Eyes Wide Open

I've always considered myself an observer. I like to watch. (Hey now, I'm not a voyeur.) And there's a difference between seeing, looking, watching and observing.

With all due respect to Webster and Wikipedia, seeing is automatic for those of us blessed enough with the sense of sight. Looking is a way to alert, warn or direct us to where we want to get to. Watching is can be passive and active. Observing is breaking it down––the way people walk, talk, react, position themselves and is a sense of discovery. It's paying attention to the details.

I do even more observing since I've had cancer. It's almost as if I can read more––and I'm not talking about reading text. I notice if people are happy. Sad. Confused. Angry. I notice how people drive. (I believe the worst drivers in the country are in the DC Metro area. Yes, you Virginia and Maryland are included. Don't believe me? Observe how many people know how to merge, know what to do at a 4-way stop sign, know that pedestrians have the right of way. And don't get me started with cell phones and driving. In fact, I saw something last week that floored me––a woman putting on her make-up, talking on the phone, eating something in a wrapper and drinking from a Starbucks cup. Mind you she wasn't doing all of this at the same time. Just 3 at a time.)

Today I took 5 minutes to sit on a street corner in DC. My observations?

A co-worker in his own zone, ignoring me as I called his name.

Two women talking on their own mobile phones AND talking to each other.

A woman in a car almost run over another woman in the crosswalk––and yell at the pedestrian to "get outta my way, BITCH!"

A man taking a picture of his lunch group while walking backwards up a hill.

A homeless man watching me watching.

A man selling jewelry.

Two guys trying to pick-up a woman on the street corner. And I don't mean by lifting her up.

An old man bent over at the waist, looking at the sidewalk below.

More combovers than I've seen in a long time.

Two old friends looking for a place to eat. (I talked to them.)

A bike messenger darting in and out of traffic.

People talking politics––this is DC.

Someone actually buying the homeless newspaper.

People dodging Greenpeace people.

Toenails with crazy designs.

That's what happens when you don't know if today will be your last day on Earth. You take life one hour at a time. One slice of life at a time. One day at time. There's no guarantee that you'll get to the weekend. Or across the street.

That's why I keep my eyes wide open.

Call Me 25¢

Now I have 5 holes in my stomach. One from my feeding tube––it's out, but the skin is still pushed in––and four from the emergency gallbladder surgery I had September 2nd. And since I have a big rectangle of skin showing on my chest and stomach from the shaving they gave me before surgery, the holes show very nicely. (I could sell ad space on my chest and stomach. Hey, Virgin is using bald guys to display tattoos of their logo. And takers out there?).

I was talking to a friend who said, "you can tell all kinds of wild stories with those marks." Which reminded me of 50 Cent, who was shot 9 times and has the scars to prove it. Scars are cool for men. Makes us macho. Makes us tough. Makes me remember how I got them all. And none of them are incidents I wish to relive.

The most damaging scars are mental ones. The scars from a bad relationship. From a terrible job or workplace. From loved ones. And don't think mental scars don't leave a mark. You can see them when you're trying to start a romantic relationship––why won't he/she trust me, what does this person REALLY want, he's after wham, bam thank you ma'am––if you really look. You can see them when you're trying to coach or teach someone something new––c'mon you've seen that look of "oh crap, here we go again. I don't know if I can do this!"

I can see the scars from my battles when I look into the faces of my family and friends when I talk about all the crap I've been through the last 13 months. I really saw it this Tuesday when I walked into a production meeting at work. They were extremely glad to see me. They wanted to know what the hell was I doing back at work so quickly. They also looked at me like "oh my God. He doesn't look so good." And I didn't. But the fact that I was able to stand before them and talk to them was good for me. I also believe it was good for them, too.

My gallbladder Doctor told me," you are a great patient. Having cancer makes people more accepting of what we do as Doctors. They know we're human, just like them. They know nothing is guaranteed. And because of what you've been through, only you know what's really good for you." He's right.

And I have the scars to prove it.

Pain Is A Four Letter Word

I saw the fear turn to anger on her face. She had had enough. Here she was––again––in the ER of Reston Hospital and she wanted some answers. She wanted to know why. Why was her Husband––me––just lying on a too small gurney with his twig and berries hanging out and another IV line in his arm and no one was DOING ANYTHING.

I'm in pain. Teresa is ready to kick some ass. And rightfully so. This was the fifth time in four weeks she was at the hospital. Three with me, two with Travis. And she was tired of waiting for the Doctor, after she was told to "go to the hospital and have the Doctor paged." So we went. We had him paged. Did I tell you I was in pain? Oh, and scared shitless. What the hell is going here? Why am I back in the ER? Miss the food? The atmosphere? Being woke-up every two hours? Pissing in a water jug?

Teresa was tired of seeing her Husband like this. No pain medication––"we can't give him anything until we know what's wrong and the Doctor sees him"––no food, no word about when the Doctor would be, no, nothing, zilch. And I watched her face the whole time. All 6 hours. I was worrying about her worrying about me. Funny, huh? I watched the pain and anger trade places in her forehead. I watched her try to be strong and try to be in charge. I watched her stare down every person that walked by the curtain in the ER. I watched her.

