Tuesday was a big day for me. In addition to my dad's turning 75, it was also the one-year anniversary of my last chemotherapy session. I was originally scheduled to have six rounds, with one round coming every three weeks. With a few bumps in the road and a regimen change, it stretched out to eight rounds and I finished about two months later than we'd planned. Still, when the choices are an uncertain course or certain death, I'll take the uncertain course every time.

Doctors found my cancer in October of 2005. I went to my doctor with some abdominal pain and weight loss, and after a few tests I got a phone call. The caller said, "stop what you're doing and go to the hospital right now." The call came on a Friday afternoon, and it really messed up my weekend. Instead of getting my yard ready for winter I lay in a hospital bed getting pumped full of IV antibiotics.  The following Monday I had surgery to remove a bowel obstruction and a tumor of unknown origin that was about the size of my fist. After a few days of what my life would be like if I turned it over to the Marx Brothers, the word came back from Pathology. The obstruction was non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and the tumor was an extragonadal seminoma. That fancy medical phrase means I had testicular cancer but not in the usual spot.

I started chemo on November 1, 2005. According to my oncologist, my particular combination of malignancies made developing a treatment plan a challenge. After consulting with some colleagues at Indiana University he came up with one. It's called RICE, and it's a combination of four different drugs: Rituxan, Ifosfamide, Carboplatin, and Etoposide. For some reason I could remember the names of all the drugs except Carboplatin; all I could think of was "Clopinhead." That's about what it felt like about three weeks after the first round. I was in the shower washing my hair, and it came out! I had a heck of a time rinsing off, as each time I ducked my head and rubbed the suds off, more hair fell out. Thankfully, it didn't all fall out at once; I had some time to adjust to the idea that I'd be bald for the duration. I ran around with the "mangy dog" look for about three more weeks and when I couldn't take looking like Homer Simpson anymore, I buzzed what little hair remained.

I could have taken one of two attitudes with the loss of my hair. Option one was to wail and moan about losing my beautiful blonde hair, poor me, and boo-hoo-hoo. That didn't appeal to me. I chose instead to hope that the chemo was doing the same thing to those damn cancer cells!

One of chemotherapy's drawbacks is that in addition to killing off cancer cells, it also kills blood cells and plays havoc with your immune system. One day at the office I got a call from Marilyn, who I'm sure is an angel cleverly disguised as an oncology nurse. She told me my latest blood test showed a white count of 1.2; normal is in a range between four and twelve. In short, I had no immune system and would not do well hanging around a cubicle farm where sniffles and sneezes pass around regularly in big, germy waves. Doctor's orders were to go home and stay there until my white cells were back over 2.0. Thankfully, someone at our office (and I won't tell the suits who, ever!) bent the rules and got me access so I could continue to work from the very computer I'm writing this on. Being able to dial in was an enormous help to me, as I'd burned up all my sick days and the remainder of the year's vacation back in October. The drawback was, even though I was home I still had to work! While I was able to access everything that was on my work PC and the network, I had to do it at 56k. The software I use at work is very graphics-intensive, and sometimes it crawled like a wooly-bear caterpillar at dial-up speeds. I developed a routine that served me quite well while I was a shut-in. Click the mouse, go get some coffee. Drag the icon, go get a cookie.

One particular day close to Christmas, I couldn't take being confined to quarters anymore. I had shopping to do, and the only way I could do it was to wear a germ mask when I left the house. I felt ridiculously conspicuous, going out with my face covered and my scalp naked, but Christmas was coming and and I had things to do. As I parked my truck in the lot, I had to laugh at the headline that could have come from someone seeng a bald guy in a mask and getting the wrong idea: "ELMER FUDD STICKS UP STORE!"

Things fell into a regular pattern for the next several weeks. I'd get well enough to go to work, have a chemo session, get a blood draw ten days later, and work from home until I'd recouped again. Early in January I had a PET scan. I thought a PET scan was like a CAT scan but just covered more species. The two are similar; in both you get put through a machine that looks like a big donut and takes x-rays all the way around your body. However, for a PET scan you get pumped full of IV fluid and radioactive sugar. Cancer cells love sugar, and that's their downfall (as it is mine). They uptake the radioactive glucose and get caught in the scan. I had a PET scan before I started chemo, and it showed I was a mess. I had things showing up in my liver, spleen, one lung, and in my mediastinum (the cavity where your heart lives). My oncologist told me I was at stage four; there are only four stages. But he also told me that what I had was highly treatable and he mentioned the word "curable." I held on to that hope like a lover.

