when the horns are blowing and you allow yourself the passing hope that it’ll be a brand new start tomorrow. We all know that jerk boss will still be there on Monday, but you give into the promise of the moment.

One of the nurses told me never to come back, like I know they do with so many people, but I swear it almost made me break down and cry.

My stomach grumbled a bit as we were leaving. It was no doubt from a full day of nothing but popsicles, apple juice and yogurt, but I knew what it really was.

It was Stoma Stu. My man now on the inside. Telling me everything was going to be alright…

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 8

February 20, 2022February 25, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / Leave a comment

August – October, 2021 – The Lonesome Ballad of Stoma Stu

*Sometimes the beach gives you worry stones.*
*Sometimes it gives you rage rocks.*

We join our tumor-less hero with a three month final countdown to an ostomy reversal and a colon that will sit as empty as a school gym in July until then. To start this oncological hazing gauntlet at the beginning, remove adhesive backing and apply here.

I won’t even mince words. I hated my ostomy for the most of the time from the LAR surgery until I had it reversed. I hated it with a passion. With a fist-clenching, shaking shoulders, staring at a problem that won’t go away at 3am kind of hatred. A hatred that can make you cry. A hatred that did make me cry.

It was also a hatred of luxury. Because my ileostomy was meant to be temporary, and there are a ton of people in this world who don’t have a choice or an end date. People who wear them their entire lives. And I see the peace one can find in a situation like that, but I was filled with nothing but frustration and anger every time one of the bags “failed” (such a clean word for such a horribly dirty reality).

If I had a “pity me” moment at all during this, it was during the first few weeks of having my ostomy. At first I was embarrassed by it, then I gave into it, but then I finally found my footing through it.

*The backing of one of my ostomy bags after the previous one failed only minutes earlier. I may have blacked out for a moment. Apologies for the language, but it was 100% a real moment in time…*

Looking back, I think I had hit a self-awarded break point in my treatment, so it wasn’t all the ostomy’s fault. I think after the second surgery I just felt like I had done enough. Again, only from my point of view, but it was valid to me. I was just done with having cancer and wanted to get back to normal. It had seemed like a constant climb back to normalcy since the chemo in a way anyhow. A false sense of normalcy though, as the plan was always to have this surgery. I think I just ignored the big picture of the surgery for the pleasure of my daily improvements until now. There were even some hours where I would forget that I had cancer, that’s how pleasurable the time before this was.

Then this ostomy nonsense happened and it felt like a major setback. Just knocked way back to the start of the video game level, when you were just pixels away from a save point. (I had a Chutes and Ladders reference in there originally, but I felt super old. Then again, “pixels” probably isn’t much better.)

Whatever it was, it took me a while to get back on my feet. It was a good knock down and I lost perspective. And I had to battle this godforsaken ostomy like some metaphoric dragon to win the day. It became my windmill, my Moriarty, my… third metaphoric thing…

I won’t even attempt a medical explanation of an ostomy and all the different types there are. I had a vague knowledge of what their function was before all this but had no what they really were or how they worked.

*Yep. That’s Baby Stu sticking out of me. It wasn’t any less weird looking down at it… The hernia belt is a longer story about the dangers of your spouse making you laugh too much while on Oxy.*

Mine was a what they call a “loop ileostomy”. Meaning they pull out your small intestine, through your stomach muscle wall and then leave a bit exposed outside of your stomach skin. Called a “stoma”. If it sounds like your innards are just sausage skin, it’s cause they kind of are. A little slit at the top of it provides you with the new exit for your waste and is otherwise a kink in the intestinal hose that allows the rest of the system to heal up without any output running further through it as it would normally happen. There are parts of the ostomy experience that are kind of neat and excitingly time saving and efficient, if I’m being honest. This plus three months of not using my phone in the bathroom were actually a refreshing overall life development.

An ostomy means you have what is nothing more than a sticky bag slapped around the stoma faucet sticking out of your belly. The stoma doesn’t hurt at all in and of itself (doesn’t really have any pain nerves) and is considered “healthy” when it’s as red as a baboon’s behind. Then you just let nature take its course as you eat and carry on with your day. You don’t really have a choice as it’s mostly impossible to control anyway beyond trying to time your eating. Bag fills up, you empty bag when you need to. Change the bag every few days. Seems simple enough right?

Well, it wasn’t for me and it took forever to find my footing. And it was dark days, man. So, so dark.

*Tho I would eventually pivot bag models, these are the backings of most of the bags I went through in the first 6-8 weeks or so.*

Fitting an ostomy bag comes down to the right materials and proper application. Both of which can vary in product, approach and patient physiology. And the products offer you a million optional solutions for all the same use – it’s enough to drive you nuts. It’s something that is remarkably simple when you’ve figured it out and yet somehow the DaVinci Code when you’re in the thick of it and on your fifth bag change at 2am and you ran out of paper towels. Again.

I really only hit bottom a couple of times in the process. I had done enough other hard cancer things to trust that eventually it’ll work out. And try as I did to find it on the internet, there’s never been a story of someone not being able to figure it out before. So that comforted me in a worst-case kind of way.

It took weeks of trial and error, and waiting for supplies (shocker – there is no Amazon for Ostomies. Nor a local Target for them), I finally hit the right material and application and things began to lighten up. I’m a problem solver and counter by nature, so once I embraced that, I knew the days were numbered. And what was once counted by only hours between bag changes (my shortest bag duration was a little over 70 seconds) then quickly became countable by days instead.

Pro tip. Shoe rack as ostomy supply holder.

This is when the beast known as Stoma Stu really came into his own. Like I said, you have zero control over a stoma. If it decides to go, it’s going. If it decides to just let out fart noises, it’s gonna. You can’t “hold it” or pinch it like normal attempts to control bodily functions. In short, the dude’s kind of an a-hole. Literally too. He’s Stoma Stu.

I think by this point my warped humor had made its mark on my family, so the moniker of Stu was embraced by all. He was preceded by his cousin “Tishy the Scar Tissue” – the cartoon scar tissue that was left behind from my tumor treatment.

Stu became the name of what I was going through now. And I’m sure it was a way to ask how I was doing without asking me directly for the hundredth time. Stu could give me a good or bad day. There were days he behaved and days he didn’t. But most days, he was just a vehicle to make some people chuckle over text. My family would refer to him like a bad roommate we all agreed to suffer through until he moved out.

Before we knew it (and trust me, I was counting the days) my ten weeks was up. It was an aggressive estimate by the surgeon, but I think it’s because of my relatively positive recovery and reaction to treatment. And I have to admit that I’ve always been the kid in class who wanted to be singled out for being great at something. There’s zero value in it and I know that on a logical level. But that voice is always in the back of my head. And while I occasionally may not have used it well in the past, the cancer treatment gave it an excuse to be loud and coach me through it all. I was out to be a model patient, shallow as that may sound. Even if just for me. And while I am still waiting for my trophy with that title, the most important part was just that I had something to shoot for.

But here we were. End of the line. And Stoma Stu, being the little gastro-intestinal Mary Poppins that he was, was getting ready to say goodbye.

*Went in doubt, apply all you know from film production tracking.*

I had another scan and also had to do an enema test to make sure there was a complete seal where I healed in my colon. If you ever tested a beach ball for air leaks, it’s pretty much the same principle. Only way messier and more humiliating at the time.

The last night before surgery I was feeling bold, nostalgic and a little accomplished. The last night before leaving a production to finally go home kind of feeling. I decided to change my bag (the feeling of a fresh and new one is akin to clean new underwear). Stu had been behaving for weeks now and I had the bag thing down pat. It was after a shower and I was standing there in a towel, letting Stu proudly stand in the open air. Kind of like letting the dog stick its head out the window on the last trip to the vet. It was a wonderful moment as I dried my hair.

