Happy Thanksgiving!
Late December marks 30 years since brain cancer tried to delete me. The tumor pressed against the part of my brain that controlled my left hand—eleven years of piano training was gone. (Intentional em dash)
Picture it (Sophia Petrillo-style) ➡️ Fall 1995 at Binghamton University and the start of my Senior Year. My capstone was supposed to be a full musical production. Book, lyrics, libretto, set, costumes, lighting, direction. All of that. At the time, it was forebodingly called “Times Like These, “inspired by Sondheim, Schwartz, Webber, and Gershwin. You know, all the greats.
Then the tumor showed up uninvited, with all the fabulous symptoms Fine motor coordination in my left hand stopped working. Goodbye arpeggiation. (1) December diagnosis. (2) January craniotomy. (3) Feb/Mar Chernobyl radiation.
The musical was dead in the water. Except Binghamton bent over backwards for me. And all my musical theater nerd college friends? Well, they showed up like an army.
Two weeks out of radiation, we salvaged what we could. “Times Like These” became “Changing Times,” a cobbled-together collection of vignettes, angry songs, whatever pieces still worked. My left hand barely remembered how to move, but that did not matter.
We staged it in May anyway.
Those friends didn’t care about practicum credits or glory. They just decided cancer didn’t get to win this round.
Of course, my parents were there with their obligatory 20lb Wonder Years camcorder perched atop my Dad’s grieving shoulders.
Well, guess what? I found the VHS tape 📼 last week, buried in a dusty cardboard box under the bed. I got it digitized and uploaded it to my since-forever dormant YouTube channel
Proof that sometimes you steal thirty years from statistics. Sometimes your left hand remembers how to play. Sometimes the math is wrong.
🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃
Today’s Thanksgiving.
Every family gets their FOX News uncle and their MSNBC cousin at the same table today. May they cancel each other out while you focus on the mashed potatoes and sweet potato pie.
I’m grateful for the friends who held the line (and my head over the toilet) when holding it mattered, for a school that rewrote rules so I could finish, for an uncle who understood that living meant more than just surviving, and for all of you who read these posts, share these stories, refuse to shut up about what’s broken.
Some of you are waiting on scans. Some fighting insurance. Some just trying to make it through dinner with family.
Know this: Sometimes six months becomes 30 years.
Sometimes you get to tell the story.
CRINGE VIDEO LINK ⬇️
If this hits home, tell me where you have seen it happen. Drop your story below. Are you new here? My condolences and my thanks. Follow along and stay loud with the rest of us.
#GobbleGobble #CancerSurvivor #WeThePatients #Thanksgiving