St. Jude and the Importance of Forward Pressure

The thing about it is that we told her, I told her, that there wasn’t anything to this little procedure. I said specifically that they’d put her to sleep and when she woke up it’d be over, and our family would be there, and then she was going to get to spend the night in one of the awesome rooms at St. Jude with the video games and movies. We’d have balloons and music and dancing. A Stellabration is what we called it. Her name is Stella, see. We’d have a party. I said that.

We were going  downtown to St. Jude because my niece, my godchild, was diagnosed with something called papillary thyroid carcinoma. Cancer. The doctors needed to remove her thyroid altogether, but that was ok because you don’t really need one as long as you take your meds, see.

My niece is eight. She does gymnastics and plays soccer and likes to go to the farm to visit her grandparents. She rides horses there. She makes straight A’s in school. She knows the two-deep for the Grizzlies.

What I want to tell you is that I love my niece very much. She has lived her entire life within a few blocks of me in Midtown Memphis. When she was a baby I would jog the three blocks over there and fall out on the couch and put her on my chest and she could fit entirely upon it and she would sleep there – softly wheeze-snoring on her belly. I remember that.

My niece Stella loves sports. She wakes up every morning and watches SportsCenter with her dad. Last year I took her to an Ole Miss football game with me. It was the day Mississippi State had upset Texas A&M. Being Ole Miss fans, some friends and I were downplaying that win. “I think A&M’s quarterback went out early,” I said. “He’s an All-SEC guy. What’s his name?” I struggled to remember it. So did my friends. My first-grader niece leaned into our conversation. “Trevor Knight got hurt?” Yes, Stella. That’s correct. Trevor Knight. Thanks.

Anyway as it turns out there was something to this surgery. A complication. The tumor was bigger than they thought. It had poked a hole in her trachea, which required reparative work, which resulted in her being intubated. She was sedated and on a breathing machine for two days.

Hospitals use a drug called propofol to sedate children, in part because it can be turned on and off very quickly, effectively like a light switch.  For Stella’s doctors this was convenient, because they occasionally needed to see how well she was breathing on her own. They would restrict the flow of propofol, and she would wake up minutes later unable to talk because of the intubation. Her eyes would shift quickly around the room as she came to, trying to make sense of the situation. Frantic, confused, scared. This isn’t right. There was going to be a party. Her parents tried quickly to explain what was going on, but things were foggy. It was unclear how much she understood. Then, minutes later, the doctors would put her back under. It would be hours before they’d get another chance to explain.

This, of course, crushed my sister and brother-in-law. They would sink back to the waiting room where we sat, giving us updates on the slow progress. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run down into the Diagnostic Imaging waiting room and slam a chair through the aquarium glass. I wanted to see the spotted goby flopping around on the floor.

This is my fault. I said there’d be a Stellabration, see. And now there wasn’t, and she didn’t know why, and there was no real chance to explain it. This is on me.

***

Yet man is born unto trouble;

As surely as the sparks fly upward.

-        Job 5:7

Memphis is, among other things, a Kierkegaardian wonderland. In the early 19^th century, the Danish government and the church were one and the same. Kierkegaard believed this eroded the true nature of faith among Christians.

We believe, in short, that a man was born of a virgin mother and that he lived for 33 years performing a whole host of other miracles, and then died and then was resurrected and then ascended into heaven. This is, of course, absurd. I believe in an absurdity. But when this absurdity is so ubiquitous that it is literal state policy (as in Kierkegaard’s Denmark), there is no choice other than to believe it without question. And that renders void the act of conscious belief, according to Kierkegaard.

What then would he make of Memphis, roasting under the Southern sun on the banks of the Mississippi? When that sun goes down across the river, the shadows of St. Jude expand eastward, covering the entire city and the mega-churches that dot the countryside in the exurbs beyond the I-240 loop.

People from across the world send their sick and dying children to St. Jude, often with little to no hope. Once, when I was tabbed to be Stella’s godfather, I was asked to attend a short meeting regarding her baptism at St. Mary’s in downtown Memphis – a small Catholic church literally in St. Jude’s shadow. That session was cut short when the priest was called away for an emergency at the hospital next door. Last Rites, no doubt. I think of the St. Mary’s priest often. You should keep him in your prayers.