I thought about Stu. I felt for the dude. We had been through a ton together. A lotta sleepless nights and lonely stretches in the bathroom. And really, all of that hatred and anger, well, I couldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the little guy responsible for it. So how could I carry that on? This was never a question of if I was going to die – it was a question of how I was going to live. Whatever it was, I needed that darkness to get to this light. And I’d never take it back. I didn’t hate Stu. In fact, I loved the guy.

…and that’s when Stu spontaneously spat out all over the white bathroom rug. It was an impressive amount. I wanted to be upset. Such a thing would have sunk me weeks earlier.

But I just smiled. And did the Tom Hanks laugh from Money Pit.

It was Stu’s last hurrah. His last F-U. The old tiger showing he still had teeth and could mess up a rug if he wanted to. I couldn’t help but admire his spirit and sort of see myself in it.

I was glad to see the little asshole go.

The drawing on my very last ostomy bag I wore into surgery. I was unconscious but it was apparently a huge hit in the operating room. And tho my surgeon has photos of it on his phone (slightly disconcerting thought there, but he’s earned it), he obviously couldn’t keep it. So I drew another one and framed it for him as a thank you gift. Signed “thank you from the bottom of my heart – and my rectum”.

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 7

February 11, 2022February 20, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / Leave a comment

August 2021 – GO TIME!

*“Get away from that colon, you B&#?!” Xenomorph rock painting by Kevin.*

We rejoin our shrunken-tumor-bearing hero with a table full of painted rocks, and about to be robotically operated on Star Trek-style. To start this whole story from the beginning, turn your head and cough here.

I didn’t really think about the LAR surgery much before it happened. I had a decent sense of what it entailed – they were going to cut out the section of my rectum that had the tumor, hopefully cleanly enough to get all residual traces, sew me back up and then give me a temporary ileostomy bag on my abdomen so that internal surgery area can heal without having to deal with the hassles of digestion and poopin’.

Piece of cake, right?

I had found a pretty sterile cg animation on YouTube of what the procedure would look like and it all seemed pretty logical. I mean, I had no frame of reference anyway, so you may as well be explaining what it’s like to fix the navigation system on a Space Shuttle. I’ll just take your word for it, chief.

The prep was easy enough. Another cleanse and nothing to eat by mouth the day before. This time however, I was coming off of a pretty decadent month of finally being able to eat “realer” foods post-chemo. Man it was so good to have less throat sensitivity and nausea from certain foods or smells. So the fast the day before bothered me more than usual. But I ultimately took it as a good sign.

*While we didn’t have access to any free universal Canadian healthcare, we did have Canadian snacks sent by my amazing family. Just don’t ask me to pick between free healthcare and a Coffee Crisp.*

As we got closer to the day, I could feel the nervousness from everyone else. It was weird, but it never hit me that way. It was just something I had to do. I mean, what was the alternative anyway? But everyone’s nerves made me want to be stronger for them, in a way. And it wasn’t even bravado – it actually did scare the crap out of me if I focused on it too much. But I really did trust in that moment that we were doing the right thing, so that abated a lot of the nerves. Somehow in my mind that was all the justification I need to do something hard. Plus I think there is a lot of merit in the idea that sometimes you find peace in the most non-peaceful moments of your life. Seems to leave you with a momentary clarity and a very clear coin toss to decide which side you want to land on any given subject. I was convinced we were going to land heads-up on this one.

It’s worth bringing up at this point that the location of my tumor had always been of concern to everyone professionally involved. They all furrowed their brow and gave the optimistic pursed-lip nod, but the concern was that it was so low inside and close to the “verge” (the fancy name for the opening of your butthole – The More You Know) that once they cut out the tumor, there wouldn’t be enough tissue left to re-attach. Thereby leaving me with an ostomy bag the rest of my life (we’ll get to poop bags in a moment). But they always said they’d know on game day once they’re inside and call an audible as needed.

The diagram my surgeon drew on to explain what was going to happen with the LAR surgery. As a post-script now six months after that surgery, it totally feels like that’s what happened down there…

None of it ever really bothered me… until we were driving in that morning around 5am and it started rattling around in my head. Mignonne was my chauffeur for the better part of a year and I found that being a passenger occupied my mind a lot more than driving. So when everything was feeling better at this point, I started to drive us a couple of times, eager for the control. (What? Kevin? Controlling?) And Mignonne indulged me, all to her credit. The only drawback was that while driving, my mind had nothing to do BUT ruminate… and it hit me hard while driving into Westwood.

*Our 2021 yellow brick road – the 101 freeway.*

We got there at the appropriate ungodly early hour and were well taken care of once at the surgery center. (See: Kevin’s Correlation Theory of Level-of-Care-to-Seriousness-of-Illness from Part One) Mignonne and I had been married over ten years and I hadn’t taken my wedding ring off once for all the appropriate man-made reasons. By now it had been off at least a dozen times for scans and surgeries like this, temporarily parked on Mignonne’s index finger until I got it back. To be honest, I kind of like how it stripped the formality from the whole thing. That bond wasn’t true because there’s a piece of metal. It’s true because you decide it to be. Plus, it always gave us an excuse to say “I do” again when we’d put them back on. And I know there were days where I wouldn’t have blamed her for a healthy pause and exhale before she did.

*6am surgery call time. Author in deep thought, contemplating life and whether or not it’s kosher to wear Nike kicks with Adidas pants.*

Mignonne could stay with me until the anesthesiologist wheeled me up to surgery. A never-ending revolving door of nurses and other folks associated with the surgery would drop by for check-ins and papers to sign. And then for the second time in my life, thanks to this jerk named cancer, I was fully sedated for another procedure.

It really was the blink of an eye and I was awake in a recovery room.

Mignonne’s smiling eyes and Covid-masked face was the first thing I saw. I immediately felt like I had been doing sit ups for hours. Coupled with surgery in my butt. After hearing a new crinkling when I moved, I eventually looked down and saw a beige ostomy bag stuck to my abdomen under the blankets. Oh yeah. Poop bag. I had forgotten about that, given the enormity of everything else.

It was also much later in the day than we had anticipated. The four-hour surgery turned into ten, apparently, as my (rockstar) surgeon was really making sure to remove all bits of the tumor for a clean margin extraction. I’ll leave my medical terminology at that. But from what it sounds like, getting it out was like using tweezers on a microscopic level to separate Velcro from itself. That’s my layman interpretation, but either way, it sounded like everyone outside was pretty worried for a while and Mignonne was running central communications from the waiting room. They also removed 14 lymph nodes and I love that that is the astounding fact I always forget to throw in.

*Post-surgery. And a very important sign.*

I ended up staying three nights in the hospital, tho it could have easily been two had it not been for a, uh, catheter issue. I’ll leave it out of this story as it’s non-cancer related, but buy me a beer sometime and I’ll tell you a funny story. Buy me a margarita and maybe there’ll be pics involved.

Mignonne spent those nights at a nearby hotel – a definite expense at a rough financial time, but it made all of us (including everyone out of town) feel better knowing we were that close to each other. I slowly got up to a low fiber diet and was doing pretty well with my “output”. And that’s without any credit to me – it just kind of happens on its own. I don’t know really, I’d never had an ostomy bag before, nor anyone who had one, so I didn’t have any frame of reference going into it. All I know is that the entire process reverts you to a three-year-old who gets to feel proud about pooping again. My advice, if any one is asking, is just lean into it as best you can and get through it. Like dancing the YMCA at a wedding or falling down a flight of stairs. It just does more damage the more you fight the reality of the situation, so limber up and get to ‘er.

*A newborn ostomy bag in its natural habitat…*

An ostomy nurse came by and walked me through how to change the bag on my abdomen. It felt like a car walk-through at the dealer the day you buy it. You nod at the simplicity of it all only to go home and say “what was that thing about oil levels?”. But it seemed pretty straight-forward at the time. Haaaaaaaaaa. So much more on that topic later.

