I have NOTHING to do with it, but my family is quirky.  We have enough inside jokes, secret codes, and eccentric traditions to drive away even the most loyal friends.

Example 1: The word “hmmm.”

If you ask me right now, “Are you hmmm?”, my answer would be a solid yes.  I’m very hmmm.  In our family, “hmmm” means tired.  Don’t ask me to explain why we say that,  I’m too hmmm right now.

Example 2: “Did you ever consider the possibility that maybe YOU’RE…”

About 67% of the time, if you make an innocent observation, the family member you’re speaking to will respond in that way.  Here’s a possible exchange:

Person 1: “The pool is full of leaves from the storm.”

Person 2: “Did you ever consider the possibility that maybe YOU’RE full of leaves from the storm?”

So when tropical storm Fay was coming toward us last week, I had no choice but to defy my pledge to only eat food that could nutritionally help me fight my cancer, and abide by one of my family’s main storm preparations.  Waffles for dinner.

Back in 2004 when Hurricane Charlie came right down our street, the last thing we ate before we lost power for 8 days was waffles.  Since then, every hurricane, or other severe tropical system, comes with a pre-storm meal consisting of my special belgian waffles, whipped cream, butter, syrup and strawberries.  The nice thing is that when everyone else in the area is rushing to the store to get bottled water and other storm-related necessities, no one is battling us for that last can of Redi-Whip.

Another family “thing” is that birthdays are huge…so much so that we even celebrate half-birthdays.  It’s not because we’re all that thoughtful, it’s that we LOVE birthday cake.  Guess whose half birthday was on Waffle Night?  You’re lookin’ at him.  So after we finished our waffle dinner (which I nailed by the way…best waffles EVER!), we enjoyed healthy servings of yellow cake with chocolate fudge icing.  Let’s recap…waffles, butter, syrup, whipped cream, and birthday cake.  If you Google any of those items, none of them will take you to the American Cancer Society’s dietary suggestions web page.  But it’s not OUR fault that a tropical storm was coming on my half-birthday.  It was totally out of our (self) control.  It was as if Fay had opened the door to my pre-cancer life for one meal.  The problem is that in all the excitement, I forgot to close that door.  While we endured non-stop rain outside, the national weather service issued a flash food warning for my stomach.  Bagels, pizza, risotto, ice cream, and coffee cake were suddenly back in play.  I went from 170 to 176 in 3 days.   I don’t think I fell off the wagon, I think I tipped it over!

On top of all that, bedtime started to shift from a responsible 8:30, to 9:30, and then to 10:30.   By last Friday I was so “hmmm” that I fell asleep mid-conversation with my wife and our friend Fake Uncle Charlie. (whose name is another inside joke.)

Fay is gone, but people are still dealing with swollen bodies of water. And after getting on the scale, the answer is “Yes, I’ve considered the possibility that maybe I’M a swollen body of water.” I will happily give this sand bag back that I’m wearing along my waistline and get my focus back.  This is no time for waffling! 

Back in day, if we were at a restaurant and our daughter Lauren ordered french fries, I would do the old, “Hey, what’s that over there?” diversion so that I could steal a few without her noticing.  When she would turn her head to see what I was talking about, I would snatch a few of those beautifully golden brown crispy critters and swallow them before she turned back.  I obviously stooped to such behavior out of my concerns for her intake of trans fatty acids, and the health of her young cardiovascular system.  I considered it the ultimate sacrifice that I would go so far as to ingest this “poison” to keep her out of harm’s way.  And if you’re buying that, then I was also once a deep sea turtle, and have been contacted by both presidential candidates to be their running mate (and turned them both down.)

Fast forward to now, and I’m seeing that that old diversion is back, this time to help me.

When I was first slapped upside the head with my lymphoma diagnosis, everything revolved around the disease.  I had no symptoms, but I was trying to feel some.  What felt like rapidly-multiplying lymphocytes near my abdomen turned out to be my cell phone vibrating on my belt.  Or I would have random thoughts like, “Last time I was here getting my car washed, I didn’t know I had cancer.”  It was like having CNN, the Cancer News Network, broadcasting in my head 24 hours a day.

But then chemotherapy started and it said, “Hey, what’s that over there?”  Like a couple of missing french fries, the cancer thoughts were instantly gone, and we were thinking solely about the looming side effects of the treatments.  I kept a journal of everything I ate, the medications I took, my sleep duration, the number of times I went to the bathroom, and rated each day on a quality scale of 1-10.  If things started going south, I wanted the doctor to know everything he could to fix me.  Fortunately, as you may have noticed in previous posts, my treatments have been relatively drama-free.  So after a few weeks of, “Dear Diary, I pooped today at 1:17″, I shelved the daily record keeping.  But the treatments remained the headline item on my personal CNN.  The Chemo News Network.

Then, last week came the heart and PET scans.  And once again, the diversion.  Even though I was there for treatment number 4, by reading us the successful results, the doctor did a masterful, “Hey, what’s that over there?”  And in the after-glow of the report, all concerns about the pending chemo vanished like a fry in a Happy Meal.

While it can go into a deep sleep, my cancer doesn’t have a cure yet.  I’ll always be at the mercy of the next PET scan every few months to see if it’s back.  But if we can string several good ones together, then I can look forward to the days, months and years where it takes little, or nothing at all, to divert my attention away from this disease and say, “Hey, what’s that over there?”   

We interrupt this program for a special report.  We have reason to believe that someone’s cancer has been abducted and taken out of state.  The cancer was last seen in the lymph nodes of this person’s abdomen and neck, and also on his scalp.  Upon a routine PET scan on Thursday, the cancer was declared missing.   The cancer was last seen being led away by a person of interest who goes by the nickname “Chemo.”   There is no reward being offered, and all efforts to return the cancer to it’s owner have ceased. 

Repeating our top story, after his most recent PET scan, no cancer showed up in the lymph nodes or scalp of a Winter Park, Florida man today.  We have reporters on the scene who will update us after an additional PET scan at the end of September once treatments are completed.

We now resume normal programming, already in progress.