I went to take a shower, and I was not at all prepared for what happened. At the hospital, the only thing I ever saw in the small vanity mirror was my face. In our bathroom, we had mirrors large enough to see my body from the waist up. Undressed, I turned to get a towel and caught a full glimpse of my naked body. The sight took my breath away.
I could see every rib in my chest, my shoulder bones jutted out in sharp points, and my arms and legs looked like sticks. My butt was gone, my back just connected to my legs in one seamless line. And I was hunched over like a ninety-year-old man.
What had I done to myself?
I sat down on the toilet seat and sobbed uncontrollably in deep heaves. The visual reminders of the changes were just too overwhelming. For weeks, I had thought of myself as the same strong, fit, army soldier I’d always been, and I had wondered where this silly potbelly had come from. Now I realized my stomach was about the same size it had always been; the rest of my body had just shriveled around it.
Food selection became an Olympic event: great hope for success, devastation in the frequent failures.
And every crap was an emergency.
My body seemed incapable of controlling its temperature. If I pulled on a sheet, I’d wake up soaking wet; if I used nothing, I’d wake up freezing cold. And my bandages could never contain the volume of leaky digestive juices for more than an hour.
For the first time in my life, I experienced night terrors, and they were frequent. I would wake up yelling and thrashing from dreams I could not remember.
Each of these conditions prevented me from sleeping. I was exhausted, but I could never get more than two hours straight. I had to sleep on a twin-size air mattress in our living room—the same one I’d used in Iraq for a year.
For the next three months, we measured success and failure by digestion, weight gain, and bowel movements—and also by my mood, which wasn’t quite what it had been when I’d seen myself as a jut-jawed army soldier.
After a few weeks, and with the Serenity Prayer rolling through my mind constantly, I resolved that I needed to push some boundaries to see what changes I could effect.
I started with the pain medication. Many of my conditions stemmed from the fact that my entire body was half-asleep, yet I still seemed to feel pain. After a brief consult with my doctors, and against their advice, I stopped the meds cold turkey. The all-night drenching sweats, the agony of restless leg syndrome, and an incomprehensible level of nausea made me appreciate the “rebound effect” of any heavy narcotic. For four days, I seriously considered popping a couple of those pills, but I held out hope, based on others’ experience.
Just one more day, I told myself every night. It will get better.
In the weeks that followed, my bowels began to move, which improved my mobility and digestion and advanced my healing dramatically. Soon I found I could do useful work around the house, though I liked warning people it would not be wise to pay me by the hour.
I still experienced a lot of pain, but not much more than when I was on the drugs. And I found that a clear head made the pain tolerable. Tradeoffs.
Whenever I felt like complaining, I thought about being stoned, constipated, and thick-headed. The power of that perspective helped me maintain my resolve.
But then on November 2, 2010, a CT scan revealed the remaining cancer had rapidly progressed and was now inoperable. The treatment options were essentially nonexistent. “I think you’re looking at March or April at the latest,” my oncologist told us. He was giving me four or five months to live.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. My diagnosis had been a “slow-growing” version of pancreatic cancer. What had happened in three months that it was now going rogue?
We moved my treatment from the Mayo Clinic to the Virginia Piper Cancer Institute in Minneapolis so I could be closer to home. To die.
I began preparing for my funeral. I wrote to my childhood priest, planned and wrote out a set of funeral details, expressed my final wishes, and even organized the funeral reception. I thought about writing letters to you boys and Kristin, but I already had twenty-two years’ worth of journal entries. What more could be said?
At Piper, my newly assembled medical team injected new energy into my treatment. They actually listened to what I told them about the inconsistencies in how the cancer was acting. In contrast, at Mayo I received blank stares and resignation. I hadn’t gone to Piper for a second medical opinion, but that’s what they wanted to give me.
Mayo doctors had dismissed several tests because they didn’t think the outcome would change my treatment options for pancreatic cancer. Of course, this would have been true if I had had pancreatic cancer.
