Thanks

For my Wife.

For my Children, Adam, Ryan, Travis & Kaity.

For Lucas & Eli.

For family.

For my Mom, Dad, Angie, Wanda, Shan, Chris, Jeff and Marina.

For the God given ability to think.

For the little things.

For having a good job. (Any job, for that matter).

For having the strength to beat cancer. Twice.

For making the right decisions at the right time.

For having the intuition that I knew I had cancer––even before my diagnosis.

For good people to work with.

For best friends––Fred, Ben, Ted, Larry, Francis, Tom, & Jim.

For the opportunity to be there for others who are battling cancer.

For the love I receive every day.

For remembering all the pain––physical, emotional & mental––from my treatment.

For never forgetting how fragile life really is.

For having a new perspective.

For JB, Cap, Stevie Ramone, Andy, Lisa, Marcia, Rob, Paul, VW, Ally, Aimee, Jill, Leah, Chris, Juanita, Reem, JP, Richard, Kristin––KS & KF––Rachel, Nancy, the whole CS/DI and Sheri, who really is an angel.

For those who are fighting for our freedom.

For being alive to write this today.

Happy Thanksgiving.

87 @ 29

My Son, Adam, is 29 today. His Grandfather called him today and told him, "you can't be 29 because I'm not that old." It was a nice generational connection, as my Dad––Adam's Grandfather––and I had just talked last night. And my Dad said the same thing to me.

Being the oldest of my four kids, I knew Adam would be the most outwardly concerned of all of them. He's a Dad. A great Dad. And I saw him go through a ton of emotions through my diagnosis, treatments and various other surgeries and attacks on my body. My kids had never seen me sick for more than a day or so. And this was cancer, not the flu.

I especially watched as Adam was looking to help his Mom, my Wife. Not really knowing what to do but just be there, share his love and try to be a rock 'cause Dad's in pretty bad shape. And that's all that was needed. We just needed to be together as much as we could as a family. I know it was hard for Lucas and Eli to not be able to wrestle––or "wrassel" as Teresa calls it––with me for about a year. Having the boys around me helped me a lot.

I'm so grateful to God that Adam came into my life. He's a wonderful Son. And a lot like me––more than I think he even realizes, ha! It was great spending time with the family tonight. Even got to see Sarah, too. cancer gives you a new set of eyes, helping you see the love in family. Sure, there's going to be some strange shit, but it's your strange shit. And there's some strange pride of ownership thing going on.

So here's to you, Adam. Those who know you will know what 87 means. (Did that come out right?). It's the 29 that's obvious. Happy 29th Birthday. But you can't be 29.

I'm not that old.

Common Sense

Lately, I've been wondering how we all keep getting further away from using common sense. We seem to be overly impressed with intelligence––Mensa, PhD, MBA, Big Name College Goes Here––but somehow common sense gets overlooked. We try too hard to impress each other with our smarts.

It's funny, I'm more impressed by our new President's––OK, he's not officially our new President––common sense. He has the ability to use his God given intelligence AND common sense. I heard him talk about towns that want to pass laws banning baggy pants.  Obama said those laws are "a waste of time. Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants". http://gawker.com/5076025/youth-to-pull-up-pants-for-obama

Maybe I'm just not that smart, I don't know. I try to make things simple for myself, my family and the people I work with. The simpler, the better. Right? It drives me crazy when we try to out think what the other person will think. We try to "over intellectualize" things instead of stepping back and seeing the issue for what it really is. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being smart. But smart comes in many forms––street smarts, comes to mind. And Doctors. Now we're talking brain power.

Makes me chuckle, really. I have six Doctors. Well, I don't have them, they have me as a patient. Six very smart people. But man, can they make things seem complicated. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I had a ton of information being thrown at me by all these Doctors. I know I'm not the only patient who has been diagnosed with cancer, but I really had to grill some of my Doctors to get them to speak to me as a common person. I didn't spend years and years studying the human body. (Well, at least not to help cure diseases).

I wanted to know the real deal. What were my chances of surviving? Do I have to have surgery, radiation and chemo? What are the long term damages to my body? How long before I'm better? When do we start? I got all different kinds of answers from all of them. I got many opinions. I got pissed and told each one of them they better appoint a project manager, because I needed all of them on the same page. Let's get some communication here. You guys better talk to each other, check your egos at the door and come to agreement on all the shit you're doing to me. This is my life, people. Make sense?

