Hearing the News Broke Me (My Cancer is Back...)

As a father and husband, I feel that one of my primary roles is that of protector. I serve as a sort of foundation for Erin and my kids that is steady and unfailing in times of turbulence and chaos. I am a rock they can always depend on. I work hard to take care of their needs and be there for them, which often means putting myself and my needs last.

They are my kind of crazy family, and i feel like one of the ways I show my love is to listen to them, validate them, and support them in good times and bad. A somewhat outdated notion now, but as a father and husband I am the helper, not the one who needs to be helped.

My original colon cancer diagnosis changed all of this. Suddenly I was thrust into a series of intensive medical treatments and recovery periods in which I was dependent upon doctors, nurses, family, and friends to literally help save my life.

Going through radiation, chemotherapy, pills, ostomy bags, and multiple surgeries left me physically and mentally exhausted. Suddenly I felt I was failing at everything, since I held firmly onto this notion that I still needed to be there for others. I felt like a failure both at home and at work because I was slowly stripped of my capacity to contribute.

It was an abrupt paradigm shift for me and one that I resisted as long as I could, because I didn't want to be a burden to anyone, nor let them down at home or at work. But over time, I realized that the overwhelming love of family and friends was not only something that I needed to receive, but actually a critical part of my treatment plan.

I needed to be loved and let others love on me.

I needed to let go and let others step in to take care of me and my family. Due in large part to the love and generosity of others, my family and I survived that time period and I was declared to be in remission.

Fast forward two years, and things have been rough in different ways. Home has been challenging due to having four spirited young ones (ages 12, 10, 6, and 3) with diverse needs and a parent-to-child ratio that leaves us perpetually playing zone defense.

Our children have many strengths and talents but also struggle in different ways.

Some have ADHD, some have anxiety, some are downright defiant and stubborn (like their parents), and some (okay, all) test the limits of our capacity to be loving, supportive parental figures from time to time.

We also lost three beloved pets in the past six months, including one dog to a stroke, another to a car accident, and our daughter's beloved cat failing to return home one evening.

Our children have also dealt with all sorts of school issues, with our sixth grader's class being rotated through four different teachers over course of one school year, our kindergartner slow to acquire foundational academic milestones, and both of our older kids being separated from their best friends and desperately needed support network.

Work has been increasingly challenging due to the stressors of staying productive, chasing grant funding, conducting research, and taking care of ever-growing student issues.

On top of it all (and most likely because of it all), I've been increasingly experiencing a sort of mental fog that is a combination of the lingering effects of chemo, burn-out, stress, and a hearty dose of depression.

I would sometimes get to work and just stare at what needed to be done without actually doing any of it.

It was a struggle, but I powered through work obligations the best I could until the end of the school year, and was on occasion surprisingly productive for how little energy I had. We jokingly said that we had to drag our children across the finish line as well.

All would be well when summer came, because things would die down and my sabbatical was coming!

I had finally put in enough time at work to take a full academic year sabbatical - Fall, Winter, and Spring quarter of next year. This coming year also aligned perfectly with our kids' grade levels - no one would be missing a key school year, like starting Kindergarten or graduating 6th grade. Noah would miss his first year of junior high, but if there was one year to miss, that would be the one to pick.

We were going to live in Europe for the year, go on adventures, explore the sites, and create family memories to last a lifetime. We had even settled on Spain as our home base, and planned to venture out from there to explore all that Europe had to offer across all the different seasons.

Until I got the call.

As a colon cancer survivor, they had been monitoring my body like a hawk. Every few months, there would be something - a blood test, a CT scan, or a follow-up colonoscopy to ensure that I was still cancer-free. During my most CT scan, I wasn't particularly worried, as all of my results had thus far been negative and to the best of our knowledge, my tumor had been removed before it had a chance to metastasize anywhere else.

I was working with a family and some practicum students at the autism center when my phone rang from the cancer center and I needed to step out. "We are looking at the results of your CT scan and we are seeing some abnormalities on your liver. We would like to schedule you for a PET scan right away and have you do some additional blood tests."

At first, I didn't really register the gravity of the news and had to compartmentalize it as I returned to the clinical training session. I returned to my students and the family, and we finished our time together.

