Did I Get Colon Cancer Because I’ve Been Full of Shit My Whole Life?
Stage 4, no warning. But this isn’t a farewell. It’s a reckoning, and cancer picked the wrong mother fucker.
Sometimes I never know what to say, most of the time I say too much.
I mean, fair question, right? Is that why? Because I’m full of shit? Probably not. I would assume drugs, cigarettes, booze, and a former unhealthy lifestyle. As a side note, I will beat this cancer. I have shit to do, people to love, and a documentary to start shooting in 2028.
Cosmic irony at its darkest: all that bullshit I spewed, bad takes, worse decisions, years of swallowing what I should’ve said, choking on the truth, chewing on doubt. And now it’s eating me from the inside out. Stage 4. No warning. Just a doctor with eyes too soft and a voice too calm telling me the clock’s moving faster than I’d planned.
So here I am, still trying to be clever while my body decides to betray me in the most poetic way possible.
People talk about death like it’s some grand transition. Some “next phase.” But you know what it is? It’s the invoice. For every moment you thought was endless. Every time you said, I’ll deal with it later. Later shows up. Dressed in scrubs. Holding test results.
And now I’ve got questions. Not for the Gods, I’ve scared off most of those. But for myself. For the body I dragged through years of chaos, the heart I kept locked up, the people I let go of too easily. For all the jokes I made to avoid telling the truth.
Am I scared? Not really.
Angry? Not at all.
But mostly, I’m awake for the first time in years.
This isn’t a farewell.
It’s a reckoning. It’s just another challenge to overcome. Four days in bed crying over what? Dying? Stupid. We all fucking die. And honestly, my life has been a fucking blast. I raised two of the most amazing humans I have ever met and seen so much of this beautiful world it still, to this day, blows my mind.
So yesterday I got my port installed. Doing chemotherapy was hard for me to decide on. Injecting poison into my body to kill my cancer felt like a betrayal at first, like signing a deal with the devil just to buy time from a different one. But time’s the most precious drug I’ve ever chased, and now it’s the one I’ll fight for.
So I’m going to fight this, cell by cell, breath by breath. I’m looking at glutamine regulation, fasting protocols, new therapies. I’m using Rick Simpson Oil (RSO) alongside the chemo, because if there’s a shot at killing this thing from every angle, I’m taking it. I’m learning everything I can because knowledge is ammunition, and I plan to show up to this war fully loaded. I’ve kicked worse habits. This is just another beast. A bigger one, sure, but I’ve faced worse things than death, I’ve faced myself.
And now? Now I wake up with purpose. Even on the days my bones feel like ash and my skin crawls. Even when the food tastes like cardboard and every smell makes me gag. I wake up and I remember I’ve still got shit to do.
There’s a documentary to film in 2028.
Chapters to finish.
People I love who still need my chaos.
Joints to smoke on beaches I haven’t seen yet.
Motorcycles that haven’t tried to kill me.
Friends I haven’t met.
And somewhere out there, a version of me that’s still laughing in the face of this whole mess, middle finger raised.
I’m not writing this for sympathy.
I’m writing it to stay sane.
To stay grounded.
To remind myself, and maybe you, that we don’t get to choose what breaks us,
but we sure as hell get to choose what we do next.
So yeah, cancer picked a fight.
It picked the wrong mother fucker. And I will document this journey to inspire others in my situation to not give up, to fight every day, to consider alternative solutions and to live, not just survive.
#neversurrender #fuckcancer #needmoretags #imfunny
Because this isn’t just about medicine. It’s about mindset. It’s about standing up when the weight of the world says sit down. About laughing at the worst days and screaming into the void on the better ones. About flipping the bird to despair and saying, “Not today, asshole.”
I’ll talk about it all. The wins. The side effects. The fucked-up moments no one wants to mention out loud. I’ll be the loud one. The raw one. The real one. Because if one person sees this mess and thinks, “Shit, if he can do it, maybe I can too,” then it’s worth every word.
This isn’t a pity parade. It’s a war journal. A blueprint. A love letter to life and a punch in the face to everything trying to end it early.
I’m not here to fade out quietly.
I’m here to set the fucking sky on fire on my way through.
Let’s go!
My brother died of Stage 4 Colon Cancer on February 6 of this year, at 4:12 a.m. His wife and I were by his side.
All I think about now is how much I want to walk around that corner in the dark, and emerge on the deck of our old place in the Catskills, to find the deck covered -- covered -- with every pet we ever had and wild animal we positively interacted with, from Nomad the Cat (aka Harry A. Smith) to the toads we saved back in 1976 to Stubby the Squirrel, who lived on my block (he had no tail, but could do all the squirrel stuff).
And sitting at the picnic table on the deck, is my brother, restored to perfect health, quietly working on a plastic warship model. He looks up, sees me, and says, "Glad you could make it."
He hands me a model of my own to build, along with paint, glue, thinner, tweezers, and instructions. The weather is perfect -- sunny, mid-70s, no wind, just the sound of a breeze rustling the trees and birds chirping.
He starts telling me what this "next world" is like, and I realize that all my pain -- and his -- is over for all-time and forever.
You've got shit to do. Hugs 🌻