The post-op pain wasn’t too bad. I mostly got by with 5mg of OxyContin and was more than fine. I was allowed up to 15mg, so I bumped it up to 10 one time when I was feeling particularly uncomfortable and wanted to sleep. A half hour later I was telling Mignonne how much I loved and missed the kids as tears were coming to my eyes trying to speak. She stared at me a beat and then said “…you did the higher oxy, didn’t you?” What can I say, I’m a chemical romantic.

Now on the other side of it, I finally understood why everyone thought it was a big deal surgery. Cause it felt exactly like a big deal surgery when it was over. Cause it was. I’m still not sure if that was blissful ignorance or bravery, but I now know there is a very fine line between the two. And it’s amazing how your brain is equipped to try and keep the show on the road when you need it the most.

My first ostomy bag seemed to be working just fine and after I unplugged from everything, I showed them I could walk unassisted by the second day. It was actually pretty easy, all things considered. The internal surgical site in me was the most challenging of it, as that whole butt area really is the epicenter of most all your movement, come to find out. As a result, it was pretty sensitive to movement of any kind. But honestly, it you’re a patient and you’ve gotten to this point, you’ve probably dealt with worse, so it proportionately wasn’t that bad.

It was also at this moment that we remembered we live in an upstairs unit with about twelve or so stairs. As soon as we mentioned it, a nurse brought me a short stack of practice stairs to climb in the hallway there. It was going to be slow going but I was prepared to leave as the stair master.

We got discharged on day three and I went home with a catheter still in me (that was… not fun) and a drain J-pouch still coming from my surgical site. The promise was that both would come out the following week when we went back in for a follow up. They both did and weren’t really that bad to manage at home. The catheter felt more like a constant physics puzzle to get optimal drainage, and the drain bulb barely filled with a half ounce of liquid a day.

First day leaving hospital. Complete with my Matrix tubes and the bag carrying my catheter pouch. Good news is that it takes just one time forgetting it’s attached as you walk away and get the yoink. Then you’re good.

I was on bed rest the first couple of days and before I knew it, my youngest son was sitting next to me playing games together and watching more Rick and Morty while trying not to laugh too much as it hurt to do so. I took maybe one or two oxycontin at the most, but then was down to regular Tylenol for a week or two.

LOOK AT MEEEEEEE!!! A Mister Meseeks painted rock from Rick and Morty. Gifted to my awesome son for showing some amazing empathy during all this.

The recovery from that part of the surgery was fairly linear. The internal surgical site healed as it should have, as did the small laparoscopic scars on my abdomen from the surgery. The tumor and scar tissue were sent away for a biopsy and they came back with a “margins clear”. That was really good news. Basically, all the cancer was contained inside what was removed, without any of it touching the edges, and therefore bringing into question if it was entirely removed. Totally a Mission Impossible moment.

I came down to the car to Mignonne and my youngest son. As we were driving away, I reported the “margins clear” thing out loud, passing it along as if it was just another blood pressure reading. it was probably the fourth item I got to and then it hit me as the words were coming out. That was the first time I cried for a happy reason in a helluva long time. I had actually forgotten what it felt like.

Now all I had to do was successfully heal over the coming two to three months, and then if all went as planned, I would reverse my ileostomy and basically turn on my plumbing back to the way it used to be. It seemed simple enough.

But then I met Stoma Stu…

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 6

February 3, 2022February 9, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / Leave a comment

June 2021 – Rapid Radiation and Ridin’ On

We find our tingly-fingered hero finishing six cycles of chemotherapy and preparing for his next phase of X-Man radiation treatment.

To start with PT. 1, of all this nonsense, click here.

As we were closing in on the sixth chemo cycle, I had another round of scans that showed my tumor had been reduced to mostly scar tissue. My Iron Man oncologist rarely exhibited affirmations of good news, but I could tell this was a very good development. I loved the way he and Super Surgeon sort of remarked of it as a positive, but with a bit of a scrunchy face. “Yeah, it just shriveled up I guess”, with a shrug. I could also tell the difference just in how I felt in that area too. So whatever chemo was supposed to be doing, it was, and I wasn’t complaining.

We went on to name the remaining mess “Tishy”, in an off-handed text to my Canadian family. That joke snowballed into what officially became “Tishy the Scar Tissue” until he would be permanently cut from my body in a couple of months. I even framed a photo of him for present to a near and dear relative who was there for us a lot during the whole thing.

This was still far from our darkest sense of humor during all this…

I went on to kid myself that I could nail chemo and radiation so well that the doctors would scratch their heads and say “Guess we don’t need to cut you open and all that stuff. Surgery’s cancelled!”. That illusion tho – that hypothetical scratchers lottery ticket win – kept me going through the chemo and radiation. I was planning to feign being surprised as if I didn’t realize how great I had done. It would be great. I also knew it was next to impossible as a reality, but I found myself amused by the knee-jerk miracle wishing and kind of saw the joy those people get who wish like that more often.

My CEA numbers were starting to fall as well. “Carcinoembryonic Antigen Numbers”. They’re cancer markers found in the blood, but only for certain types of cancer, and not all of them. Colorectal is one. I have zero understanding of the science other than that, so take all of this is relative.

At my hospital, anything at or under a 3.1 was considered “normal” and without a sign of cancer. And apparently those numbers can vary from clinic to clinic, so you gotta realize you’re dealing with horseshoe and hand grenade accuracy. But that didn’t matter much, as my first reading was an 80.5. I guess you could say I’ve always been a bit of an overachiever.

Over the course of the treatment, that number dropped to 46.2 almost immediately after the first round, then to 5.9 and then finally 3.1 on the nose on the final round. So, while still technically in the red, I knew this was trending positive. It was also at this time when we embraced the term “trending positive” as a way to relate “good news” in a sane and realistic way to others. Not saying we were in All’s Good-ville yet, but we’re definitely headed in the right direction. The other thing cancer seems to forevermore rob you of is the binary general state of “good” or “bad” – you’re always in flux and trending one way or another, yet never reaching either it seems.

My Dow Jones of cancer trackers. CEA numbers.

Dr. Iron Man never really lived by those numbers, so most of this was me parsing out information from my tests on my own. In retrospect now, I respect his POV. It’s realistic. It’s a number that can fluctuate and as Kenny Rogers will tell you, there’ll be time enough to count your money after the dealin’s done. That’s why he’s my Iron Man. Even my staging was never officially discussed – I had to fish that out of my own records as the approach was so pragmatic and action-oriented. Still though, he politely indulged my med chart sleuthing as I think he knew it was keeping me busy.

I pretty much reset physically after each of the first four chemo rounds, feeling almost back to normal by the start of the proceeding round. But by round five, I started feeling the cumulative effect of it. It felt like one and a half rounds and didn’t go away after like the others. The neuropathy in my hands and feet never really dissipated either. The cold sensitivity in my hands just stuck around and I was in gloves all the time as the summer weather came in. My right hand also started to randomly cramp up and contort like it had a palsy or something. You can even see it on a few of my Instagram rock posts with my shaky fingers trembling while they handle the cartoon rock.

I would always say I could take more if I had to. I even meant it most of the time. But toward the end I was definitely looking for a break. Because of the positive scans and tests, we stopped the chemo after the sixth round. Tony Stark said the difference a 7^th round would make would be negligible, and he wanted me healthy for radiation.

There was a small break – I want to say a couple to four weeks – before I was to start radiation. It was pretty sweet after a few months of chemo treatment. The sun didn’t feel as weird with each passing day and I was slowly getting my appetite back.

It was then that I heard two of my favorite words – rapid radiation. We were preparing for a full five weeks of daily radiation therapy – usually par for the course from what it sounded like. Our nearest radiology department was in Westwood, about a 90-minute drive each way. It would be, like most people who go through it, hours of time in a car daily just to go to a building just for a five minute daily zap. Needless to say, we were both dreading it on a lot of levels.