Later, in the quiet of my office, I began to process things. It could be any number of things, I told myself - perhaps some lingering remnant of a past COVID infection, or a temporary anomaly from too much partying with colleagues in Stockholm. But all of the follow-up tests that were ordered were designated STAT - to be expedited and prioritized over all routine tests. So I started to google things. Specifically, "Colon cancer spreading to the liver". As it turns out, if colon cancer is going to spread anywhere, it is most likely to end up in the liver due to a blood pipeline connecting the two.

At that moment, I knew. And it broke me.

I tried with everything in my power to hold back tears, but they came anyway. I cried at my office desk for a long time. Not just for what it meant for my health, but also what the news would do to my family. And our sabbatical, which was suppose to refresh and renew us, was no longer a possibility.

When you have news that has the potential to devastate others, you are faced with the ultimate dilemma. As a husband and father, it is my job to protect my family from things that will harm them, not be the messenger that causes their world to fall down around them.

In the end, I decided to hold off on telling Erin until after we finished one last special date - just the two of us - in a rare outing at the Santa Barbara Bowl. The Bowl is a magical venue to hear live music and remains one of our favorite places to go if we get a chance to escape. I wanted one last evening where we could just laugh, sing, and talk to each other without a care in the world. It was a beautiful night, and I'm so glad that we had that time together.

In the following days, I was at home when I received a call about scheduling my follow-up PET scan. Erin's ears immediately perked up. She asked what the call was about, and I reluctantly told her what was going on. She was initially upset that I didn't tell her right away, but gradually understood once I explained wanting one more carefree evening where cancer was not the only thing on our mind. We both began tearing up and had to quickly leave the house, as all four of our kids were home with us.

After texting our neighbors (who were amazing and immediately stepped in to watch the kids), we quickly drove up near the hiking trails at the far end of a nearby park. There, every emotion was unleashed as we processed the news and what it would likely mean for ourselves, our kids, and our future.

It was like all the stages of grief compressed into a single moment of time, a white hot ball of compressed emotions that just exploded within us.

We cried uncontrollably, we raged, we asked what we had done wrong, how we could have prevented this, we discussed all the things it could possibly be besides cancer, grew angry at God, begged God for help, we lost hope, we regained hope, and then reeled from the inevitable fact that we would have to tell our kids. And we wanted more than anything in the world to not have that conversation.

We knew it would have to be soon, but we wanted to wait until we knew exactly what we were dealing with and the treatment plan. We also needed time to prepare to be a source of emotional stability and not a heap of uncontrollable tears on the floor ourselves..

In the coming days we met with both a surgical oncologist and a medical oncologist. Our surgical oncologist confirmed that all of the various tests and scans were consistent with cancer in the liver. He said that the treatment plan would be surgery in the next couple of weeks to remove that part of the liver, followed by 3-6 months of chemo to prevent the cancer from coming back. Based on that fact that I had previously received chemo, he thought it would most likely be on the shorter side.

Erin and I had a glimmer of hope. Perhaps it would only be three months of chemo? Since it was June, maybe we would only be delayed a month or two from our planned international departure in September? Could we possibly still salvage our trip and make it to Europe this year?

Our renewed optimism was quickly dashed when our medical oncologist told us that I would need a month to recover from surgery, and then a full six months of chemo before they could even evaluate next steps.

Fuck.

It was as if someone saw us struggling towards the finish line of some grueling race and decided to kick us back down the muddy hill back to the very start. We were suppose to be able to finally finish, rest, and recharge. Now we lay here, broken.

Over the next several days, Erin and I slowly adjusted to our new reality. We gradually came to the realization that we had two choices - we could give up, or we could conjure up what strength we had left and fight this thing with everything we have. And we weren't alone.

In the midst of this crisis, we had momentarily forgotten about our community and had grieved in isolation. We also had family and friends ready to fight this thing right along side us. As we began to tell family and friends, words of encouragement, inappropriate texts from rugby buddies, and other forms of support came pouring in. Our mothers drove down to take over our household responsibilities. Folks offered to help us with our kids. They asked if they could bring or make us dinner. They prayed for us and alongside us. They called, texted, and visited to send us their love. They moved quickly to take things off my plate at work and let me focus on my health. We had a village, and within days, we were flooded with the full power of its healing love. This reinvigorated us and ensured us that yes, we would get through this.

We had felt broken, and our friends and family helped to put us back together again.