Three weeks later, on Thanksgiving of all days, pathologists at Piper confirmed with an unmistakable air of giddiness that they had discovered what two previous pathologists at two different hospitals did not: I did not have pancreatic cancer, nor did I have any disease even remotely related to the pancreas.
I had gastrointestinal stromal tumor—or GIST, for short. There was still no cure, but the good news was that there were chemo treatments consisting of a lot more than magic beans and hope.
* * *
At a very early age, I had the chance to taste both exceptionally bitter defeats and the sweetest successes. My dad raced cars. And until I was fourteen, every Friday and Saturday night was filled with adrenaline as we prepared for the excitement of Raceway Park in Shakopee, Minnesota.
In many ways, the emotional ups and downs I experienced later in my life always paled in comparison to watching “Dynamite Denny” race his black, gold-trimmed ’57 Chevy around a quarter-mile asphalt track every summer. It had flames painted on the hood and front fenders, a white-and-red-trimmed “26” emblazoned on the door panels and roof, and slightly canted front tires that helped with steering on the steep banks of each turn.
The deep-throated grumble of that 350-cubic-inch small-block engine with no muffler filled my young senses with a strength and power that seemed supernatural. We knew those races were coming every week, but Dad always startled us when he fired up the engine to put it on the trailer for the race. My brothers and I knew nothing of racing outside of Minnesota, so to us his races may as well have been NASCAR events.
At the track, my brothers and I would head to the back of the grandstand, where two massive trees stood twenty yards apart. After a heated debate over who was going to be number 26, we ran our own twenty-lap “hobby stock” footrace around those trees. Bumping was allowed, but anything too rough would earn a black flag that meant “out of the race”—a ruling that was self-administered, because we were gentlemen, after all.
Two things we always wanted but were never allowed: to drive with Dad to the races and to hang out in the pits during the race. At the end of the race, everyone was allowed into the pits, but not knowing what happened during the race gave it a mystical quality. To conjure a feeling of intense anticipation today, I need only remember what it was like waiting for those big wooden doors to open.
One night we approached a chaotic scene in the car stall where my dad parked his truck and trailer. Something was wrong, and tensions were high. A fight? No. Someone badly hurt? Worse. Dad’s race car had been “claimed.” An arcane and rarely practiced rule of racing in those days said if you won a race, another driver could claim your car for $150. In return, you would get his car, which was presumed to be a piece of junk.
It speaks to the enduring power of human emotion that here and now, some thirty years later, my eyes fill with tears as I recall that day.
My brothers and I quietly sobbed as we watched the great Satan, Gene Kreuger, drive off with our beloved number 26. Hate is a strong word, but that’s what I felt that night.
And what did we get in exchange? A pink car with a plain white “X2” painted on the doors. We were horrified. Not only had we suffered the indignity of having our car taken, but we got an abomination in return.
Dad was stone-faced. He and his crew scoured t
he pits that night for every can of black spray paint they could find. It was 11:00 p.m., and everyone was tired and ready to go home, but he wasn’t leaving those pits until he made that car his.
The next weekend, after seven nights in the garage with his pit crew, he took that car out onto the track and not only beat Gene Kreuger but won the feature race. There was no boasting or thumbing of noses at Kreuger. The victory alone was enough.
The lesson regarding the failure and success of that experience was all unspoken. The car is important, but it’s the skill, attitude, and the determination of the driver and the team that wins the race. Dad never did get his old car back, but only because he didn’t want it anymore.
* * *
Few memories endure like a fistfight. The act touches the nerve root of the human instinct for survival. My first came at Palace Playground in Saint Paul, Minnesota, when I was twelve years old.
Billy Bean was a bully right out of a storybook—he had long, oily hair and was always dirty and unkempt. When we saw Billy, we instinctively went the other way.
If Billy was the stereotypical bully, I was the stereotypical wimp. I knew how to stand up for myself verbally, but if things ever got physical, I walked away, a pattern of behavior that eventually made me a target.