But Iron Man called up and said that their tumor board met and said I was a good candidate for “rapid radiation” because of my response to treatment and that I was generally crushing the whole thing. Ok, that last part I made up, but that’s what it felt like reading between the lines to me.

Rapid radiation is not a hard concept. It’s basically a lot stronger hit of radiation, but you go daily for only five days. FIVE DAYS!! How much stronger? I couldn’t really tell you the math and science, but considering it was cramming five weeks into five days, I’d say it was a solid Bruce Banner level dose each time. But still. FIVE DAYS.

Radiology was a different pace. It felt a little looser, a little more revolving door department (by design and necessity) and just a little kooky. Like Real Genius kind of off-kilter, but top notch performance. Operating out of the basement, naturally. I dug it.

It was also a bit of a return to gen-pop. In chemo, all the patients there were probably going through some sort of cancer. So it was an emotional bubble of sorts. In radiation, there are a million other reasons it seems that patients could be there too. So it was a bit of a jump back into a cold pool after the jacuzzi comfort of chemo. There weren’t as many of the knowing nods hello in the waiting room. After the initial reaction passed tho, it was a nice little taste of the system outside of cancer. It kind of felt normal.

You also got to pick music to play loudly as you were getting zapped. I normally wouldn’t care, but they were so excited about it and being able to cater to any musical taste thanks to their Spotify account. Their enthusiasm had me sold. I ended up doing my own cliché Beatles, Dr Hook, Beach Boys, Groove Armada and AC/DC days, respectively. “Sylvia’s Mother” made me really emotional for some weird reason and the AC/DC playlist was the most obscure and ‘meh’ deepest cuts I had never heard. I wanted to be really frustrated but then realized I would have never heard them otherwise, so then I just chilled and enjoyed.

My musical mantra since about day one was “Can I Kick It” from the Tribe Called Quest song. It’s totally on the nose title-wise, but I’ve since learned to appreciate clichés. It was as much the song title as it was the groove. It’s a groove that sort of says “I got this” while also not losing your cool. It became my alarm clock sound for taking my daily chemo pills and the song I would listen to fresh out of the shower before appointments. Like I said, I’m a frustrated athlete when it comes to superstitions and can roll with the best of the crazy.

The eternal question… (we left this rock at the front desk of the chemo room)

Then thankfully “Ride On” by AC/DC closed it out and gave me a new mantra for the rest of my treatment – “And I ain’t too old to hurry, ‘Cause I ain’t too old to die, But I sure am hard to beat”. And I think that was the moment that I actually started believing how hard I’d be to beat on this one.

Any time prior to this, and I would have easily admitted to death “yeah, you got me on that one”. That image of Wile E. Coyote with an ineffective umbrella over his head for the bomb? I totally get it. But looking back, I never had a “why me?” reaction during any of this. If anything, I just kept asking “why not me?”. What would make me so special that this couldn’t happen to me? That usually snapped me out of a self-pity spiral on my worst days.

Cancer in a nutshell. Image copyright Warner Bros.

I started feeling my strength again. Maybe it was the Hulk gamma rays after the months of chemo. But I was ready to smash some stuff, with cancer top on the list…

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 5

February 1, 2022February 5, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / Leave a comment

Feb – June, 2021 – #@&!-ing Prune Juice & Painted Rocks

Know what sucks? Prune juice. That’s what sucks. With all due respect to the prune industry and all whom it employs, I know you help so many people. But it’s like having a big cup of thick raisin spit to me. And my Tony Stark oncologist prescribed a glass a day.

…only to be followed daily with a grumbled “#@&! you, prune juice”. A sign I was at least still alive and kicking.

At first I could slam it down college-style for a month or so cold from the fridge. But that was before chemo and cold sensitivity hit hard. So now not only did I have to have the cup a day, but I had to let it sit and get to room temperature in the sun before I could drink it without my throat seizing. I tip my hat to the universe on that one. Well played.

But in the middle of all the chemo, needles, scans, procedures, do you know what? Drinking that prune juice every @#$!-ing day was still one of the top three worst things about cancer to me. So, I figured as long as I could confidently say that, then how bad could things really be?

It was also during this time that we started going on daily walks. I couldn’t really move very quickly so they were more like daily strolls or Tim Conway Old Man shuffles. Eventually as the tumor was shrinking, I think my body must have had more energy for walking, because we eventually started going to the beach and for longer walks. It was quiet, peaceful and as always, a reminder that there is a much bigger world out there than just you. Whatever it is, that place does the trick for me.

San Buenaventura Beach. Home sweet home.

Just before chemo started were sitting on the beach quietly combing for beach glass one morning, and it was a good day for it. I looked down and saw a rock that looked like Pickle Rick from that cartoon Rick & Morty – a show our 11-year-olds really shouldn’t have been watching, but when up against cancer, pales by comparison in importance in exchange for an immature laugh. I had been meaning to watch it forever and it hit when I needed to laugh the most. Seeing it through the juvenile eyes of our kids just make it better.

Somehow I got the idea of wanting to paint a rock that looked like Pickle Rick.

I’M PICKLE RIIIIICK!! The first rock I ever painted. Pickle Rick and Rick & Morty copyright their respective owners.

So I ordered some pens off Amazon (Artistro brand are amazing btw) and got to work. Now, I didn’t invent rock painting at all. There are plenty of feel good rocks out there with messages of hope, love and peace. I like those a lot. But these ended up making me laugh. And the people I showed them to smiled, which just triggered something for me. At first I thought about leaving them around the neighborhood, then got selfish and wanted to hold onto them. I had a million ideas of what to do with them, but for now decided I’d just focus on painting.

Staples to look for that you can never get too many of – perfectly round rocks for Pokeballs and flat ovals for Pac-Man Ghosts

This began my rock painting therapy. It wasn’t about painting uplifting and life-affirming sayings on rocks. I’m just not that guy. It was about making myself smile and chuckle. Focus on something that wasn’t work. A hobby, I guess, and by far a luxury to anyone over the working age of 21. Searching through rocks on the beach became a treasure hunt for cartoony shapes I could work with. Letting my chemo-clouded brain flow and free-form associate again. Even when the neuropathy was bad and it was too hard to comb through rocks or even hold a paint pen with my tingly fingers, it was fun to dream and plan the next one.

And why paint someone else’s design? Exactly because it wasn’t my design, I think. Not my visual style. I had to give myself to someone else’s design choices. Some I loved. Some I hated and had a hard time with. There was a clear “right” and “wrong”, and that satiated a good chunk of my brain that needed that definitive logic at that moment. And the moment I shared the rocks with people and they got a happy reaction, I dunno, I just felt better about things all around.

Our art station table. It stayed this way for the better part of 2021.

It eventually overtook a dining room table, transforming the room into an adult craft corner. I’d find myself past midnight a lot of nights just looking at the unpainted rocks and trying to assign the best cartoon to put on them. Other times just looking at the ones I’ve done over and over just to change the width of an eyebrow. Other times just watching them grow in numbers as time went on, pleased to see some sort of progress toward whatever destination. Part pile of accomplishments, part hashmarks on a prison wall counting the days.

For whatever reason and purpose, painting rocks kept me going. And I’m still doing them today. Mostly meditative, with a dash of superstition. I highly recommend giving it a shot.

Way at the beginning of this I found this great short interview online that Tommy Chong did after he went through his colorectal cancer treatment, coincidentally with my same surgeon. He talked about the importance of keeping your humor and his forthrightness about the whole thing always stuck with me. Especially after looking so hard for something this direct and demystifying. It was a link about colorectal cancer that actually made me laugh, and put it all in an easy-to-read-when-needed format. A touchstone of sorts to help maintain perspective as I was slowly earning it. I kept that article bookmarked and would reread it pretty often. Turns out my mom was doing the same whenever she needed the reminder or boost. Whatever it was, it left an impression on us, and I thank the guy for it.

