Flip It For Life

"I lied to you," said my doctor. And I knew at that instant.

I knew what the doctor was about to tell me even as her lips formed silently only the first syllables of the first words that she
would use to deliver the news she hadn't ever expected to deliver.

"The tumor we believed to be benign is..." she told me with a hint of incredulity and maybe even a bit of guilt, pausing not for
effect but because she truly needed to find the words. "I'm sorry to say that it's malignant."

She let the word sink in for a moment, perhaps as much for herself as for me. And then she continued, lifting the veil on a
ruse that intuition had told me was a ruse from the moment she'd called me in to her office.

"I called you in today not to check up on your scar, as I said on your machine, but rather to tell you face-to-face that..." Breath.
"... you have cancer."

And that was that. What had begun as a slight discomfort in my neck, a discomfort that a previous doctor had written off as
me being a "hypochondriac with swollen glands" (thankfully, that doctor's less-than-savory bedside manner compelled me to
find a new doctor-- call it fate), had now metamorphisized from a harmless outpatient procedure to the dreaded "C word."
Yep, Cancer with a capital C. Or more technically (these things one never forgets), acinic cell carcinoma of the left parotid
gland, a salivary gland running from the base of your ear canal down your neck to the base of your throat.

I'd already experienced one surgery to remove what at the time was believed to be nothing more than a bodily nuisance. In
fact, it was the first stitch I'd ever had in my twenty-three-plus years of living to that point. My parent's hadn't even thought to
travel to Chicago to be with me, and I never thought that they should have. A ride from a roommate and some Tylenol with
codeine would do the trick, right?

Now, the game had changed fast and furious.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I know of any Cancer with a lowercase c.

So I did what anyone else in my situation would do. I sat in my parked car in the lot at Binny's Beverage Depot across the
street from the hospital, and I laughed. I laughed at the ridiculous task that lay ahead of me in the minutes that would follow,
despite time having felt like it slowed down to the point where I felt I could read every word on every wine label being carried
out of Binny's by the weekend revelers whose plans did not include getting the Cancer out of their bodies. I laughed because
I knew that capital C for my parents, over the phone and 1,000 miles away, was going to hit them across the face like 60
Helvetica Extra Bold Underlined!

So I laughed. Perhaps because I didn't want to cry.

I should say right now that I never got sick. That is, I never felt sick. I never required radiation or chemotherapy, I never felt
pain, and life over the next few months was as normal as it could be for a 23 year old who now wore the modern-day scarlet
letter. My A was a C, and I its Hester Prynne. My parents sprung into action as if propelled out of a Nerf rocket launcher.
Doctors appointments begat more doctors appointments, second opinions became third opinions became fourth opinions,
and I found myself navigating the nuances of the percentages of various checkups and procedures that were and were not
covered by health insurance.

Two particular memories come to mind: One, my "baby" sister, just having entered her freshman year in college, wondering
aloud and over the phone if I, her oldest brother, was going to die. I laughed again, if only (again) to cover the tears, hers and
mine.

"No," I said, "I'm not going to die." Could she have detected the microscopic bit of uncertainty in my voice? Cancer wasn't
that scary, I learned, until you saw or heard your own hidden fear reflected in the fear of the ones you love.

Two, laughing again as the ear, nose and throat doctor pulled a 16-inch tube out of my throat by way of my nasal passage,
this time the laugh a combination of the discomfort of a 16-INCH TUBE BEING PASSED THROUGH MY FACE and the hilarity of
watching, along with my father and a team of nurses, the serious amount of snot hidden back there on a 32" TV monitor
perched atop a sterile hospital countertop. What else was there to do but laugh?

Flash forward three months to Thanksgiving week in New York City, Rockefeller center skating into full operation, and
Christmas decorations lining Fifth Avenue. And me, walking through Manhattan for hours amidst the cold, late autumn air,
knowing that it would be days before I felt strong enough (or non-vain enough) to brave the outside elements. The day after
would be my "real" surgery at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Harvard of Cancer treatment, which of course
had been the only feasible option as far as my parents and I were concerned. You don't skimp on Capital C.

Dad would arrive late that night to share the hospital apartment room with me, and be there the following day to lose his mind
while I lie in surgery. Gotta hand it to him -- if he was nervous and/or scared, Dad didn't show it those few days. I'm certain
we laughed more than anything.