Made perfect sense to me.

The Mask

It's my favorite holiday. Halloween. Why Halloween? You don't have to stuff yourself with food, sitting around an over-crowded table. You don't have to buy anyone a gift. And, as a bonus for those who have dysfunctional families––all of us?––you don't have to spend time with ANY family members if you don't want to. I don't think anyone says, "but it's Halloween. Our family always spends it together." (Maybe if you're still trick or treating with your kids you'll hear that. But if you've reached puberty and don't have kids, you're free baby!). Yeah, it's your time to spend however you like. And you get to dress up and be someone else. How cool is that?

We have a Halloween party every year––The Freaky Fest, so dubbed by Mr. Rick "Bubba", "Tex", "Rusty" Abel in 1982. Well, we did have a party every year until last year. In 2007, I was at the end of my treatment for cancer. I didn't have the energy or strength to have a party at my house. I wanted so bad to be well. We had a party every year, from 1981 until 2006, in California and Virginia. No matter where we lived, how good or bad the weather was or how bad the economy was, we PARTIED. This was our Mardi Gras.

So instead of bemoaning the fact that The Freaky Fest was not going to happen, I thought how could I still celebrate. How could I keep things as normal as possible, so I didn't have to show my disappointment to my family? After all, I was always the one who wanted to host the party every year, dreaming up new things to do––palm readers, astrologists, dance contests, murder mysteries, Most Disgusting Joke Contest––and generally using the party as an excuse to see people who I don't get to see very often. (And my kids are all grown up now, so they have their friends over too). My Wife & Kids tried to cheer me up by telling that we would have a Halloween Party after I was better, no matter what time of year it was. That was great, but then it wouldn't be Halloween. I am a traditionalist, ya know.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks––I already have a mask. My mask was fitted over my face every day, keeping my head still and the radiation targeted at the tumor in my neck. Five days a week, for seven weeks I had to wear that mask. 20 minutes at a time. It made me sweat. It made me itch. But most of all, it helped me get better. So what's the big deal, right? On October 31, 2007, I was dressed as a cancer patient. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I was already a cancer patient with or without the mask. But it's my costume so I'll do whatever the hell I want.

This year, the party was back on. We had a great time, seeing old and new friends and sharing lots of laughs, stories, hugs and even tears. A full boat of emotions. But there was something that I never knew, until I brought out that mask to show some friends that had come into town for the party––Teresa didn't like the mask. She told me to put it away, she didn't want to see it. I asked her why. She told me it reminded her of all that I had to do to beat cancer––bad memories. Really bad memories for Teresa. To her, it was not a Halloween mask. 

It was much scarier than that.

Faces Of Love

What does love look like? I'm not an authority on love––or an expert, a word that I think is grossly overused––but I like to think I'm pretty good at spotting love. And all the different kinds.

There's the lovey-dovey stuff you see when people first get together. The "love you like a friend"––yeah, guys REALLY love to hate that one. Then there's the love your parents have for you, displayed in all kinds of ways that are subtle, overt and dysfunctional. Sometimes all at once. Let's not forget puppy love, your first love, love of chocolate, the love for your children, jungle love, the love triangle, the love that got away, the things you do for love, love of the open road, pet love (not to be confused with the aforementioned puppy love), love from afar, six-pack love––you know you know what I mean––love of your favorite team, love of babies and I'm sure I'm forgetting to post a lot of others. But I don't want to fall in love with my own writing.

But the face of love that I see every day I wake up is the one that keeps me going. Keeps me living. Keeps driving me to survive cancer day after day after day. When I look at my Wife, Teresa, I can see the love in her eyes, her smile and her worry. And she has done a lot of worrying the last 15 months. Every bad turn, every test, every set-back she has been there ready and loving. For me. And I feel it, every bit of it. Her worry is because she loves me.

I have always thought it so amazing that I can love someone sooooo much who is not related to me. They say that blood is thicker than water. I can't buy that. There's no way I can love someone any more than I love Teresa. I know it's a different kind of love. One that I can't really explain. (Some writer I am, huh?). But I do recognize that no matter what happens to me, no matter what I put her through, no matter how much she worries when I ask her not to, it's always there when I look at her.

