Today is Wednesday, January 3, 2024.
We are going to try something new, here. You see, I have this story that needs to be told. It’s the story of my encounter with leukemia in the year 2022. Many of you know the story, and if you have read Alligator Wrestling in the Cancer Ward, or listened to the audio version, you may be tired of it.
What follows is not precisely the Alligator Wrestling story. I have taken liberties with it, summarizing the first scenes from that book. While the storyline is followed, some of this material is brand new.
But there are others who need to hear the Alligator Wrestling message, because it is a story not just about cancer, but about how to engage with cancer.
Cancer is a bully, and it is a bully worth fighting. When you let the bully have his way, and you step aside, and you let him push you around in front of people, he steals not just your lunch money but your dignity.
When your dignity has been taken in that way – unfairly, unrighteously, brazenly – and you have let it happen, you lose other things also. You lose self-confidence, you lose whatever joy there may have been, you lose the ability to have good fellowship with your friends. All because you have knowingly bowed down to the bully.
Bullies need to be fought and stopped.
You may lose the fight. You may die with cancer.
In America, as this new year opens, 600,000 of your fellow citizens will lose their fights and their lives.
Another 2 million will hear the diagnosis this year for the first time: You have cancer.
The same thing will happen next year, and the next.
Research, and new, effective treatments are coming all the time, and success is increasing. I am living testimony to the value of research. Lives are being restored and families are being reunited as survivors leave the hospital to return home.
But death still reigns. Cancer remains a killer, rampant among us.
Death may be your future. You may fight and struggle and curse, and you may still lose.
Or you may win through. You may find yourself in remission.
It comes out the way it comes out.
You probably do not have a choice about the final outcome, but you do have a choice about how you engage the fight.
We do not always get to choose the trials we face, only how we face them.
Face up to the bully. Call him out. Challenge him on his own turf. If you die, die with a smile on your lips and defiance in your heart.
It is a glorious calling.
There is much, much more to getting a grip on how to fight this battle. Follow the journey. Walk with me. Here is the first episode.
How My Tough-Guy Attitude Helped Me Survive Cancer
And How Yours Can, Too, or Die Trying. Episode 1 of 4.
Once all the hubbub was over, I found myself in a small hospital room with a strong fragrance of industrial-strength cleaner. It was tinged with just a hint of unpleasant bathroom odor.
The picture window offered a generous view of a brick wall 30 yards away, dotted by regular rectangles of glass. Other rooms in the cancer unit.
A tiny triangle of blue sky teased from a top corner of my window.
I laid in a 50-way adjustable bed with IVs snaking into my arm. Dripping who-knows-what into my veins.
My cell phone had 35% battery, no charger, and spotty wi-fi.
I stared at the ceiling, waiting for the browser to crawl into the tiny screen, and thought about how to spell leukemia.
Two hours before, I had been my normal, chipper self. Except for the swelling, unusual bruising and a sore inside my mouth.
I hate mouth sores.
It had all started that morning when I saw the family doctor for a regular yearly checkup. He and I talked politics — our normal routine — and he turned me over to a nurse. The nurse used a needle to draw blood, applying a bandage after. She pointed to the bathroom and asked me to fill a little plastic cup.
Standing there with the door closed, concentrating on my task, I gradually became aware of something warm on my arm.
The bandage was soaked red where she had taken the blood sample. Blood ran down my arm and dripped onto the bathroom floor.
I pitched the cup, zipped up and stepped into the hall, pressing a wadded-up paper towel to my arm. The nurse saw the blood and went suddenly wide-eyed. Whisking me into an examination room, she replaced the patch, got the bleeding stopped and wrapped up the arm.
I drove to my office and got to work, half-rolling the sleeves of my logo shirt to hide the blood stain. Busy morning: Calls, emails, planning my next out-of-town sales trip.
In three hours, the nurse called my cell.
“Mr. Ghormley? We have seen the results of your blood test. Some of your levels are way off. We would like for you to repeat the blood test.”
I scrolled through the list of emails on the desktop screen, half listening to her. “What levels?”
“Your platelets should be at 150 and they are at 4.”
“Four what?” I asked absently.
“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. Noting the urgency in her tone, I pulled myself away from the computer and gave her my full attention. “Please go to an ER and ask them to repeat the blood test.” She paused. “Right now, Mr. Ghormley, please. It’s important.”
I stared from phone to screen. “Okay, whatever,” and rang off. I found myself scowling at the list of emails.
I had come to work late that morning because of the doctor’s appointment, and this additional irritation would take my lunch hour. If it went too long, I would be obligated to take some vacation time.
I hate wasting vacation time.
An hour after showing up at the Emergency Room, a nurse put me in a bed made for someone half my size and started an IV.
A doctor entered, took his place on a short stool and rolled up to the side of the bed. Clipboard in hand, he made eye contact.
“Lymphoma and leukemia can look similar in preliminary tests,” he began. “But they are both serious conditions. I’m glad you came in when you did.”
I studied him. “I missed something here,” I said. “Why are we talking about the L-words?”
He studied me back. “Because your platelets are low, your red blood cells are low, and your white blood cells are virtually non-existent.” He knitted his brow. “That is a strong indication of leukemia.”
I paused. Listened to the hum of the air conditioning, heard the indistinct murmur of voices in the next room, was aware of the buzz of the overhead lights.
“Is that a diagnosis?”
“Of course not. We’re an ER. We’re not qualified to make a diagnosis. But,” his gaze was suddenly intent, “When platelets are low, reds are low and whites are low, that’s leukemia.”
***
So it was that I was transported by ambulance to the hospital, finding myself in a high-tech bed. An IV tree at my side would become my closest companion for the next 83 days.
At least the air conditioning worked, and the nurses were young and pretty.
But the big problem was the L-word.