A few days later the results of the PET scan showed up at the cancer center. I saw them at my next chemo session. Never in my life was I so happy to be described as "grossly unremarkable!" There was no sign of any active mailgnancy; I had a few calcified lymph nodes and some granulated remains in my liver, but at that point nothing grew in me that wasn't supposed to! I thought I was done early, but the doc had other ideas. There would be no more RICE for me; from now on the treatment of choice was CHOP. It seemed like a wonderful thing. I'd only have to go for chemo one day a week instead of three, and the treatments wouldn't last as long. The only drawback was one of the side effects of CHOP: Chemotherapy-induced neuropathy. For several months, even after the end of chemo, my fingers and toes were completely numb. It was just the wrong thing for a person who earns his keep by pounding on a keyboard.

Slowly, my life returned to normal. The days I worked from home grew further apart. Until I'd been deprived of it, I had no idea how I cherished socializing with my co-workers at the office. Spring came, and shortly after my last chemo I felt good enough to go outside and tune up the lawn tractor. I had the radio on in my truck while I fiddled away in the tool shed. That particular evening was also the first time I heard the song "Skin" by Rascal Flatts: I cried like a little girl.

It's now been one year since I sat in a recliner and got pumped full of incredibly strong and outrageously expensive drugs. I only got sick enough to hurl one time. Eventually my hair grew back and my hands stopped tingling. In late June I was well enough to travel to Florida for our son's wedding. The endless days of captivity are just a memory. I'm actually healthy enough now to be ornery about each morning's hour-long commute to work. But in truth each day I'm oriented portrait instead of landscape is a blessing, and I'm grateful for each one. I'm especially thankful for all the people who prayed and cheered me on during that long, slow healing process. Particularly Carolyn, who has her own health troubles but was there to keep me company even when it meant long hours of sitting in an uncomfortable commercial-design chair.

My oncologist declared me to be in remission in May of 2006; my plan is to stay there. Strangely, even though I'm always grateful for another day of breathing, sometimes I feel guilty. I'm still here, but some of the people I shared treatment rooms with aren't. Ray would talk forever about his grandkids and all the stuff he had for them at his house and how he loved to see those kids enjoy it all. Ernie made it to ninety before his cancer finally beat him. I'm still here, and they're not. All the stuff in Ray's garage won't bring him back for his grandkids, and not one of those fancy toys can replace him for them. One wonders: Why am I still here and not them? How should I carry on to honor their memory? What's expected of me now? My obligation now is to encourage and strengthen the ones who are still in the fight. I have to tell them it's beatable. My job is to show them that maybe they can still be around for their families. And especially to tell them that nobody walks through cancer alone. I was surrounded by family, friends, co-workers...people I didn't even know prayed for me to get better. I was at Stage Four and I'm still here; prayer really does work!

That said, I still have occasional down days. A dark companion visits me now. It shows up with every strange stomach gurgle and every twinge of pain in the places where my cancer grew. It's fear. It's that little heart-stutter that makes me wonder...is it back? Is it worse this time? Can I beat it again? Last year I lost a testicle when a neoplasm, or a group of pre-cancerous abnormal cells, showed up on a scan. Not long after that I had a CAT scan, and my oncologist told me I had some swollen lymph nodes in my abdomen. They eventually receded and the problem went away, but the news scared the hell out of me.

As a boy, for some reason I was a bully magnet. I got pushed around on a regular basis until one day I fought back. I'm fighting back against this dark bully, too. I get checkups every six weeks to two months, and a CAT scan before every-other appointment. This year I'm a team captain for the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life, a 24-hour fun-and-fundraising event. While it raises funds, it also raises awareness about how to prevent cancer, shows the benefits of early detection, and provides support from one survivor to another. Relay teams can sell little purple paper feet for a buck each. Every one of them I sell is a stomp against cancer. That's where I need to be. If I'm on life-support, I want to be the one providing it. God was gracious enough to give me back my health. I need to use that health to help people that don't have theirs back yet. Cancer better just watch out...Ter is back.