I even painted Cheech and Chong rocks in honor of the help Tommy will probably never know he gave me with that article. Thanks, Man…

And while cancer may never be a laugh riot, I was just amazed at how much of a downer it is across the board. Probably rightfully so, and I get that. But I think I went into this wanting to find the smiles as I could along the way. Why not, it was all going to happen anyway. And in the end, even if it didn’t do anything for others, the residual effect made me feel happier and stronger. It also ushered in a new era of really dark humor between Mignonne and I that would sometimes just leave us gasping for air laughing. Maintaining that humor did something along the way that I still can’t quite define. But I think it really began with the rocks. Just made it about something that wasn’t me in a time where everything had to be about me. Figure out how to laugh about it along the way, and if you can, find something to safely focus your rage on.

Like @&$!-ing prune juice.

And as a reminder until next time from Rick and Morty…

Never go back to the carpet store. Thank you Justin Roiland.

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 4

January 31, 2022January 31, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / Leave a comment

Livers and Ports and Chemo, Oh My!

Sick Ren and Nurse Stimpy painted rocks that Kevin eventually gave his Tony Stark oncologist as a thank you gift.

February – April 2021

So the next bit was a bit of a blur between everything happening, nothing happening, and everything also being on rinse and repeat… like that Groundhog Day movie. Or most of your 30’s.

First up was my liver ablation in February 2021. Until now I had mainly only ever been in hospitals for other people, so everything was new to me. No sir. I didn’t like it. And yet another Covid-era procedure that I had to go in for solo while Mignonne sat waiting in the mostly-treeless streets of Santa Monica.

The surgery was straight forward enough – they did it laparoscopically so I came out with just two tiny incisions on my side, maybe the size of a regular staple each. I made it a point to not YouTube any videos on the procedure. I wasn’t afraid of it – I was just aware it was always with a caveat – not exactly my condition, different hospital, different machine, blah blah. My plate was full with my own narrative and I was fine with that.

On their advice, I also had my optional chest port installed for my chemo IV and future surgeries. The idea being that if I had to get poked a bunch over the coming year, it might be nice to have a Matrix-like port to just jack that stuff into on demand. I didn’t regret it at all, especially after one random IV in my hand proved how much more uncomfortable it is for any drug to flow up your arm to enter your system. And after overhearing patients struggling to hit their veins in the chemo room, I’m glad I had my plug and play doohickey. It would still go on to drive me nuts and be itchy for the next few months, but hey, it’s better than cancer.

That was an outpatient surgery and we were home by the evening. With my first ever surgery and anesthesia, I felt like I got my first parachute jump behind me. Chemo was about to start the following week or so. I didn’t really know what to expect other than what everyone else tells you. And it took only two internet searches to get totally overwhelmed at seeing it through other patients’ eyes.

I had a lot of people concerned for my hair for some reason. Another notch in the belt for cancer’s face in film and tv I guess. One of the greatest gifts of cancer seemed to be perspective – it immediately ranks everything in your life between urgent and important. Yep, just like the Eisenhower principle. What is urgent is important, but not all important things are urgent, kinda thing. And worrying about my hair didn’t even make the list, shocking as that may be to anyone who knows me. (Spoiler alert – it only got thinner and dryer with a few grays, but seems to be returning to normal now)

Somebody say hair? Painted rock by Kevin. Johnny Bravo trademark to his respective owners.

The first chemo day I was allowed to have Mignonne with me, but for that day only. We were actually excited about that – the closest to a date we’d been on the last few months. It also produced the only photos of me during chemo that weren’t bathroom selfies.

The room was bright and just starting to fill with about a dozen or two patients over the next couple of hours. I always made my appointments early in the day – I figured everyone would be the most energetic and patient with me, and also I wouldn’t spend the day fretting about going. What works for the DMV works for chemo. I weighed in and gave my birthdate for one of the 1468 times done during treatment. I got seated in a decently comfortable recliner chair with a warm blanket, pillows and small snacks as I wanted. Really, the chemo room feels like a decent domestic business class trip on a plane. The seats are a little nicer, you get a little more one on one attention, but honestly, you still would rather be home.

Only chemo photo not taken in a bathroom mirror. The larger smile here while looking at my wife is not lost on me.

I shuffled into the room from my tumor discomfort, but mid-way through the half hour steroid IV drip, (the opening act of every infusion day) the pain just faded away. It was amazing. But that’s either how extreme the tumor inflammation was, or just how effective the steroids were going to be. I didn’t care either way, I just let finally let my full weight sit down on a chair for the first time in four months. I know it was still chemotherapy in the big picture, but it was also kind of glorious at the moment.

The chemo drip (oxiplatin) usually took over 2 hours to complete. I never really felt anything during the drip, other than an overwhelming sense of having to pee cause, duh, they’re pumping you with fluids. You have to unplug your IV and hit the bathroom in the chemo room. That was my first real experience of seeing a bunch of cancer patients all in one setting. And it was very clear very quickly that there were a lot more stories than mine. And the conversations you can’t help but pick up on in the quiet room cemented it all in.

At any given moment someone was having a fantastic day while someone was having their worst one in a long time. That youthful excitable voice actually belongs to that 90-year-old woman behind you who smiles and waves. And that weakened one fighting to contain his graveled crankiness is the 20-something with the neck tattoo to the left of you. There were appointments where I just put in earplugs as it was almost too much humanity at times. But for the most part, it was pretty humbling to realize how much life there is out there at any given moment.

Wound with a view. The chemo room and my lucky clover socks I wore every infusion and appointment. Necessary? Perhaps not. But I’m also writing this a year later cancer-free, so you do the superstitious math.

I finished the chemo and we walked out to the car. I was assuming I’d feel like I had nitro-glycerine inside me, but I felt sort of fine. I was ironically parched and took a big drink from a room temperature water bottle Mignonne had. It hit my throat and immediately felt like I had swallowed three big ice cubes with razor sharp edges on them. I couldn’t even swallow. That was the chemotherapy and the first of many neuropathy reactions like that that I’d have to deal with in the coming months. I realized that explained why the bathroom faucet felt so cold just a few minutes earlier. I tried a bit of a banana and my throat closed, not even entertaining the idea of ingesting anything. It tasted just off and was pretty nauseating.

Welcome to Chemotopia.

That began the pattern of what would happen after every treatment. About a week of extreme drinking and eating sensitivity. The ability to enjoy anything savory went away almost overnight. Everything seemed too rich, too smelly or just unappealing overall. We followed the rule of thumb to not try and eat your favorite foods – it’s so unpleasant that I could totally see the possibility of negative association. My feet bottoms would go numb from the neuropathy, and I’d lose the sensation in my outer three toes, making it feel like I was balancing on rounded feet bottoms and could possibly fall over when standing. My hands couldn’t touch anything remotely cold, especially metal, and I wore gloves and a beanie for most of the coming months. It was just weird.

Gloves just became a thing for the first two weeks of every cycle. Thankfully they’re pretty easy to get with touchscreen finger pads.

I play mediocre guitar for fun and it was now completely off the menu as it hurt my fingertips too much. Even the nylon strings on a ukulele. I’d take eight pills a day, plus a bunch of vitamins and supplements and a blood pressure medicine as I had started to spike from everything going on in my body. The third week of every cycle was better as I could eat a little more daringly and had energy to walk in the sun for a bit. And I finally wasn’t freezing all day.

But for the most part I was just mostly tired and really limited with my energy for the next few months. Chemo brain kicked in and I started blanking on a few Zoom calls or just remembering what I went to the kitchen for, but nothing a little extra attention to mindfulness didn’t overcome. I could always do work and be creative, but I had to start scheduling it and couldn’t necessarily do it all on demand like before. Work video calls were always easy as it gave me something to focus on, oftentimes just forgetting what I was dealing with for the fun of work itself. I could go for hours without realizing what was happening. That was a bit of a godsend. Or maybe a sign that I work too much and I was just a junkie getting my fix.