The face of love. Right in front of me, where I need it most.

Discovery Of Another Kind

We are observing Columbus Day today. Hard to imagine how life was in 1492, traveling on a vast, seemingly endless sea of water in search of a place that may not exist. Armed with a vessel, a group of people that he could count on and a belief that there are riches beyond our wildest dreams, Columbus fought against the odds. Big odds. I think Vegas would give him 1 million to 1, bigger than the Tampa Bay Rays winning the AL East.

I can relate to Columbus these days. (Relate––sounds like I'm back in the '70's.) After another trip and a 4 day stay in the hospital, I feel like my body is going through one discovery after another. This time, they had to put a camera, a wire and some sort of "clean-out" tube down my throat, through my bile duct and at the base of liver. The Doctors also did a biopsy, just to be safe and sure. Oh, and for good measure they checked my small intestine while they were in there. Might as well, 'cause ya never when they'll have to cruise down there again. Hopefully never.

What would they "discover"? Look, after head & neck cancer, skin cancer in two spots,  gall bladder disease and gall stones, I was so over another discovery of the human kind. But it had to be done. My stomach was again trying to erupt like Mt. St. Helens and I was fuckin' tired of being in constant pain. Just get this shit over with so I can get my life back.

But that's the thing with cancer. It does it's own form of discovery. It finds the unchartered spots in your body, landing in a soft spot and then tries to take over everything in sight. I was talking to Sheri last week about the way cancer travels. You never know if it has left the vessel we call our body. It can show up unannounced anywhere, any time at any moment. And that's something you live with. It's something that cruises in the back of your mind when something isn't right with your body. It's also something your family is very well aware of, too. They don't have to tell me. I saw it on ALL of their faces––Fred's, too––when I was in the hospital. Does he have IT again?

I'm not going to lie to you. I was thinking I could have cancer again. I have a 3cm cyst on my kidney. Do I have a tumor or cyst at the opening of my liver? Nah. Maybe. No! Don't stress yourself out, Greg. But be prepared for a discovery that you won't wind to make.

So far, so good. Thank God it was smooth sailing.

The Camera Doesn't Lie

As the world changes, we need to keep up. We also need to pay attention to the little things that remind us the world hasn't changed that much. People still take time for granted. Laughing is better than crying––unless you're crying laughing, which Richard Pryor used to make me do. Sundays are much better during football season. And the camera doesn't lie.

I'm working on trying some new things at work––changes to stay competitive––that will surely be met with resistance. But if we don't progress, we digress. (Which I'm doing now and do very well, I might add. There I go again.) So I had the idea of presenting our ideas in video or images. Drop the keypad, put the Crackberry away and get thinking in pictures. We are SO much the visual society that we should have done this waaay back.

The idea is ironically being used for the first time on a communications effort about cancer. Yeah, ain't that a kick in the nuts. So what the hell, let's do a "documonial"––that's someone telling their story on camera because their stories are real and compelling but need to be told in a way that is NOT a testimonial. But using part of the "T" word helps sell the idea. Ya still with me?

So Aimee gets the flip-cam and we're going to see if I can tell my story of beating cancer twice in the last year in a way that will convince clients this is the way to go. We'll put it on air, online, on your desktop and on your mobile. (Soon, we'll be doing this every week and we'll wonder why it took so long.) But first we have to put it on camera and see how it flies.

It has been awhile since I've seen myself on camera or video. It's been a rough 14 months since I found out I had cancer. And I turned 50––kind of sounds like "I turned into a vampire", doesn't it––and the gall bladder being yanked out of my body hasn't helped either. I've lost at least 40 pounds and that kind of weight loss has changed the way I look.

I didn't look like myself when I saw the footage. Even though I look in the mirror every day to see if I shaved my face right and comb my hair, I didn't get the full picture until I saw the video that we needed to cut for our idea. Who is that guy on the screen? That dude isn't me. I'm the healthy looking one, the one who has always looked young for his age––I could buy a kids General Admission ticket at the Dodger Stadium until I was 15––this is my Dad. I was trying to figure out what we could do with the video to bring it to life and share as a concept. But I couldn't concentrate on anything other than the fact that THIS is how I look to my family, my friends and my work family. And then it hit me like a 15-pound bass upside the head.

The camera doesn't lie.