St. Mary’s is but one of a thousand churches in Memphis – a city famous for lifting Gospel in the air. The non-denominational evangelical community bustles at the seams here. So do Catholicism and protestant denominations of every stripe. Nestled off I-40 East, the gargantuan Bellevue Baptist boasts a membership of some 30,000. The shadows of St. Jude touch each of these.

Walker Percy was a student of Kierkegaard, and understood the next logical step in this absurdity of Christianity. How, as Christians, are we to maintain our belief in a loving God in a world so full of pain and mud and shit? The most fertile ground of expression for this logical crossroads, for Percy, lies in the suffering of children.

In the epilogue of his 1962 National Book Award winning The Moviegoer, his lead character Binx Bolling describes plainly, to a car-full of sullen children, the death of their long-suffering young cousin, Lonnie.

Mathilde sobs in my neck and Therese eyes me shrewdly. “Was he anointed?” she asks in her mama-bee drone.

“Yes.”

“Very good.”

Only the two girls are sad, but they are also secretly proud of having caught on to the tragedy.

Donice casts about. “Binx,” he says, and then appears to forget. “When Our Lord raises us up on the last day, will Lonnie still be in a wheelchair or will he be like us?”

“He’ll be like you.”

“You mean he’ll be able to ski?’ The children cock their heads and listen like old men.

“Yes.”

As readers, we’re supposed to know here, in the epilogue of this book, that Binx is not one to sugarcoat. This is important. Largely the message of the whole book hinges on that answer – yes, Lonnie can ski in heaven. Binx believes this, plainly. He answers an absurdity with further absurdity.

This world is beautiful and terrible, per our protagonist here. We do not know why the innocent suffer as the sparks fly upward. We should consider it thoroughly. We should acknowledge the improbability of our belief – that we don’t know why but that there is something beyond that suffering.

Memphis, in the shadow of St. Jude, grapples with this. In this city we are forced to. I believe that Lonnie skis, too.

***

Offense is an organized hope. Not an unguarded hope, but one designed to take care of something, to carry it forward. Offense is measured in terms of moving forward or backwards, with the goal being to move forward, live for another series. Offense is the art of solving for hope against endless variations on despair.

-        - Spencer Hall, from When the Levee Breaks

As far as sporting days have gone for me recently, October 14 was about as good of a salve as I could ask for. Ole Miss was coming off of two blowout losses, and the U.S. Men’s National Team had just been eliminated from the 2018 World Cup.

So that Saturday, as Manchester City blew out Stoke 7-2, and Ole Miss exploded for 57 points in a 22-point win over Vanderbilt, it felt like more of a release than anything else. Two absurdly large score lines for two utterly ridiculous games.

I believe in my heart that there is no such thing as secular art. As long as it is honest, all art is evidence that we are ensouled. All earnest art is spiritual to behold.

Thus is the nature of watching Kevin De Bruyne run at defenders on Saturday mornings from the comfort of my living room. In sports, as in art, there are only creators and destroyers. Just like Spencer Hall, I have always been drawn to the creators.

There was a moment that morning, shortly after halftime of the City game, when Stoke had closed the lead to 3-2. Under normal circumstances in that scenario, the team that is leading is tempted to go into a defensive shell. They’ll settle in, pack 9 defenders behind the ball, and be content to thwart away any oncoming attacks.

But, remarkably, the Citizens opted for the counterintuitive. Instead they warped into a hyper-offensive mode, pressing high up the field. KDB forced a turnover and immediately found Gaby Jesus in full-stride with a sublime pass into the heart of the box. The lead expanded repeatedly. Four goals, five goals, six then seven. Manchester left themselves exposed repeatedly, but it didn’t matter. The concentrated forward pressure relieved any need for defense. They could’ve played without a goalkeeper.

The forward pressure is its own defense. Absurd positivity. Carrying something forward at risk of appearing naïve while relieving tension at the back – this is the option. We have this plan and we are capable. There ain’t nothing else to think about.