We continued to do tests throughout the treatments and they began to show some improvements, outside of all the things that the chemo messes up with your body on a normal day. My butt wasn’t hurting internally anymore, and I actually began to use the bathroom like a semi-normal person again. It’s amazing the things you take for granted, I know. And all thanks to the chemotherapy shrinking the tumor I assumed. Which I also hoped was a positive sign. I just know I was wearing underwear like a big boy again and didn’t have to wear a panty liner anymore. Nothing against them. Probably just more the reasons why.

We had to delay the fifth and sixth chemo rounds as my numbers were too elevated to administer the chemo. It’s mostly a white blood cell thing from what I took away from it all. The whole deal weakens you, so basically it’s them making sure you don’t redline. You’re tested prior to each cycle to make sure, but my blood cell counts weren’t strong enough to confidently do it those days.

The last time it was pushed off it felt exactly like school being cancelled for a snow day. The sun was a little warmer that day driving home. I knew I’d have to pay for it later with more work, but it was a welcome break. And gave food a chance to taste normal again for another week.

Plus it gave my neuropathy-hit hands some bonus time to work on something that inadvertently saved my brain and creativity during the whole process…

Schoolhouse Beach in Ventura, CA. I owe you.

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 3

January 25, 2022January 27, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / Leave a comment

Diagnosis, A Plan & My Avengers Assemble

Painted rocks Kevin and his wife left at the rock garden she started while he was undergoing chemotherapy treatment. This one was ultimately swiped, but am trusting it’s appreciated wherever it wound up .

JANUARY 2021

On January 4, 2021 I received a message from my gastroenterologist saying that “the biopsy confirmed the presence of cancer” and that he was referring me to the head of colorectal surgery at UCLA in Westwood.

Now, I’m the first one to tell you that I have appreciated near every perk and upgrade I’ve ever received in my life. And because of what I do, I’ve been blessed to have had a few over the years. Have tried to never take them for granted, and always noticed how they made a moment a little better for myself, my friends and family along the way.

This was an upgrade that I wasn’t thrilled about at all.

Couldn’t one of the newer surgeons look at it? It’s a teaching hospital. I’m sure we can get some new grad or something. Surely it’s not so bad that we have to go directly to the head guy, right?

Right?

Phones rang a lot right away and there were a lot of emails exchanged making appointments with experienced medical support staff. The UCLA hold music became the soundtrack of my life. Oncologists, liver specialists, nutritionists, geneticists, therapists and financial services if needed. They were friendly and warm in ways that I hadn’t received in any other medical scenarios in my life.

This was kind of the way I tracked the severity of my cancer throughout the year — looking at the reactions in people’s eyes and the way they responded to me. Don’t get me wrong — they all strive for the top care of everyone — but there was just a sincerity in their concern and help that gave me glimpses of how serious this all was. It kind of felt like getting front of the line all day at Disneyland only to later realize it’s because you have some terrible illness.

Painted rocks Kevin and his wife left at the rock garden she started while he was undergoing chemotherapy treatment. (characters and licenses trademarked their respective owners and Matt Groening’s massive bank account)

We had to figure out how to tell my parents, our immediate family and our kids. That all just sucked really bad, not gonna lie. I got some solace in being strong so that other people would feel better about my condition. Maybe it’s the dad in me, maybe it’s the over-performer, I dunno. It was weird and awkward to say it all out loud, but usually better once I did. That’s something I’m still learning today. I felt pretty protected and supported from day one with that entire crew. Like i said, I’m a lucky guy.

And I noticed this right away too — we have done ourselves a major disservice with how Hollywood and social lore portrays cancer. I think we all picture some gray, thin, gaunt figure with a beanie cap, shaved head and sunken eyes as “the face” of cancer. And sure, while that may be true in some cases, it does nothing but stigmatize the entire word and everyone going through it. The truth is that cancer can look, feel and be experienced in as many different ways as there are people on the planet. So I found half of my conversations were mitigating everyone’s (including mine) perception of what it really was to go through all this.

Turns out the end of days can just feel like a Tuesday sometimes.

I ended up going to my surgeon appointment and my oncologist appointment shortly thereafter. I was driven to both of the appointments while sitting in a garbage bag with leg holes cut out of them, just in case, as my symptoms were still ongoing and unpredictable. Say no more.

My surgeon is an honest to god rockstar of a human being — tho I know that’s the expected reaction to the person who cut you open and took out the bad thing that would have otherwise killed you. He was appropriately serious at the time. We did a digital exam that still makes me cringe to this day, but we got ‘er done. It took him all of 3 seconds to confirm what was doing down there and he had the plan.

I was then sent to my oncologist and this dude has been my Tony Stark since day one. Smart, sharp, and enthusiastically armed with new world technology. My Iron Man quarterback, partner and shot-caller for… well, probably for the rest of my life at this point if he’ll have me. Tony’s my guy.

The plan was simple in retrospect, but the entire thing sounded like babble at the time. Like a Space X take-off prep list. Terms and procedures I had never heard of before. I quickly took sporadic notes to Google more later.

We’d start with scans of my abdomen and my chest to see how things were looking. (Wait — there’s a difference between a CT and an MRI?) By this point Tony was the third doctor to scan through my colonoscopy photos and nod with that same somber knowing look.

*The Golden MRI rule: one must always throw up horns to offset standing only in socks and a gown.*

The scans came back and I was diagnosed with Stage IIIb rectal cancer. Staged as such because while it started in my rectum, it had moved into the walls and “potentially” the lymph nodes. (Spoiler alert: they did) Then the stage gets a bump up if it’s jumped to another organ, which it did to my liver. There were a couple of “spots” that they were concerned about on the liver. My lungs were thankfully clean, tho. It felt like at least getting your name right on the test when everything else was wrong.

The treatment plan was to do eight rounds of chemotherapy — getting an IV drip every three weeks, with two weeks of chemo pills called capecitabine and then a week off. I’d have a liver ablation surgery first to take out those “spots” as they were concerned that chemo would shrink them smaller, and they wouldn’t be able to track them as well. That seemed logical to me.

Then after the chemo, I’d have a break, and move onto daily radiation therapy for five weeks or so. All with the goal of shrinking my tumor and cleaning up the edges of it to eventually and definitely remove for good. We’d test again, and if it had made enough progress in the shrinkage department, we’d then go to robotic LAR surgery (Lower Anterior Resection— YouTube it when you haven’t just eaten) where they would take out the section with the tumor, sew me back up like they just took a piece of piping out, give me an ostomy bag for hopefully only a few months, then eventually reverse that and turn my plumbing back on downstairs after it’s all healed. I’d have a coordinator and also access to a therapist as I needed it.

I just nodded.

We live by the beach and, as a result, have logged our fair share of hours on boogie boards in the surf. It’s a blast to go fast and be pushed to shore, but there is also a certain joy I get from the wipe outs — when the wave catches up to you, slams you down and then you’re just caught in the churn for a few seconds waiting to see which way is up. God I love that. Maybe it has to do with (my infamous) control issues. But you can fight it and look for a place to grab air, desperately gasping for a breath, or you can just go with it and roll with the surf, however it decides to push you to shore. You still end up coming out of it either way. One is just far less traumatizing.

Unpainted beach rocks in their natural habitat on a Ventura, CA beach.

We were in the churn now. And I purposefully decided to just go with it.

Who knows, I thought, maybe it’d make a good story someday…

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 2

January 25, 2022January 27, 2022 / Kevin Munroe / Leave a comment

Christmas Colonoscopies & New Years Neuroses

*Painted Beatles rocks Kevin made during cancer treatment. He’s also never been a fan of subtlety*.