Before me yawned a dark canyon of uncertainty, slashed suddenly, rudely and obscenely across my path. The trail I was on led to the edge, pulled me forward.
And down.
The only way to the other side led through unseen depths before me. Would the path become clear? Was there a path?
Somewhere down there, hidden by shifting shadows, lurked fear.
In my mind, I made a tentative step toward the gloom and began the hesitant search for a foothold.
* * *
The oncologist came to visit the next morning. My wife was with me, having lovingly brought the precious phone charger.
The doctor dived right in.
“You have a case of acute myeloid leukemia,” he announced, in the tone of an auto mechanic advising the need for a routine oil change. “You also have some swelling for an unrelated infection. We will treat that with antibiotics for two weeks, then begin chemotherapy for the AML.”
We discussed the treatment calmly and objectively. I thought I held up my side of the conversation well, even though I was largely faking. I had not yet embraced the idea that I had cancer. It was a little surreal.
“I want to check some other reports,” the doctor was saying, “so I will be back with you shortly.”
And with that, he was gone.
Research on the iffy wi-fi system was slow, but I gathered some background data about AML. It was not encouraging.
The average age for diagnosis in the U.S. is 68. So far, so good. I was in the sweet spot.
AML patients have a 25% chance of surviving 5 years past the diagnosis.
Not so good, but what I did not know was the demon hiding in the details. The doctor announced the demon on his next visit, barely two hours after the first.
* * *
“As I indicated earlier,” he said, “we wanted you on antibiotics for two weeks to make you strong enough to withstand the chemotherapy.” He paused and wet his lips. “But we have determined that you do not have two weeks. We are going to begin chemotherapy immediately.”
I stared at him. “Two weeks?”
He nodded. “You have an unusual variant of AML. There is a genetically mutated white blood cell active in your bone marrow. It is called FLT-3. It crowds out the good white blood cells and makes your immune system dysfunctional.”
“Can you treat it?”
He wagged his head, tilting from side to side, balancing this against that. “Yes,” was the tentative answer, “but we do not how you will respond. We will give it our best college try.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You should know,” he added, “that most people who come to me with numbers like yours do not survive to walk out.” He coughed and looked out the window at the brick wall. “But we will do what we can. We will begin an aggressive treatment schedule tomorrow.”
“But what about the infection, and the swelling?”
“We will treat that at the same time. We will give you both medications via IV, simultaneously.”
“Won’t they fight against each other?” I asked.
“Yes, they will,” he said confidently, “but the chemo is a schoolyard bully and will win that fight. And there may be enough antibiotics that survive to do you some good.” He offered the beginnings of a wicked smile. “We are going to treat this aggressively. The cancer is aggressive, and so are we.”
If there had been an Optimism Meter hooked up to me with all the other patches and monitors, it would have taken a sudden leap upward.
The wicked smile had recruited me. I was his.
Later that day, I learned that FLT-3 cut the survival percentage in half. From 25% down to the 10-15% range.
I quit reading about it.
I had had better days.
The canyon trail beckoned.
* * *
Dinner was cafeteria food. It was not bad, but I would grow to detest the menu, repeated weekly, over the next 3 months.
Wife gone home for the night, I tried watching some hospital TV. A vast wasteland in 60 channels. Eight minutes of Bonanza followed by 12 minutes of commercials. Rinse and repeat.
The same commercials in every break.
I deciphered the remote control, found the OFF button, and killed the program. My room was dark, dimly lit by the LEDs on the monitors.
I stared at the ceiling, listening to the IV hum.
And I thought about the fear.
The fear had been with me all day, taunting from the shadows. I fancied I could hear the cackling of distant, mocking laughter woven among the sounds of the IV pumps.
At length, I brought the fear out into the open. Challenged it to stand and face me.
Unbidden, a snatch of a phrase suddenly came to me: God has not given us a spirit of timidity.
Yet, I AM timid, I thought. And I have a right to be! I am descending into a dark canyon, and I don’t think I’m coming out the other side!
The thought again: God has not given us a spirit of timidity.
Then, of what? I demanded. What is there for me?
Without consciously conjuring it up, the words came to me: Power, and love, and discipline.
I wondered at the conversation playing out in my mind. It was a Bible passage, one of Paul’s letters to Timothy.
What had that to do with me?
God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power, and love, and discipline.
A few years earlier, I had read an action-adventure novel, cops and robbers. At the climactic scene, the lawman asks the outlaw: “Why do you do it?”
The outlaw replies: “I was paid the money, so I’m doing the job. It may not be much of a code, but it’s all I’ve got.”
I flashed on the scene from the novel, heard the conversation in my head.
I was standing at the edge of the canyon yawning before me.
The sudden assertion came over me, and I heard myself say out loud, there in that hospital room: “I am the toughest hombre that has ever been inside this cancer unit. You have never seen a tougher patient than I am. I will accept any pain, any discomfort, any bad news you can throw at me. I will grab it from the air, chew it up and spit it back in your face. Try me!”
And then: It may not be much of a code, but it’s all I’ve got.
In my mind, I turned, faced the yawning, dark, terrifying canyon and stepped down onto the trail. Darkness engulfed me as I felt for a way forward.
The night was suddenly chill, and I pulled the blanket around my shoulders, past the tubes and the wires and the monitors.
I slept well, all night through.
* * *
This episode has been a re-telling of the initial scenes of Alligator Wrestling in the Cancer Ward: How a Christian Tough-Guy Survived Leukemia with Gallows Humor, One-Liners and a Praying Posse. The full-length version is available in audio, eBook and paperback wherever books are sold. A paperback copy signed by the author can be ordered at www.alligatorpublishing.com. Use this landing page.
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How My Tough-Guy Attitude Helped Me Survive Cancer 1/4