One day I looked at Billy the wrong way. I didn’t need any hints about what to do when he responded with an invitation to fight. I dismounted my tire swing and took a direct line toward home. But Billy followed, taunting me as I walked the long, hundred-yard blacktop path that led straight to the driveway of our home. I was tempted to run, but I remembered Dad said never to run from a predator you can’t outrace.
My head was down. I walked with a slump. Despite his taunts to turn and face him, I refused. I was so afraid. My heart felt as if it were in my throat, and I wanted to cry. Why me?
About halfway down the path, I lifted my head and saw someone standing in our driveway. It was Grandma Weber. She was holding my baby brother, Charlie, in her arms. She was yelling something to me, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. “Come home”? “Hurry home”? She must have seen what was going on. Perhaps she had come out to provide some comfort. She was gesturing with one arm as if to gather someone into a hug. Suddenly I caught on. Her gesture was intended as the swing of a fist, and she was saying, “Hit him! Fight back!”
A hot surge of adrenaline made me clench my right hand into a fist. I wheeled and threw the first punch I had ever thrown, straight into Billy’s face. The stunned look in his unsuspecting eyes only encouraged me more, and I let loose. His inability to match my effort surprised and emboldened me even more. I had him!
Even amidst all that unbridled fury, I wanted only one thing. “Are you going to leave me alone?” I demanded as I held him in a headlock. “I want you to leave me alone! Never again, you hear me? Never again!” Pleadingly, he promised.
Billy Bean never came near me again, and I learned a vitally important lesson about how to deal with bullies.
I never did feel good or proud about that fight, and I never once relaxed around him, either. As far as I was concerned, I’d caught Billy Bean on a bad day and had gotten lucky. It wouldn’t be the last time I felt humility in victory.
* * *
With due respect to General MacArthur, pride in an “honest failure” is not always a virtue.
I learned that during a visit to our rustic summer cabins on Cross Lake, in central Minnesota. There was a dustup with my younger brother Chris, over who would get to sit in the front seat of our family van. I lost the fight as well as my mother’s vote when she returned to the van after her shopping. I didn’t think I deserved the treatment I got—from a younger brother or from my mom.
She told me if I didn’t like the decision, I could walk home. That was fine by me. As that van drove off, I didn’t give the decision a second thought. Instead, I explored my options under a very hot sun.
I had three options: I could walk the five-mile trek around the cigar-shaped lake, hitchhike a ride, or make the one-mile swim across the lake, none of which I had ever done before. I walked toward the lake, just a hundred yards or so away, to make a visual assessment of the distance, thinking as I walked, I’m as good a swimmer as Dad, and he said he swam this distance when he was my age.
After no more than two minutes of reflection, I convinced myself this was something I always wanted to do anyway. The trick, I remembered my dad saying, is to roll over on your back and float if you ever get tired. Don’t panic. Don’t think about it. Just swim—nice and easy.
As I walked into the lake with my clothes and shoes on, I was conscious of how peculiar the scene might look if anyone saw me. This was Cross Lake’s main public beach, which was buoyed off with multiple warning signs regarding the dam that lay fifty yards ahead. But no one took notice.
About a quarter mile out, I stopped to check my progress. This was the longest distance I had ever swum, and our cabins were barely visible in the distance. Had I made a mistake? Should I turn back now?
Don’t panic. Don’t think about it. Just swim.
Halfway across the lake, I found myself heaving pretty hard and again doubting the wisdom of my decision. There was too much time for worrying and too little scenery to otherwise occupy my mind. I comforted myself by thinking about the added satisfaction I was going to feel walking up on that shore on the other side. Hopefully, my mom and brothers would be there to see it.
I flipped over on my back and rested a few minutes, letting myself bask in the vision. What I heard next as I lay there with my ears underwater shocked me out of my premature pride: the unmistakable sound of a nearby boat motor.
