The Words Nobody Wants to Say

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

Six days ago, my best friend and roommate was admitted to the hospital for what I, at the time, still thought was a nasty case of Bronchitis.

Joey and I have been best friends since my sophomore year of college, seven years ago.  We’ve supported each other through good and bad relationships, breakups, illnesses, academic and social problems, and financial difficulties.  I would not be who I am today without my funny, confident, often philosophical writer friend, and I am just recently coming to see the ways in which I have changed him as well.

When I first came to college, I was a scared, naïve, painfully shy teenager.  Joey was the one who patiently cracked me out of my shell one piece of a time, taught me self-confidence and self-assessment, helped me to analyze my thoughts and feelings and to act on them accordingly.  He helped me to meet new friends, to become more involved in the club we both attended, to eventually run for and become Vice President of said club.  He was the one friend I could count on to always listen, to always understand, to not judge me.  I trusted him with all my secrets, and he kept them faithfully.

Over the years our friendship evolved as we became college roommates, then graduates working to support ourselves (and not always succeeding).  We supported each other when one and then the other of us became unemployed, much to the disapproval of some friends and family members.  We helped a young couple who were our close friends when they became pregnant and helped them raise their newborn child for six months.  We lived through heartbreaks together, worked through anger together, and spent far too much time being broke together.

Six days ago, the person I have always leaned on for support, who I have always come to with my troubles, was himself in trouble.  He had found a lump in his neck, in addition to the respiratory problems and bruising on his chest, and finally got worried enough to go to the hospital despite having no insurance.

I spent that night nervously sitting in a tiny room with Joey and his parents, awaiting test results that seemed like they would never come.  They put him on blood thinners to start working on the blood clot in his neck, which was most likely caused by whatever was in his chest that they were doing the CT scan to determine.  By two o’clock in the morning we had run out of meaningless things to talk about and were simply waiting.  The doctors came in and gave us more vague answers.  Said they had found a mass in his chest, that they wanted to do a biopsy on the lump in his neck.  More tests, more scans.  The results would take several days.

Over the weekend, I was a part of my older brother’s wedding, and managed (barely) to quiet my fears and worries about my friend enough to play my part, to be joyful and feel my family’s love and enjoy the evening, yet I checked in regularly with Joey.  Still no news, but he was in great spirits and was already making jokes, keeping his parents in good spirits and, very like himself, completely charming all the nurses with his legendary charisma and wit and that big goofy grin of his.

The night before the diagnosis was finalized, I sat up in the hospital room with Joey and his parents again, talking about everything.  About the word nobody wanted to say until it was official but which we all knew was going to be the answer.  By then they had already surgically implanted a chemo port into his chest, silently telling everyone present that they expected to start Chemo as soon as they knew which type it was.  He told us that no matter the prognosis, he considers this a victory.  That he’s not afraid.  He told us that whether he lives for five years or fifty years, this whole thing has given him the certainty that he will make the most of that time in deliberate purposeful action, and that he will not squander another moment of the life he has to live.  He is ready to fight, and he is ready for whatever happens.  And seeing as how he’s supported me through everything for seven years, I figure it’s about time I start truly supporting him in return, so how can I be any less determined, any less ready to fight alongside him?

We may as well just come out and say it at this point, as I’m sure you’ve figured it out and we had too: My best friend has cancer.

Even now my hands tremble as I type that word, that awful word.  Cancer.  The diagnosis came in on Monday while I was at work and it was more complex than I expected.  He has Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma, which is a fairly aggressive form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  We had hoped for Hodgkins, as it is purportedly more curable and also more common in his age bracket, but the doctors are still optimistic as they seem to have caught it fairly early.  The tumor in his chest measured about 10 centimeters at the time of the CT scan, and the lymph nodes in his neck were the only other masses they found.  We’re still waiting on a bone marrow biopsy, but for the time being we believe he is only at stage two, meaning they can kill the tumors in a matter of weeks and then just work on making sure they don’t come back.

When Joey told me about his diagnosis, he seemed relieved.  To know for sure what it was, and how to go about dealing with it, must have been a load off his mind.  The waiting, as they say, is the worst part.  But for me, the worst part so far has been not being there while everything is happening.  Being at work, trying my hardest to be productive and interact normally while my BEST friend, my Big Brother, is in a hospital bed having poison pumped into his veins and just waiting for some crazy adverse reaction.  Waiting for his hair to fall out.  Waiting for him to start puking uncontrollably.  Waiting to see if the Chemo actually does what it’s supposed to.

From here on out it’s really just one waiting game after another, and all I can continue to do is be as confident, as calm and as supportive as I can be, because he needs and deserves that from me, and because he helped to make me into a person who can do that, who can support someone else with strength and courage.  It is because of his friendship that I can live up to my end of the bargain and be his support during this crazy time.

Today is day 2 of chemo treatments.  Chances are his hair will start falling out any day now, and he’s decided to go ahead and get a buzz cut to reduce the trauma of that event.  He was still feeling pretty well when I saw him last night, if exhausted and slightly nauseous, but we are told repeatedly about how far medicine has come and how the drugs they use nowadays are so much better than they used to be.  All that being said, they have no more idea what his body’s reaction will be than we do, and they, as we, are waiting to react to whatever happens.

Throughout this entire process so far, Joey’s positivity and strength have helped the rest of us to cope.  At a time when we are each trying to be strong for him, it is his strength which gives us the strength to do so, if that makes any sense.  I told him on the night before he began chemo that “I have always been terrified of hospitals… but this time is different.  Because you’re here.  Because it’s where I need to be.  This time I am much more terrified of going home to my empty apartment than of spending time here with you.”  The apartment, which we were supposed to share for a few months, is now being emptied of his belongings as they are moved over to his parents’ house, where he will be residing for the duration of his treatment.

Joey has such a sense of purpose now, of motivation to live his life well and purposefully and to make a difference to others who are struggling.  He is keeping busy by writing in a blog and keeping in constant contact with all the friends, family members and other well-wishers who have been messaging him since his announcement through Facebook on the evening of the diagnosis.  He has also told members of the hospital staff of his willingness and desire to share his thoughts and experiences with others who are struggling, to speak at cancer survivor events or with others who have recently been diagnosed and share that positivity with them.  He told me upon his diagnosis that he “was okay with this.  Really okay,” and I couldn’t believe that could possibly be true.  But I am coming to believe it now, and I am working towards being okay with this too, with his help.  And through this website.

On my most recent visit to the hospital, Joey told me (and a room full of family members, nursing staff and the hospital social worker) that the thing that helps him most right now is knowing that he’s helping others.  He wants to write, to speak, to talk to other survivors and people fighting cancer and to spread his positivity to them, and his attitude is so infectious that he had all of us laughing and smiling along with us.  This while lying in a hospital bed with a tube sticking out of his chest, poison pouring through his veins and making him slightly radioactive, and feeling nausea and exhaustion.  He’s one of the most amazing people I know, and I will do everything in my power to make this fight easier on him and on his family.

To follow the progress of his journey from his amazing first-person perspective, please read and follow his blog, Perspective Odysseum (http://perspectiveodysseum.blogspot.com/) and leave some words of support.