Hi kids. Figured I’d dump some demons out of my skull this morning, nothing says self-care like tea, meditation, and unloading your fears onto unsuspecting readers. What a sweetheart. But writing’s rage, insight, therapy, and salvation. It’s the purge that keeps me standing.
When you get a stage 4 diagnosis, it doesn’t come with a manual. There's no checklist. Just a cold medical phrase and a face full of future you didn’t ask for.
Yesterday, I published my metabolic plan to kill this cancer with every tool I’ve got. Chemo, RSO, diet, fasting, supplements. It’s war, and I’m building my arsenal. But there's another side no one likes to talk about, and I’ve got to. Because it’s crushing and I promised to take you on this journey if you wanted to tag along.
Let’s start with the money. And to those saints who love chirping 'money isn’t everything' or 'it doesn’t buy happiness' cool, can you Venmo me? Because those words usually fall from the mouths of people who’ve never had to choose between chemo and rent. No, it doesn’t buy happiness. It buys survival. It buys options. It buys the kind of health the rest of us just dream about. That’s the truth. That’s the burn.
I’m on LOA from work. My paycheck? Maybe 60% of what it was, if it shows up. And I was already working pay check to pay check like most of us out here trying to have a life. Insurance is helping, but the system is built for paperwork, not people. Copays pile up like junk mail. Chemotherapy is only partially covered and there are reductions in payouts when you are terminal, why would they spend the money on a dead man?
Out-of-pocket expenses don’t wait for a cure. RSO isn’t covered. Ketone meters? Not covered. Healthy food? Definitely not covered. Try buying wild-caught salmon or organic greens on a cancer paycheck. You can’t.
I didn’t expect to budget my way through chemo, but here I am. Choosing between meds and gas, groceries and supplements. The financial stress is its own kind of tumor.
Then there’s the people part.
Being sick makes you disappear. Not on purpose. But it happens. You’re in bed. You’re not fun. You’re tired of saying, “I’m fine,” when you’re not. People stop reaching out. Or they say dumb shit like “Stay positive!” and you want to scream. You love them, but their words don’t land. Their well-meaning platitudes feel like paper straws trying to hold up bricks.
So you isolate. You ghost. You vanish. And part of that is self-protection, but part of it is grief. Grief for the person you used to be. The one who didn’t flinch at a twinge in the stomach. The one who didn’t count down days between treatments or Google “survival rates” at 3AM.
I’m learning that managing relationships while you're dying is its own kind of emotional triage. Who has the bandwidth to stay? Who can hold space without filling it with noise? And who disappears, because your reality is just too fucking heavy?
There’s also guilt. Survivor guilt in reverse. Guilt for being the sick one. Guilt for being expensive. For being tired. For needing help. For not replying to texts. For still wanting to be loved but not knowing how to ask for it.
And here’s the truth: I don’t want to be anyone’s inspiration. I want to live. I want to make it to 2028 and shoot my documentary. I want to laugh. Write. Hug my kids. Smoke a joint by the ocean and scream at the sky. I want all of that, but I also want to be honest about how dark this gets.
This isn’t just a medical journey. It’s a spiritual gut-punch. It’s a financial trap. It’s an emotional reckoning.
And it’s lonely.
But I’m still here. Still fighting. Still trying.
This is my life now. It’s not pretty. But it’s mine.
And maybe, just maybe, saying it out loud makes the weight a little lighter. If you're out here in the trenches with me, broke, scared, fighting like hell. Then maybe this helps you feel a little less alone too.
Read this on Substack where it first appeared — if you’re into that sort of thing.
