This isn’t easy. And I’m never going to be the guy in the motivational video with the perfect lighting and the heroic soundtrack. I don’t have the words, the charm, or the reach. And that’s fine. I don’t need to inspire the whole world. If nothing else, I’m going to show my daughters what it looks like to stand your ground when it fucking hurts, when you’re scared, when the odds are stacked high enough to crush you flat. You don’t give up. Fuck that.
I say “it’s all good” and “everything’s fine,” but that’s just a story I tell you. The truth? It sucks. Some days I’m furious, some days I’m hollow, and a lot of the time I’m scared shitless. Just today, I caught myself staring out the window, wondering if I’ll be remembered when I’m gone, if I even mattered. That other voice in my head, the one that doesn’t tolerate self-pity, stepped up and smacked me around: “Get up. Fix this. Or die on your feet, chasing your dreams.”
So I got up. Not because I’m special, I’m pretty average. A little crazy, kind of weird, usually stoned. But I got up, and I want you to do the same. Slap your own face, slap your own ass, whatever it takes, just wake up. Don’t hand your life over to the system. Don’t let an insurance company or a doctor’s shrug decide how long you get to live.
Fight for it. Question everything they tell you. Dig into the research yourself. Find the people who have walked this road before you. Some of them made it out alive, and they’ve got stories worth hearing. Yes, listen to the science, but don’t underestimate the value of the “unofficial” stuff, anecdotes can be just as powerful as data points.
Cancer is a street fight. It doesn’t matter if you’re Stage 1 or Stage 4, you don’t just “follow the plan” and hope for the best. You get involved. You track what you eat, what you take, how you sleep. You learn the drugs they’re giving you, what they do, what they don’t do, and how to stack the deck in your favor. You find the gaps in their care and fill them yourself.
No one is going to care more about your survival than you. Not your oncologist. Not your insurance company. Not even the people who love you, because they can’t get inside your skin and feel the clock ticking the way you do. You have to become your own case manager, your own advocate, your own mad scientist.
And yeah it’s going to be exhausting. You’ll want to quit. You’ll convince yourself you can’t fight this hard forever. But you don’t have to win in one punch. You just have to keep getting up, round after round, until cancer runs out of ways to knock you down.
If I can do it, average, flawed, stoned, swearing, and crazy, so can you. As my best friend occasionally reminds me.
“Be the ball.”
Read this on Substack where it first appeared — if you’re into that sort of thing.