I can deal with my pain. I would say that after all I've been through the last 13 months––two bouts of cancer, 8 surgeries, 10 months of a feeding tube in my stomach, 12 chemo treatments, 35 radiation treatments and losing 35-40 pounds––I can deal with a lot of pain. Bring it, baby. But I have a real hard time when I can feel and see the pain in Teresa. To know that my illnesses have caused her tremendous emotional, spiritual and mental anguish. That's a pain I can't control for her. I can't make it disappear. I can't give her something to take to make it go away. I can't rub it away. It's the worst kind of pain.

The four letter kind.

The cancer Cup

I was sitting in an 8:30 AM meeting, the one we have every Tuesday. This is a meeting where it seems as if everyone has an "assigned" seat. I always sit in different spots, just to "shake" things loose. But I like to beat Michael to "his" spot. So I sat next to Sheri. No Michael. Next time. (I just broke the world record for "quote marks" around words in a paragraph.)

As I'm sitting next to Sheri, she pushes her coffee cup towards me and motions with her eyes to look at it. The Way I See It # 295. Can we laugh at cancer? That was all I got to read. Until Sheri got another # 295 coffee cup. Can we laugh at cancer? Is it funny to lose your breasts? Am I crazy to have humor when I lose my hair? Should I ignore the giggles while receiving chemo? What if I nudge someone and sneak a smile, even though I have no eyebrows? Is it inappropriate? Don't be offended, it beats waxing! ––Judy Wade, Starbucks customer and cancer survivor from Seattle, Washington. Judy, ya nailed. Thanks.

I thought I was crazy, laughing privately at some of the things I went through during my treatment. I woke up one day and my face was covered with pimples. More than I ever had as a teenager. Shit, 10 times worse. It was the Erbotux, the chemo. And it was a good sign that they were all over my face. Dr. Felice said it "shows it's working." So I had to laugh. Laugh at wanting to have zits. I laughed when I would be in the shower and look down––easy now––and see a blue tube sticking out of my stomach and dangling 10" down my body. Can I get cable with this thing?

I laughed when it took Nurses and Doctors and more Nurses and Doctors almost two months to find the right fitting for my feeding tube so I could EAT through it. It was comical. You gotta laugh 'cause you can't cry.

Hell yes, Judy, we can laugh at cancer. cancer isn't funny, but we can laugh at it. Ridicule it. Make fun of it. Because it makes you feel good.  Gives it a face. A persona. A target.

As I sit here, Barack Obama is on the biggest stage in the history of the United States. He just announced he accepts the nomination for the Presidency of the United States. Change. Yes, we can change things for the better. For our families. For our friends. For our family at work. We can change the course of cancer.

So the only time we see cancer, it's on a coffee cup.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Today is a very special day. Travis was born 24 years ago, on his Grandfather and Great-Grandmother's birthday. It was 1984, and living in Los Angeles with us during the end of July and August were the Olympics.

I really dreaded the Olympics coming to LA. Didn't we have enough traffic? Didn't we have enough to do over the summer? Don't they know my Wife is having a baby and I just have to be there? In 1984, there were no cell phones. Beepers. I carried a beeper. Because I had this strange feeling––yeah, here we go again––that I MUST be at the delivery. And Teresa was late. Travis was having a good time staying right where he was. "I'll see ya guys when I'm ready."

Those Olympic Games were great . And I had tickets to all the best stuff––Basketball, Track & Field, Boxing––but I couldn't use them. I was afraid to get caught in the crowd at the Colesium or stuck in traffic. I didn't want to miss Travis. I really needed to be there.

Teresa was not doing well. She was about 10 months pregnant and it was hot as hell that year in Los Angeles. Poor thing. And to top it off, my old college roommate came down from NoCal with a friend and camped out in my living room. Using all my tickets. Be waited on by my overly-pregnant Wife. Be assholes, actually. So after the Games were over, after a pretty exhausting and hot day, Teresa and I went to bed. Watched "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" on TV. And then it started. Contractions. Closer and closer. Harder and harder. It was time to go. The last we went to the hospital for delivery, Ryan came out in about an hour. So we got to the hospital in a flash. And sure enough, 3 hours later Travis is born.

But there was something wrong. He wasn't crying. He wasn't breathing. He was blue. And he was a big baby––9 lbs., 7 ozs., 24" long––so Teresa needed the Doctor's attention. "He's not breathing", I said. The Doc says he's just getting used to being out. Now I know the Doctor has delivered many more babies than I ever had, but my kid is BLUE. Not crying. Not good. I tell the Doctor, without trying to freak Teresa out, "he's not breathing." The Nurse then tells me to grab Travis and bring him over here. "Here" was a table where I had to hold his arms down, while she stuck a tube down his throat. She said she was getting the fluid out. The cord had been wrapped around his shoulder and neck. He needed to get real air. 

Thankfully, the Nurse got the fluid out and Travis was crying. Not as loud as Ryan had, but crying nonetheless. He was breathing. I could finally breath. I don't know why I get those feelings, but I just knew I had to be there. I had to be there to make sure my Son and Wife were going to be alright. I will never forget that day as long as I live.

