Cuck Fancer

Where do I begin? How about with: WHAT THE FUCK!? I don’t think that any of us hoped that I would ever be writing one of these again, at least not for this reason. I was 18 months clean and strong like Russian bull. I was taking a full load of classes at school, I had two solid internships, and I was living 20 feet from the beach in Newport! Life was good. I guess you can guess what I’m feeling? Cancer really makes you appreciate what you ‘used’ to have. But please don’t feel sorry for me. I will have it all again soon.  The question I seem to get from everybody is,  “how did all this come about?”

One beautiful August morning, I was off for a routine pet/ct scan. Honestly, not giving it a second thought. The doctor called my mom the next day and said we think we found something but we aren’t sure. They were hoping it was an anomaly, or some type of infection, or a false positive, anything but THAT! My doctor (Raul Mena who we all adore) said that my cancer, if it was back, was slow growing so waiting 3 months would not harm me at all. Besides, he and everyone else NEVER believed it could be back. So, off to school I went. Come December, I finished my first quarter of school and went in for my pet/ct scan. It was similar to the day that the Americans invaded Normandy, we knew it was coming but nobody really wanted to go.  I mean come on; there is no way that it’s back. I am young, I fought it off the first time and categorized as a “rapid responder”, I’m good, no worries Ben. That is what I kept telling myself. I pretty much tell myself that to this day. I get a call the next morning and it wasn’t good news. The area previously seen in August had not only not gone away, it had gotten a bit more “intense” They knew it was something. By the way, I still thought it was nothing. I had 3 options. 1. Wait 3 more months to see if it went away or got bigger. Yeah RIGHT! 2. Get a second opinion. I have the best Dr. in the world, not gonna happen. 3. Have a biopsy, find out what this shit is and move on from there. Being that I am the instant gratification guy that I am, give me door number three.  I knew I would be in pain from the surgery but if it meant not having cancer, it was worth it. So I went in for a biopsy on December 21st and while smiling, taking pictures of my naked butt in the hospital bed, cut to 2 hours later the surgeon hugs my mom and cries “it’s Hodgkin’s.” My mom pulls it together like she always does and comes to see me in agonizing pain in ICU. She tells me, but I couldn’t retain water if you know what I mean.
So where does that leave us? That was just a background for anybody who might want it, or maybe it was just so I could write it down because I hadn’t really wrote it down before. After speaking with my oncologist we knew that the next step was going to be a stem-cell transplant (That is standard protocol for relapsed Hodgkin’s). The question was where? City of Hope is 1 of 3 hospitals in the United States that does this shit in their sleep. So if any of you know my mom, guess where we went? Yeah, you guessed it! Not only one of the best hospitals, but she got me in with the best doctor, the doctor who wrote the first book on bone-marrow transplants in 1978, Dr. Stephen Forman!  A little fun fact, City of Hope does about 500+ transplant a year, to where the average hospital does about 100. Oh by the way, COH is in the middle of nowhere. I mean don’t go past the hospital too far or you might feel a little “uncomfortable.” It is in Duarte, between Monrovia and Arcadia. We went in for the consultation on January 12th, and I started chemotherapy on the 15th.

First let me tell you about Dr. Forman. It was like I met Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen at the same time. But this guy was way smarter! I felt completely safe and knew that this doctor was going to save my life. He explained to ME the processes, not my mom. Which, if you were wondering, is the best a doctor can do. Talk to the patient, not his mother! It killed her but she’s used to it by now.
Here is the process: Stay with me. Focus. Take notes. I am going to be having an Autologus Stem-Cell Transplant/Rescue. They will take my own stem cells from my veins and use them to re-grow my immune system. The other places you can get stem cells are from somebody else, umbilical cords or from the bone. My cancer is not yet in my bone marrow, it lies deep within my blood on some unknown cellular level (anybody cracked the code of cancer yet???)  So, they can use my own stem cells for the transplant.  Imagine this next part in a calendar. I will be going in for salvation chemotherapy called ICE every 3 weeks. I will be in an outpatient facility for 1 day and inpatient for the next two. I will do this probably 3 times. So we are at about 9 weeks. This chemotherapy will hopefully put my body into remission. When I say remission I mean that there will be no visible trails of cancer from a pet/ct scan. So then why not stop there right? But as I said earlier, we know it will come back because it is deeper on a cellular level that nobody can see. This much they apparently know about Hodgkin’s. In between the 2nd and 3rd ICE treatment I will have a mini surgery and get some type of Hickman catheter put into my chest. I will wake up and they will start my 3rd cycle of ICE while I am in the hospital. After those 9 weeks, I will rest for 2 weeks or so, and then go into City of Hope so they can harvest my stem cells. It’s about a 6-hour process. The technology is amazing. Check this out. I will sit in a chair and they will take a lot of blood out of me, but give me back everything but my stem cells. You may ask, why stem cells? Well blood is made up of 5 parts. White blood cells, Red blood cells, plasma, platelets, and stem cells. Stem cells are the cells that can become any one of the four other parts of the blood, or mutate and become cancer. How about that science tip for you. Now go impress your friends. After they harvest my stem cells, and they say they have enough for a transplant, BOOM! The shit hits the fan. I am thinking this will be about week 11-12 or so. Then I go back to City of Hope and they put me in the Stem-cell wing. They will give me what they call the “atomic bomb” of chemotherapy for 6 days straight. They say this is like Hiroshima on your body. It will kill anything and everything, including the Hodgkin’s cells that exist on that cellular level, they hope. This chemotherapy protocol is called BEAM.  On the last day of this chemo they will re-introduce my stem cells back into my body, and while everything else re-grows with lots and lots of good drugs, my stem cells will set up shop in my bones in about 9 days. I then will stay in the hospital another 10 to ? days to make sure my white blood cells and immune system come back to strong numbers. So in total I will be in the hospital for a minimum of 25 days. Some stay less, and others stay more. I will be on close watch. If anybody wants to come visit (which I highly encourage) you will need to wear a mask and gloves. The room is very sterile. It’s kind of like bubble boy. Does anybody have any good movies that I should watch? Any playboy magazines I should read? I’ll take anything to keep my mind off of the storm I will be enduring. So in the end, we are looking at about a 16-week (or longer) process.
After the transplant, they have certain benchmarks they look at. Day 1 is the day I get the transplant. From then on day 40 is important, day 50, day 70, and day 100.  They use these dates to make sure I am healthy and they recommend I stay pretty isolated from certain areas. I mean I’m like a baby. My immune system is going to be brand new. I think I can get the chicken pox again? Who knows? If you guys have any questions, please feel free to call or email me.

I want to start off by saying thank you to everybody who has been there for my family and I. I don’t think that anybody can battle this alone. People ask me if I need a support group or a place where I can tell people how I am feeling, and I pretty much tell them I have probably the largest support group in southern California. All of you are the reason I keep truckin’ because nobody wants to see anybody fail and everybody wants to hear a success. Well I am going to be that success. Bracelet sells are through the rough partly because of Stand up 2 Cancer. They made a little facebook note about me and people just started buying. Those bracelets mean a lot to me. I don’t really think it is about the money with me. Don’t get me wrong, raising money for cancer research was the goal for these bracelets, but when you wear one it does more then raise money, it raises awareness. You are wearing something that means more to me than anything, and I can’t thank you enough. I want to spread the vibe of CUCK FANCER nationwide. And I want everybody to have that sarcastic, cynical, fuck it mentality towards cancer. It sucks and we all should be able to say it.

With love,
Cuck Fancer,

Ben