I suppose there are words you never expect to hear in your life, or at least, words that I never expected to hear uttered to me. 

You have the list in your head, whether or not you know it: cancer, divorce, being let go, fired, incurable…..

But what they don’t tell you about those words, the big moments in which you hear those words, is the death by 1,000 papercut moments that precede. There are three and four second exchanges that do more than niggle at you…niggle is too nice of a word…but I’m going to go with it 

I had my first niggle in mid-June, while home for my niece’s birthday. I’d been coughing a lot at that point, and knew I had bronchitis. Then I felt like I had indigestion and just couldn’t swallow very well. It almost felt like there was something in my chest getting in the way.

Maybe it’s cancer, I thought, for the first time. The thought crept in the way it does in the movie Kindergarten Cop when Arnold Schwarzenegger tells a kid that his headache is not a tumor. 

My next niggle was in early July, while watching an ESPN special about Jim Valvana. It was about his iconic ESPY speech, and I watched it that night, still with this indigestion, still not feeling well, still assuming I had some form of long covid, but the niggle was there - a bit stronger - and I pushed it down.

July 26th, 2023 wasn’t the day I found out I had cancer.

It was the day of my third niggle. Ok, not a niggle exactly. This time, it was pure shock when the doc said I had an opaque structure in my chest cavity. My Primary Mediastinal, to be specific. I looked up at the ER doc and, for the first time, let myself absorb the idea that something was really wrong with me. Not like, bronchitis or long covid had turned into pneumonia, but that something was really, really wrong. 

July 26th was when I started to really hold onto the small pieces of….I don’t know, hope or denial, I guess? Your blood work is good so there’s that must mean no cancer. I’d been exercising about until a few days ago, I couldn’t do that with cancer right? Yes my heart was basically running at tachycardia, but that’s why I’m here and that doesn’t have to be cancer right?

Also, hey, this could be two other things that you can’t remember because the last thing the doctor said was that it might be a malignant lymphoma and anything mentioned before or after that doesn’t matter, because malignant lymphoma. 

I looked up from my laptop, where I had basically been knocking out work to pass the time, and barely gave the doctor a passing glance at the news.

Maybe she expected more questions. Maybe she expected some tears. Maybe she expected me to suck in my breath, as my wife did, gasping as she sat in the chair next to me. 

“Ok,” I said. And turned my attention back to my work. My insides were buzzing like bees, sure. But what could I do? I didn’t know what the mass actually was. There was no solid news to grasp onto, just a lot of maybes.

I spent the next 52 hours in the ER. And I write this post to you on day 14 of my hospital stay.

I haven’t been home since July 26th.

The actual cancer diagnosis came to me, but not until August 3rd. I was flattened at that point, not only by the news, but by two invasive chest tubes implanted in me in order to drain fluid around my heart and lungs.

There was a lot of hurry about and wait for the first five days, and then procedures happened so fast.

Everything has happened. So. Fast.

I don’t know how I feel.

My friends have asked. I don’t know yet. I’m ok. I always preferred playing the game to watching the game. This feels no different.

I can tell you that the first big LOL moment from a higher power was the thought that I was going to be upright and controlling the narrative and the way I communicated with friends and family members, when or if, I wrote a post like this.

The universe was like LOL M*** F*****!!!!!

You have zero control.

We know this. We’re told this. We learn this.

We quickly forget this.

The second LOL moment was any hope that my being as healthy as possible was going to be any kind of get out of jail free card. Being mindful of your health helps. It’s helped me get this far with a 7.5 inch tumor in my chest. It’s helped me during this hospital stay. It will continue to help me.

As I reflect on what I know to be true for me, right now in this moment:

I am in a safe hospital with an amazing care team at Maine Medical Center. My nurses and doctors and CNA’s are humans who treat me as human.

I have a wonderful network of friends and family, and I thank all of you who have texted, called and left messages. I read them at my lower moments and take great heart in them.

I am a personal trainer.

I have cancer.

My official diagnosis is Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I’m in the first of six rounds of chemo that started yesterday. I’ll deal with it in the way that I’ve dealt with most other personal trials – through journaling and being as open as I can about my journey, as much as I’m able and feel called to do so. There are many, many, many of you who may read this who have faced a similar journey and experienced, or are experiencing your own 1,000 papercut scenarios.

I have found in the past that sharing our stories can open up the hearts of others, and I can think of no better reason for allowing some of the inside stories out.

The other night, a friend of mine described the way she thinks about food as constant chaos in her head.

What a perfect description.

I’ve mentioned before that the inside of my head is like an episode of hoarders. I have this vision of turning sideways to negotiate falling piles of yellowed newspapers from the Reagan administration as I try to remember where the door is.

Then, every time I try to get to a door, there’s a ninja monkey, sitting on a unicorn that is Salsa dancing with a warrior elephant and by the time I’m done refereeing them, I don’t remember why I was at the door in the first place.

All of this takes place under the watchful eye of a one-legged lemur who is playing twister with a rat-tail Irish water spaniel.

You can see where discerning information becomes difficult.