We join our gastrointestinally-challenged hero still on his self-imposed bedrest, binge-watching the entire Walker Texas Ranger series on DVD, about to discover what’s behind it all…

Heh. “Behind”. Butt joke.

December 2020

We finally got a colonoscopy appointment toward the end of December 2020. Because of Covid we spent Christmas by ourselves which was a first and therefore weird in and of itself. We were without kids this year, definitely challenged for holiday cheer and the house was filled with a lot of contemplative silence through the discomfort. There wasn’t really a lot to talk about — we knew answers were hopefully coming soon, so I think we just gravitated to watching TV instead. Both my wife and I are both really comfortable being uncomfortable for long stretches of time. An unassuming important life skill, but I never thought it would be applied like this.

The colonoscopy prep for the three days after Christmas just kind of felt tonally appropriate and made Christmas dinner feel like a last supper… with egg nog.

It was my first colonoscopy ever and the biggest downer was that it wasn’t by choice… as if I was this health-woke guy just taking care of himself. Nope. I could barely sit up in the car before my colonoscopy and was walking like I was 87 with bad hips. I was on blood pressure medication as my bp was suddenly running a lot higher than normal and my ears would ring off and on all day. Yeah. This was far from my choice.

*When I was younger, so much younger than today. I never needed anybody’s help in any way.*

Colonoscopy prep was everything you’d expect and was pretty straight forward. I’m actually kind of looking forward to having one when nothing else is wrong with me, that’s how simple it is. The scan was the first of many (read: all) appointments where I had to do everything alone while Mignonne sat in the car and not even in the waiting room, thanks again to Covid.

Living and working for over twenty-five years in Southern California means you end up logging over a 1/4 of your waking life in traffic. As a result, I’ve developed a sort of “Traffic Zen” over the years — applicable just as much for a driver as in life itself, I like to think. Why dart and dash and ride up on people? You’re not getting there any faster and only making things more dangerous for everyone. Sometimes traffic just flows how it’s going to and you just have to go with it. And yeah — all those people you’re “racing” and not letting merge in all have their own lives they’re living and aren’t going where you’re going, so why are you comparing your journeys? It’s about staying in your lane, knowing when to smartly change, and otherwise going with the flow. If ya can.

Now my wife is a beyond capable and resourceful person. But in the course of our 12 year life before this, she had driven us in the car maybe 8 times. Not because she couldn’t or didn’t want to — I know she put in her fair amount of commuting hours as a full-time script supervisor — but it was a combination of what I was used to, probably misplaced chivalry, her grace, and a dash of control issues on my part.

Well that was out the door now as Mignonne became my chauffeur for an entire year. I felt like I was 15 again and needing my parents to drive me anywhere I needed to go. And for a guy who doesn’t enjoy being fussed over, it was an exercise in letting go. It was no doubt way worse for her. In the end tho, I was glad that she was the one I had to let go with the first. And she handled it — and all my passenger side phantom braking — like the superstar she is.

They put me fully under for the colonoscopy, and when I woke up, the doctor was immediately jamming indiscernible screengrabs of my colon into my groggy face. It was a blur of information and way-too-intimate medical close ups… except when he said there was an 8cm tumor that had been there “…for at least 5–6 years”. That suddenly registered crystal clear. Everything else got really muffled. Turns out that happens just like in the movies.

The problem solver in me was oddly ecstatic for a moment tho. Ecstatic that I wasn’t crazy or imagining any of the pain and the cause was legit. In a way, it was a bit of a relief.

As the muffled ringing dissipated, he continued that I’d have to wait for biopsy results to confirm and then make an appointment with a colorectal surgeon to discuss more if it comes back malignant.

(“Was ‘malignant’ the bad kind, or was ‘benign’ the bad kind? Both sound pretty bad as words.” My mind raced as I immediately dropped 60 IQ points.) He’d call the surgeon immediately if so.

Surgeon? Wait what?

He was already gone by the time any real questions hit me. It was all so officious and on a conveyor belt of sorts. I felt like I was suddenly catapulted onto another belt like a defective jellybean. I got dressed back into my makeshift diaper and clothes from my patient bag. I was soon in a wheelchair and blinded by the afternoon light, being pushed through the parking lot and looking for my car from a height I never had to before. It was surprisingly harder than you’d think.

In the frenzy of leaving, I couldn’t even call Mignonne to tell her I was being discharged. She barely looked up before I was being helped into the passenger side. The nurse opened the door and said, “They found a tumor and he needs to meet with a surgeon right away!” and then, swear to god, she just closed the door and left. Mignonne’s mouth hadn’t even closed yet. If there was a wartime helicopter whupping overhead, it couldn’t have been more surreal and absurdly overly-dramatic.

And that was the start of a week or so of knowing I probably had cancer… but wasn’t sure as no one had told me officially and we needed the appointment and biopsy to officially call it. I guess? I dunno. I was new to it all and I just know I was tired of Googling everyone else’s reality. I wanted answers for me… no offense to Tabitha with the IBS from North Dakota on YouTube.

We kept the news to ourselves as I had no idea what the news really even was at that point. I worried it would otherwise felt like an unfortunate Group FaceTime from an ambulance on the way to the hospital, as I bleed out on a front facing camera, telling everyone it’s going to be ok. Let’s just get there and see what the deal is first, then we can call everyone, I figured.

I’m still not sure it was the right answer, to be honest. At points in all this I felt like I was unfairly burdening the people I told, and was disappointing those I didn’t. I also discovered therapy during this time — more on that later — so I also completely acknowledge how inaccurate all those thoughts are.

All I know now is that if anything like this ever happened again, after the year we’ve had as a family, I’d be telling people sooner. Not sure what that says about our original decision, or rather what we’ve since become as a formidable little army.

Tree ornament purchased long before we knew the dumpster fire of 2020 was going to rage into 2021.

It was a quiet New Year Eve. Everyone online, on tv and in my text messages were celebrating saying goodbye to the crappy year 2020. “It can only get better from here, right?”

I figured as long as we could still see the dark and ironic humor in that, we’d be just fine…

Chemo, Colons, Covid & Cartoon Rocks – Pt. 1

January 24, 2022September 29, 2023 / Kevin Munroe / 4 Comments

An Animated Account of Battling Colorectal Cancer

A few of the cartoon beach rocks Kevin painted while going through cancer treatment. All characters and licenses trademark and copyright their respective big wig owners.

This is just my story.

If there is one thing this entire process has taught me (other than the million other things), it’s that everyone’s journey is their own.

That’s not meant to sound super-hippie, but it’s the thing you should remember when you listen to anyone else’s experience like this. Appreciate it as you want to, or don’t, but definitely don’t judge yours by it.

And just to temper expectations, I’m not one of these super-informed cancer patients who uses all the proper terms and knows all the medicines, regimes and all that.

I’m just a guy who doodles and writes and just happened to go through this craziness. Writing honestly just made me feel better about it all. And if it ends up making anyone else feel a tiny bit better, or makes any of this stupid disease a tiny bit less of a mystery as a result, then awesome.

So take this as a story — my story — and please not as advice. Please. I’m still half-convinced stress and depression caused my cancer, which is simply ridiculous, but also a great example of why I’m not qualified outside of anything but relaying my own perspective and experiences.

The Classic Chemo Bathroom Selfie. One of many, thanks in part to 2021 Covid protocols that didn’t allow anyone else to come to the infusions with patients.

SEPTEMBER 2020 — THE STANDIN’ UP DESKS & LAYIN’ DOWN BLUES

My name is Kevin Munroe. I’m 49 years old and a husband of 11 years with four children and a grandson between my wife Mignonne and I.

And so far – knock on wood – I’m a Stage IIIb colorectal cancer survivor, warrior, and self-proclaimed Jedi.