Crazy, yes.

Can You Hear Me Now?

You hear me. But are you listening?

Listening is a wonderful attribute to have. It's a sign of caring. Some even say it's an art form. It's more personal than hearing. We don't need to be able to hear to listen. Huh? What the hell does that mean?

Your body talks to you all the time. As you get older, it talks to you more and more. I remember playing basketball against my younger Brother, Jeff, a few years ago. Jeff came out from Los Angeles with my Dad to visit. I think he was a Sophomore in high school at the time, maybe going to be a Junior. So Jeff was 15-16 at the time. I'm 31 years older than Jeff, so I had to be 46 or 47. And he wanted to show his big brother how good he was at basketball by playing me one-on-one. Probably thought I'll show this old man how we do it, right? I'm no Kobe, but I did play in college and high school (in Los Angeles) and I spent a lot of time playing all around LA growing up––Baker Park, Venice, McCambridge, Maple Park, Pasadena, South Central, Elysian Park––and let's just say that you could pick me out on the court pretty easily.

Jeff was bringing it. I was giving it back to him. In fact, class was in session and I was schoolin' him. But what I remember most that day was trying to make a move that I had made a million times before out of sheer instinct. My mind was saying, "yeah Man. Here, here, bucket." Now my body was telling me something completely different. "No way, dude. You're kidding me, right? You do this and I'll snap your ass back to reality. How old are you? Don't you know I'm in control? Your mind is writing checks your body can't cash." This conversation taking place in the blink of an eye. And I lost the ball.

Before I knew I had cancer, my body was speaking to me. "Do you know why you feel run down? Do you know why you're losing weight all of a sudden? You can't keep going at this pace. This ain't right." And then the strangest, most bizzare voice came to me while I was in the shower one morning. Why do I feel like I have cancer? Yeah, totally out of the blue. Totally freaky. Why do I feel like I have cancer? That's a body language I couldn't explain. It was my body speaking to me. It was trying to make me listen.

I tried to ignore it. Tried to tell myself I was just imagining things. This shit doesn't happen in real life. This isn't a movie. You don't one day wake-up and say "I feel like I have cancer." What does cancer feel like? But I couldn't get it out of my head. I couldn't tell anyone. I couldn't make it go away.

Fortunately––for my sake and for my family, friends and co-workers––I listened. I went on gut feelings, instinct. I said let's end this conversation and get checked. Let the Doctor tell me I'm over-tired, over-worked and imagining things. 

I wasn't. I had cancer. I had a level of understanding that I never had before. My body had it's say. My mind and body got together and said "let's help this guy out."

Thank God I'm a good listener.

Whiteboards

Love whiteboards. Love the fact an Art Director is making tons of cash because he can draw his ass off on a whiteboard. (My Son, Travis, hates the guy. I don't know why.) Love it when you write something really good on the whiteboard. Love when someone else makes a contribution on the whiteboard.

I take a walk by our two big whiteboards that are really wall whiteboards all the time. People draw arrows, graphs, TV storyboard boxes––that would be me because I can't draw anything else––conclusions, even draw up strategies. Sometimes. Rarely. OK, almost never. But we're making progress.

In some ways, whiteboards are big blank "your ad goes here" spaces that are just begging for attention. Try walking past one that's got stuff written all over it––with some circles and dates that beg you not to erase all the great thinking––without looking. Can't do it. It's a magnet. Today, Industry Ju-Jitsu was written in red marker on the whiteboard. Nice one, Rory. I've also seen "I think I've seen your best work already", a client issuing a challenge. One that we would later meet and exceed. The first time I saw a wiki was on a whiteboard.

I got a whiteboard from work as part of a care package to help me through the cancer. I had surgery where they took out my tonsils, scrapped my larynx and took a chunk out of my tongue. So talking was not going to happen right away. And boy, did I use that whiteboard. I think my family was ready to break it over my head after a while. But the funniest thing was trying to communicate with my Dad. I couldn't talk and he couldn't read my writing. And he was wearing hearing aids that he kept saying needed to be replaced. Man, if it didn't hurt to laugh so much back then I would have died on the floor laughing. And this happened all the time. I know it was entertaining for the rest of the family.

Whiteboards are great because you can write anything you want on it and then wipe it away. As I was battling cancer, I would write down all the dates. The names of all the medications. The surgeries. The treatments. And then, I couldn't write anymore. I didn't know how to describe the crap I was going through. My mind was only concentrating on beating cancer. Keep it strong. Don't let all the stuff they put in me, beat-up my body and knock it out. Be strong so I could be there for my family. My so called creative juices were being overtaken by chemicals and radio active stuff so I could stay alive. The creativity would have to die.

There is no whiteboard for cancer, no way you can wipe away all the bad and scary things that are written about you in Doctors offices, hospitals and pharmacies. Life doesn't work that way. But maybe that's a good thing. Because, maybe, just maybe, someone researching or studying or just looking over your information will get a step closer to finding a cure for all cancers. Any cancer. Then we can go up to the whiteboard and write the word cancer.

And then wipe it away.