There are any number of things that can get in the way of you achieving your goals and one of them is information - either a lack of - or too much. And in this information heavy world, analysis paralysis happens quickly. We spend our days consuming a Niagra Falls waterfall of information. And if your mind is anything like mine, that information sticks in weird places and clutters much of your decision-making process.

Then throw in a day full of decisions - do I hit the snooze button? Should I wear the socks that have swear words on them or will I cross my legs in that meeting with my boss? Should I tell Carol how much her email yanked my chain?

Decision fatigue is a thing. It’s one of the reasons I’ll never go grocery shopping after a trip to the eye doctor.

But what do we do about all the Noah’s Ark tornado swirling around in our heads?

I’ve rained in my ninja monkey enough to throw out a few suggestions.

1. Grab a pen and do a brain dump.

Mel and I sometimes use this strategy together when we’re at the gym. When we find ourselves so distracted by that water fall of to-do’s, we stop what we’re doing, set a timer for five minutes, and put pen to paper. Often, getting all of those tasks out of your mind and onto the paper can help bring some clarity to help you figure out where to start.

2. Use the 10 minute timer and start.

I’ve written about this before, but one of the best strategies I’ve found to get out of my head and into action is to set a timer for 10 minutes and pick a task. Spend 10 minutes making your grocery list or looking up recipes. Spend 10 minutes answering emails. Pick a task and set a timer. I’m willing to bet you’ll go for longer than 10 minutes and you’ll feel better having done something.

Action breeds motivation. Once you make a decision to take some action, you’d be surprised at how much calmer you’ll feel.

3. Pause.

I’ve written before about what Buddhists call the sacred pause. Choosing moments throughout the day to stop what you are doing, even if it’s only for 30 seconds, and breathing can settle that ninja monkey down just a little bit. If you can, stretch that pause into five minutes of silence - with no distractions.

We numb ourselves with our phones - distraction is constantly at our fingertips, but our brains can be like velcro - we read about current events and even though we think we’re unwinding by sitting for a minute and scrolling through social media, we’re not giving our brains the break they need.

So take a minute right now, and stop what you’re doing. Put the phone down - slide your chair away from your desk, and inhale deeply and exhale slowly.

There. Feel a bit better?

Good.

Now rinse and repeat one more time and enjoy the rest of your day.

It’s a play I’d made hundreds of times in my career as a softball pitcher.

Field a ground ball, fire a strike to first base.

As with many sports, I’d taken hundreds of thousands of ground ball reps over the years so that during games, the play was made from muscle memory. Catch, turn, throw.

Routine.

No filter needed for this throwback pic…

Until one day during my junior year of high school when I fielded a ground ball, turned towards first base, and fired the ball 10 feet over the first basemen’s head.

I was not nervous, I was not anxious, I was not injured.

But from that point forward, something inexplicable happened to me every time I fielded a ground ball on the mound.

I had developed a case of the yips.

The yips, for those of you who don’t follow baseball or golf (though it happens in other sports) is defined as the sudden and unexplained loss of fine motor skills in athletes. Perhaps the most famous case in history is that of Steve Blass, a former pitcher for my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates. After a very successful 10 year career in the major leagues, he developed a case of the yips that was so severe, he was out of baseball within two years after his first wild pitch.

He was 32 years old. (Now when this happens to a pitcher, they call it Steve Blass disease).

In 2000, I was watching a playoff game between the Atlanta Braves and the Saint Louis Cardinals when Rick Ankiel, a phenom drafted by the Cardinals only one year before, threw a pitch in the dirt.

And he never recovered his pitching career.

Even though my experience with the yips wasn’t life altering, it was by far one of the strangest phenomenons I ever experienced. I could no longer trust my body, or trust my skills.

Field a ball and throw it home? Sure. Turn to throw it to first base, and my arm would suddenly feel almost disconnected from my body and I couldn’t predict the result. I no longer had control over something that I had always had control over.

As I recently listened to an interview with Ankiel, I was struck at the sheer terror he must have felt at his body and mind’s inexplicable betrayal of his gift. And I was thinking of how often that happens to so many of us - outside of the sports arena.

I think of the mental health struggles - the crippling anxiety that keeps a lonely person from meeting new people. The devastating depression that hijacks your belief system about your talents, your skills, and your worth.

I think of the physical deterioration of our bodies that leave us standing in a pile of “used to’s” instead of focusing on our “can do’s.”

Many of us have our own yips on this journey in life. We don’t get a say in our genetics that leave us in need of new knees and hips before we turn 60.

But we do get a say in how our story goes.

Rick Ankiel, the phenom that he was, set out to write the story of a successful major league pitcher, with all of the accolades that go with it. Instead, he wrote a different tale.

Ankiel spent the better part of six years trying to solve his pitching woes. But in 2006, when he threw only three strikes in 20 pitches during a spring training game, he re-invented himself. And in 2007 he returned to the major leagues as a right fielder, and is the only player besides Babe Ruth to have homered as both a pitcher and a position player.

He went on to play another seven years in the pros as an outfielder.

It wasn’t the story he set out to write. But I’m not sure he would have actually written the book that he did write (called The Phenomenon), if not for that one pitch that changed his life forever.

Sometimes we have to stop fighting what we want to do and start doing what we were meant to do.