We live in Ventura, California after spending the better part of the last decade working on location between LA, San Francisco, Vancouver and Montreal. I write, produce and direct stuff for the movies and whatnot. Mostly animated projects. Some have done pretty well, while the majority of those that didn’t probably taught me the most. I love what I do and I love who I get to do it with. And I would have said it before all this too, but I’m a lucky guy.

“My Little Pony: The Movie” character tribute by artist Dave Dick. Kevin only performed story and consulting work on the project, but when someone draws you as a Pony, you share it with the world.

It all uncomfortably-but-quietly started around August 2020. I had finally gotten a standing desk and was excited to begin working as such from home. Writing a script while standing just seemed like an awesome humblebrag. It had been almost a year of the sofa-as-office working during Covid and I was creatively jazzed about the physical change of pace. Coincidentally, my butt had been kind of sore lately… which I just attributed to way too much sitting at the time, and a sign I needed to stand up more.

After a couple of days crushing it like the LeBron of stand-up typing, I suddenly began having pain “downstairs” while standing. That was back when all those medical references had cute self-conscious nicknames like “downstairs” and “output”. We are absurdly to the point now when it comes to conversational medical terms.

“Morning. How’s that rectum?”

“Didn’t crap my pants last night. Thanks for checking in, babe. Coffee?”

*Kevin and one of his monsters from his 2011 film “Dylan Dog”. Sitting in make up for four hours credit: actor Brian Steele. Photo Credit: David James Photography*

It soon hurt to stand for too long and I was convinced that I was somehow making things worse with the standing desk. That was the core of my problem, I thought. I dunno, it made sense at the time, and as a reminder, I’m a passable director, but a worse doctor.

But then even sitting began to hurt. It soon felt like I was smuggling an iron golf ball down there… even tho there wasn’t anything chambered up, so to speak. So all I could do was lay down most of the days hoping it’d get better.

My humblebrag about writing-while-standing turned to writing-scripts-on-an-iPhone. And now my thumbs hurt too, tho unrelated to the cancer inside me.

I started losing some weight, without trying very hard. The irony was that the year and a half before I made a very conscious decision to get eating and exercise under control again. I basically didn’t overeat my calories and moved a bit each day for a year and dropped a little over 50 pounds. I felt fantastic. I stayed at that weight for about a year, then suddenly started unintentionally dropping a couple of pounds here and there.

50 lb. (mostly healthy) weight loss from a year before diagnosis. The secret? Eat what you want, but just move around and don’t eat over your daily recommended calorie limit. Secret to losing the next 20 lbs after that? Get butt cancer, apparently.

We were coming off summer 2020 with our younger boys, which is usually a spring break-like blur of video games, burgers, pizza and Doritos, so I remember I was trying to just make healthier choices again. We all were. I felt pretty good with the first pounds, water weight, I figured. Then I dropped about 10 pounds in a couple of weeks.

It was sort of your classic slow-boiling frog scenario. You rationalize discomfort. You can easily put off a copay or a test you don’t want to pay for. You can (literally) flush anything away that scares you and pretend it’s not real. Lose yourself and your sanity in Google. I did it all for as long as I could — about a month or so — and then had to go to a GP.

Scratch that.

I had to actually find a GP for the first time — because I could not be a more stereotypical middle-aged man — then make the actual appointment.

September and October 2020 brought a few GP visits. A couple of virtual ones to start because of Covid and my massive inability to take self-care seriously. The horrible timing of all this really couldn’t have been funnier nor more poignant. It was like needing treatment for a sunburn in a hospital that’s on fire.

The consensus was that I had inflamed something or had a hemorrhoid… even tho i had never had one before in my life. So we did the “it’s probably just hemorrhoids” dance that all discomforts in that area are required to perform as a first response. A genius Preparation H racket? Possibly. I tried over the counter treatments, but nothing changed.

By mid-October, I was laying down for most of the days. I couldn’t stray far from a bathroom and wasn’t sleeping for more than an hour at a time. Couldn’t drive or really walk much at all. I was obsessively Kindle reading both decadent rock n roll biographies and self-help therapy books through the insomnia and was slowly losing my mind.

*A sample from Kevin’s Kindle library during the time leading up to treatment. Sidenote — all are highly recommended for one reason or another.*

I was trying to make nightly gratitude lists at the same time as I was googling to find just one medical story that matched mine. Even if it was a grisly one, it’d at least be a starting point.

My diet vacillated with every new theory between high and low fiber, to eventually not wanting to eat anything as it was just too uncomfortable to go to the bathroom altogether. I stopped a long and formidable drinking habit like an atheist finding God on the battlefield, not wanting to add to my issues. My only pain management turned to hot baths, a heating pad, and admittedly too many Tylenol. 650 mg calliber, cause that’s how we roll baby.

Note: in addition to not being a doctor, I’m definitely not a role model either.

*2010 Christmas crew photo at Lucasfilm. Clone Wars and… two other projects. Kevin’s was one of the others. That’s him bottom right. Cancer story related?* *Not really. But come on. That’s George Lucas right there. Photo credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.*

On October 20th, I had finally typed “prostatitis” in my notes from one of my late-night-paranoid-Google-search-self-diagnosis black holes. The first of many. But despite the numerous notes I made, I never allowed myself to think it could be cancer for some reason.

Why prostatitis, you may ask? Excellent question. Well, at least it wasn’t “cancer”, right? It would be bad, but not too bad, I negotiated in my mind. A solid bad-but-not-horrible illness. Like the B-minus of middle-aged men diseases. I could live with that limp if I had to. Delusions aside tho, it was definitely becoming clear that this wasn’t a back problem or a hemorrhoid.

And if I was being honest, I probably knew it wasn’t prostatitis either.

The pain never left and soon I started having blood in my stool. Now there’s the normal type (apparently?) that can occur in the most normal of systems every now and again. Then there is the “dude, this probably shouldn’t be happening” type of blood in your stool. And if you’re curious, yes, it’s pretty easy to know the difference if you’re being honest with yourself.

I say this only because it’s something no one else sees but you. It’s like world’s biggest secret between you and what’s in your toilet bowl. You created this dead body. And now you can also completely dispose of all the evidence and no one will ever know. It really is the perfect crime. Just against yourself, I guess. But use and communicate that information wisely, and you stand a shot at living longer and better. Case in point, early Colorectal Cancer detection. (turns to camera and winks with a ding)

Sidenote — this also began what I call the “Dark Folder” era on my iPhone, filled with way too many unedited photos of my toilet, scars, and the body parts that I couldn’t see to track how things were progressing over the next year. Or regressing.

Before all this I used to worry about someone hacking my phone. Now I just pity the poor soul who does.

*Kevin’s iPhone photo album. As with all good desktop decoy folders, “Taxes” ain’t “Taxes”.*

Back to my point, when it comes to CRC (short for “Colorectal Cancer” to all the cool cancer kids), you quickly realize the system is set up to avoid the cancer discussion. So much so that they’ll tell you it’s hemorrhoids or your diet because the real truth is that no one wants you to have cancer, all callous business interests aside. You can see it in their eyes, even with a Covid mask. I know that’s obvious to say, but the theory explains a lot for me. And explains even more why no one likes to talk about cancer, or even entertain the notion of it existing.

And when you’re under 50 and asking your insurance for a colonoscopy (the 45-year-old rule wasn’t set then), they’re not exactly making it rain with scans for youngsters who should otherwise be healthy. In the end, you’re the only one who can advocate for your own health and I was just about to learn that the hard way.

By the time I had my scan on Dec. 29th, 2020, it had been six weeks after it was first requested. For all the discomfort and the mystery of that time, I still look back at it as a sweet, innocent period — I had no idea of the insane year that was about to begin.

Nor the tumor that had apparently been living inside me for over five years…

Kevin Re-Animated

I talked too much. Now I write too much. Enjoy.