***

Eventually Stella woke up. She spent more than two days in the ICU, and by the time she moved to one of those fun rooms at St. Jude, she was in no mood to enjoy it. She wanted to go home. Even then, when they released her from the hospital, she wasn’t much for talking.

This is ok for now. She is only 8. There will be time to teach lessons about what it means to be tough. There will be time to learn how to ride out the darkness. For now, I am content to hold that line for her. To remain in light. To continue to push the idea that there will be a Stellabration. I do not regret that sentiment.

St. Jude is a funny place. It’ll put a lump in your throat the first time you walk through it. It is also, as my brother in law told me, somehow his favorite place on this planet. The staff are warm and intuitive. The atmosphere is bright and colorful. It is a place for children to enjoy. It does not feel like a hospital.

And this is to say nothing about the research arm of the hospital – the forward pressure. Since its founding 50 years ago, St. Jude has helped to improve childhood cancer survival rates from 20% to over 80% today. For thousands of families – just like my own – there is indeed something beyond the suffering in this life. That is due to the researchers within these walls, as well as every single person who has ever given a single nickel to this place. They all share in the joy of those families who walk out of these doors with a clean bill of health. They all share in the joy of the silence of the St. Mary’s pastor’s phone.

If you would like to contribute to that end, I encourage you to do so. In December I will drag this increasingly pudgy body through the St. Jude 10K marathon. Here is one place you can support St. Jude in conjunction with this run. The idea that day, and every day from here on, will be to press forward.

September 3, 2010 - or, To Hell with Curbing Your Enthusiasm

My mother is a saint. She is laid out, all 5’4 of her, asleep on the couch in the corner of this hospital room. She is a Delta Italian. She has lived her entire life in Greenville, MS, but she retains a bit of the Old World. Mass on Sunday morning, rigatoni at lunch. Once in a blue moon, she cusses in Italian. She did just that earlier today. We are on the fifth floor of Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis. It is Friday, September 3, 2010. We have been here all week.

I cannot get comfortable. I have two IVs in my left arm, one to receive my meals through, another for my morphine. In my right arm, there is a permanent plastic tap into a vein. This is to make it easier for the nurse to draw blood. I have a catheter in place. There is also something called an N.G. tube, which runs up my nostril, down my throat and into my stomach, and acts as some sort of vacuum to clean away all the bile in my stomach while my intestines wake up from my surgery. I am miserable.

There is a profound loneliness in the middle of the night in a hospital. Machines beep and whirr in sporadic rhythm. Outside, in the hallway, the nurses whisper to each other. An unseen clock in the hallway tics.

There are only so many channels that come through on hospital televisions, and most of those that do are public service stations that give instructional programming to elderly hospital patients. ‘How to Adjust Your Bed’ reads one station header. Mercifully I switch around and find AMC. They are showing the original Rambo.

It is September in Memphis. I look above my horizontal mother, across the room and out the window. There across Shelby Farms Parkway, the lights are on at Christian Brothers High School. I realize it’s Friday night. Football season is beginning. My view is obstructed by the visiting stands, but I can see one corner of the northern half of the field. Occasionally a receiver finishes out a dummy post rout, followed by a mouthy corner. The two players jaw at each other demonstrably. Football season has begun.

Hunter S. Thompson famously began his suicide note with the declarative “Football season is over.” It was February, and he took his own life. Suicide is awful and cowardly and selfish, but if it absolutely must be done, February is as good a time as any. It is the opposite of September. Football season is beginning.

My mother has fallen asleep with her rosary beads still in her hand. I think this is probably the aspect of Catholicism that Protestants find the most absurd – the notion that we can tug on the shirt sleeves of the angels and saints through prayer, and ask them to put in a word with the Big Guy for us. The entire sum of it all is absurd, but like Walker Percy, I am a Catholic because I believe that what the Catholic Church proposes is the truth.

