Current emotional status, Day 26 since the words “Matt” and “cancer” were joined in a sentence over the phone to me, at work. Me leaning over a metal book-truck and writing “cancer” on a piece of scratch paper with a golf pencil.
Imagine one of your most intense fever dreams. Stretch it out for 26 days and make it so no amount of hydration or food or rest makes you feel normal.
Now imagine going through this with the sunshine of your life, so that no matter how scary things get, you’re still laughing and making plans, angling for the days and weeks and years when the sentence reads “Matt” and “cancer free.”
Anyone who knows present-day Matt knows that he puts his everything into the people, projects, and ideas that matter most to him. What this means for our current predicament is that he is allowing himself to rest and learning to ask for and accept help; he is taking walks in defiance of the near-constant fatigue; he is drinking SO MUCH water; he is eating even when it feels like a chore (though thankfully it doesn’t always feel like a chore), getting fruits and veggies and plenty of protein; he is educating himself, like always; and he is writing every day—one notebook for journaling and another to track meals, symptoms, side effects. Pardon the gush, I’m just so proud of him.