In a flash, I thought about our twenty-year-old neighbor, John, who had been run over by a boat just a few years earlier. He had suffered brain damage, permanently slurred speech, and a hobbled walk.
The approaching boat looked as if it were coming straight at me. I began furiously kicking water with my legs and hands in the hope that he would see me. I decided that if my warning signal didn’t work, I would need to be prepared to dive and swim as deep and as hard as I could.
That boat ended up passing a solid hundred yards away, and the driver didn’t even seem to notice me, but I had a sudden sense of urgency about getting off that lake.
At about that same time, someone at the Weber cabins took notice. “Do you see that person way out there? Some moron is swimming in the middle of the lake!” When no one could find me along the road where they last saw me, my family concluded the moron in the lake must be me. A boat was sent out for me, but I refused it. My original decision may have been born out of laziness regarding the five-mile walk, but I hadn’t come this far to be rescued by a boat.
When I reached the shore and tried to stand, my legs felt like rubber, and I could barely walk. I felt proud, but the family video will show I was humble in my victory. I looked like I expected to be scolded by my dad. Instead he greeted me with a smile, a firm handshake, and a congratulatory remark. “That took real guts!”
My mom later told me she was proud, too, but more upset about the risk I had taken. “You were going to show me, huh?”
Of course, I had wanted to make a statement about the “unfair” treatment I had received in town, but that message was sent the moment I stepped out of the van. Although I’ll never convince anyone otherwise, my swim across the lake was nothing more than a practical decision with an unexpected, but welcome, marker of success.
* * *
Yesterday’s silly argument over who gets the front seat becomes tomorrow’s silly argument over leadership styles. I was thirty years old and in command of a 182-soldier military police company at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
It was no secret among most of the senior leaders in our battalion (my higher headquarters) that our most senior noncommissioned officer (NCO), Sergeant Major Crosby, didn’t care for me. He publicly complained I was too involved in soldier care and training, and he took my leadership style as a personal affront to a
ll NCOs. And it didn’t help Crosby’s ego when my first sergeant rejected his complaints as misplaced.
When summer came, the battalion held a “unit fun day” that consisted of all sorts of physical challenge events. The culminating event was the “Pugil Pit”—jousting matches with padded sticks used in place of bayonets and rifles.
The ground rules for the Pugil Pit competition were clearly posted on an easel board all day. They were simple: soldiers competed against soldiers, NCOs competed against NCOs, and officers competed against officers. The battalion established such rules to ensure decorum in the ranks.
It came as some surprise, then, when Crosby defied those rules and challenged a senior officer to a fight in front of all our soldiers. That senior officer was me!
My five-foot-eleven, 162-pound frame was hardly a match for Crosby, who carried broad, muscular shoulders, stood six foot four, and weighed at least 220 pounds. I hoped someone would cry foul at the fact he was violating the rules. But which soldier was going to snuff out an opportunity to watch two superiors pound the crap out of each other? In the pin-drop silence that followed his challenge, I saw no other choice but to accept.
As we donned our protective gear, I tried to remember my hand-to-hand training, and I reassured myself the Pugil Pit was about tactics and techniques, not brute strength. My operations sergeant, Lenny Pabin, was a short, stout, bald firebrand with a strong New England accent. He nervously chatted me up as if he were my boxing cornerman. His words reflected confidence, but his eyes said, Don’t get killed.
Our physical differences were only made more comical as we entered the makeshift ring, and the voices of encouragement for me sounded halfhearted. More soldiers gathered to watch.
Sergeant Major Crosby was a professional, but when I looked into his eyes as we squared off, I saw only one message: I’m going to beat you into a pulp, punk.
What happened over the next several minutes was too wild and confusing to describe in any worthy detail, but I do remember the end result: victory and a cheering throng of soldiers for the underdog. I had landed three back-to-back precision kill shots. The match was over in less than ten minutes, and he hadn’t made a single point.
Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters Page 7