I direct my prayer towards the saints, too. I talk, predictably, to St. Peregrine, patron saint of the cancer stricken. My request of him is obvious. Presently I move to Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most philosophic of all the saints, a Sherpa for the high ice of the cynical mind. I ask him to help me keep my faith. Next I pray to Michael the Archangel. I am asking him to help me be a man, to carry my cross alone. No bitching to my family. No troubling the nurses. Above me, Rambo is murdering a soldier by running his truck off the road. The Dodge Ram explodes upon hitting a ditch bank below. I am asking Michael to pray for me, to help me to not complain about my N.G. tube rubbing my throat raw.

Finally I talk to the Big Papa himself. I am from Mississippi, after all. I make my pitch in the dark direct to the ear of the Lamb. I do not go to sleep. The clock is ticking. The lights are out at Christian Brothers.

I am playing From Dixie with Love on my iPhone when the sun comes up. It is opening day. There has been some discussion of them letting me go this morning. I am begging the nurses.
Finally my doctor arrives. The cluster of lymph nodes they removed is cancer-free. I am cancer-free. No more treatments or surgeries. He says he may hold me here for one more day, to observe the recovery of my intestines. I explain that the Rebels start in an hour and a half. There is some debate, and he appears to be trying to find anyone with an internet connection in the hospital so that I can watch. Mercifully his superior arrives and says he sees no reason to hold me any longer. The nurses unhook all my wiring. My mother is wheeling me towards the elevator and the ranking Doctor pats me on the back.

“Hotty Toddy,” he says.

My sister drives me back to my house. Somewhere along I-240, David Kellum informs me that we are up by three touchdowns. Nathan Stanley is rolling. Hotty Toddy. September is for living.

***

“There will be layers of means to an end, drawn out days before resolution,
Dregs will rain down from all directions, there will be right, there will be wrong.”
- Jay Farrar, Medicine Hat

The rest of the afternoon is something of a harbinger for the Rebels. Midway through the fourth quarter my mother is crying because she thinks I am going to burst the 37 staples in my stomach. The doctors told me not to have any strenuous activity for the next six weeks. They didn’t count on Ole Miss losing in overtime to a Division 1-AA school.

Weeks later I attend my first game of the year. I am late to the game, because I am moving slowly, still. I labor to climb the ramp on the east sidelines. I have chills when I reach the top and look out onto the field. On the first play I see, Jeremiah Masoli lofts a picture perfect touch pass to Ferbia Allen, who has only green in a 15 yard radius around him. He awkwardly drops a sure touchdown. My chill bumps are gone. We go on to lose to Vandy that day.

The following months are a tragi-comedy of errors for Ole Miss. Failure lurks on each snap. We are woefully undermanned and underprepared on defense. What’s worse, this is all entirely unexpected. We were supposed to be decent. An out of the blue turd in an otherwise pleasant punchbowl.

The season culminates in a fitting way. I am alone in the South End Zone Rebel Club, clutching a cup of brown liquor, knocking it back neat. My friends have long since left. I am frantically cheering an ultimately futile comeback against Mississippi State. I am drunk and loud. I look around and realize people are staring. Gray-haired ladies are inching away from me. They grasp their husbands’ arms tightly. I drop my head and take the long rotating walk down the cylindrical ramp in the corner of the south end zone.

***

“Reality it burns, the way you were living is worse…” Jay Farrar, Route

I have been thinking of Saint Dominic a lot recently. His story is one of the more absurdly metaphysical accounts in the Christian canon. Dominic was made witness to the end of days – that is, he was given a preview of how the world would eventually end. The Lord, it is believed, used him as a messenger to deliver the news that this would all be over one day.

One wonders what Dominic did with himself the next day, and the next day, and the next. How does someone insert themselves into the world after they’ve seen the end? What do you do with yourself on a regular Tuesday afternoon when you’re fresh back from the edge? The grass is growing, the clock is ticking. What to do?

A savant said something that stuck with me on the day I was diagnosed. I was pale white and shaking when I told him the news. He said he had been there before.

“You’ll be glad this happened to you, one day,” he said. “One day you’ll know your life wouldn’t be the same without this.”