But Dad hadn't arrived yet, so I treated myself to a New York matinee, "Meet Joe Black," a movie about death coming for man
whose time had come. (And death was Brad Pitt- Ha!) What the hell was I thinking, perhaps the lure of some $8 Sour Patch
Kids? Either way, I remember leaving the theater half shaken, but also half-stirred, because the movie left me the strong
feeling that my fate was already decided, and it would be a good fate, full of laughs.

Dad arrived, and we "celebrated" my last stitch-free night and what we hoped would be a Cancer-free New Year's with a
triple-decker corned beef sandwich at the Carnegie Deli. If there was any chance I was gonna go, I was going on a full
stomach. (Another laugh, followed by some minor indigestion.) As it turns out, Dad and I gave our leftovers, and there were
plenty, to a homeless man who had wisely staked a spot outside the portion-happy deli.

The story ends well, I promise. Despite eating the hospital-provided meal resembling turkey and stuffing from my cancer
ward room on Thanksgiving Day, the Titans of the NFL rendered no larger than old Atari football avitars on the 6" screen
attached to my bed, I had reason to be happy. Despite my embarrassment of exposing my bare buttocks to the cute nurse
who tended my post-op recovery, I knew I was going to be ok. My entire family's love was represented in the room by my
father, who watched the game and ate imitation turkey with me as if this Turkey Day were no different from any other. The
well-wishes poured in by phone and by delivery from my dearest friends and colleagues, who had constantly reminded me in
those months what it meant to be loved. And of course, there was the nasty 6-inch scar beneath my jaw line, from ear to
throat, that would eventually heal nicely and fade to an oft-remindful light pink, but for the moment provided me with a cool
bar story for the ladies. And despite the decent risk of facial paralysis as a result of getting in close to many of the nerve
endings in that area, I gradually recovered more than 90% of the feeling in my face. As for the other 10%, well, it's another
nice reminder.

The Cancer, for all intents and purposes, was gone before it could do anymore harm than cause me to miss out on a real
Thanksgiving dessert.

But above all, one things stuck with me from that time I spent in the hospital. Not how nauseous I felt from the anesthesia.
Not the disgusting drainage pump attached to my face for the 2 days following the procedure. Not even the poor hospital
excuse for turkey.

But rather, across the room from me, separated by only a thin curtain was a young South American man who, because I
never actually saw him, was likely the same age as me. From his moaning and slurred speech, I could only surmise that he
was undergoing a much more serious and difficult facial cancer than I had experienced. At first, hearing his moans through
the spotty and drug-induced sleep of my first overnight following the surgery, I felt a tinge of guilt and maybe even a bit of
regret, to be honest. Why was I so lucky? Why did I not feel a thing-- other than some slight post-surgical discomfort-- and
this kid, this kid just like me, had to suffer so much? Why wasn't this HARDER for me?

I had no answers, and to this day, I still don't. But my guilt and concern soon gave way to another emotional reaction, this one
a familiar one from those few months since that afternoon in Binny's parking lot. As my Spanish skills had diminished
severely since those freshman year language labs, I could only assume, but felt rather certain, that the young man's family
members were trading playful barbs between one another, and my roommate... yes, it was true because I heard it for myself.
He was laughing!

Laughing the same as I had from the day I found out the tumor was malignant, to the insanity of almost-daily doctor
appointments, to the dark irony of a Cancer patient watching a movie about death the day before his surgery, to an obscenely
large dinner, and ultimately, a day to give true thanks from the antiseptic Siberia of the Sloan Kettering Cancer ward.

What a miracle it is to have the capacity to laugh, even when the laughing hurts. And in his case, I know it did hurt. The good
kind of hurt.

Ten years have passed, and aside from participating to varying degrees each year in the American Cancer Society Relay For
Life as a survivor (!), there's very little follow-up required but for the occasional MRI or PET scan to ensure that the Cancer
hasn't come back. And there's truly no reason to believe it will.

When I think of my sister, her boyfriend Mark and especially Mark's sister, Robin, I am reminded how important it is to Flip my
attitude when it's starting to head down the wrong path. I'm especially inspired by Robin's story, knowing full well what it
must have been like to go through what she did, 1000 times over the brief summer of concern that marked my first hand
confrontation with Cancer.

And I am reminded to keep laughing. Always.

Take that, Capital C.

-Jon