I have been cancer free for a year today, and I am beginning to understand what that means. Walker Percy writes that no one experiences the pageantry of life quite like an ex-suicide. Those who have been resigned to their own mortality know how valuable their time is. They make a commitment to live each minute with enthusiasm, courage, focus. Those who have been to the edge and back get it. There is not enough time left to tolerate indistinguishable days, or the everyday acceptance of mediocrity. Going through the motions is no longer an option.

***

I am 28 years old. I have carried my best friend to his grave, I have lived through cancer, I have been letdown, lonely, lied to. The mileage has taken a toll. There is not much that excites me anymore. Tomorrow is an exception.

Tomorrow I will find my seat early. I will be wearing red. For the first time in two years I will watch the Rebels explode out of their home tunnel. I carry with me Saint Dominic, patron saint of goose bumps, of rubbing Chucky’s dome, of change and optimism and opening day. Patron saint of starting out fresh. I believe the Rebels are starting anew as well.

In heart-wrenching fashion, Spencer Hall wrote yesterday that to be a fan of a college football team requires a degree of psychological editing, a tug of war between your inner-naiveté and your inner-cynicism. There is a tradition at Ole Miss to lean towards the latter, to pack things in before the season has begun. To cross your arms and expect the worst. I reject that notion. I believe another road remains, and provides no more, except the possibility of taking us away.

It is September. Football season begins. Hotty Toddy.

>

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Lake

On Friday, July 30, 2010, I walked into the Conrad Pearson Clinic on Wolf River Blvd. in Cordova, TN, just a few miles from my office. It was mid-morning.

For several weeks I had experienced pain and swelling in my testicle. A few days earlier, I had visited a small general practice clinic to see about my problem. They told me that I probably had a urinary tract infection, but that I should go see a urologist just in case. This is how I came to be sitting in the lobby of the Clinic. I was the youngest person there by at least three decades.

I thumbed through a Sports Illustrated while I waited. I was not terribly concerned about my ailment. I was thinking about the next morning, when I would drive home to Mississippi and go out on the lake with my roommate and his girlfriend and several of her friends. I was 27. The sun was shining outside.

After a long wait I was finally called into the back of the clinic and led to a small room where the doctor would see me shortly. There was a chair and a small examining table for me to stretch out on. The walls were covered with posters that diagrammed the inside of a penis. The kind you'd find in junior high biology. I texted and played Angry Birds.

Finally the door opened and Dr. John Adams walked in, a short man with curly hair and a square jaw. I described my symptoms to him with awkward uncertainty - I wasn't comfortable talking about my genitals with strangers at this point.

After a while he instructed me to drop my pants, and rolled in a small ultrasound machine. After examining me for a short time he asked me to zip up my pants and hop down from the table. He handed me a picture from the ultrasound and began talking as I was tucking my shirt in. He looked me square in the eye.

"What you're looking at," he said, "is a tumor."

I immediately felt like my stomach had dropped out from under me. Dr. Adams showed no signs of emotion.

"The swelling and pain you've experienced is because your tumor has hemmorhaged. Because it is in your testicle, there is a 90% chance that you have cancer."

At this point he continues describing what are probably very important details and instructions, but I am not listening. I am staring at a picture of a penis behind him. My mind races.

I am too young for this. Will I die?

A thousand thoughts are running through my mind. Presently, I realize that I am in sole possession of this terrible news and there is the business of having to tell people. It dawns on me that I am alone.

What am I going to say to my mom? How do you tell this to your mother?

I am staring at a jar of cotton balls on the counter. My mouth is open, lower lip moving as if I were talking. Dr. Adams says something about scheduling a surgery soon and leaves the room. I am still lost in hurried thought when a nurse comes in to draw blood. She needs blood to test for tumor markers, but I do not know this. I offer my arm without looking at her.

After a long moment I realize she has let go of my arm without sticking me. I turn to look at her and she is smiling nervously. She looks away, and I notice that my arm is shaking badly. I cannot make it stop. I realize that my breath is short. I think I may be having a panic attack. She tells me she'll come back in a few moments. Half of my shirt is still untucked. My belt is unbuckled.

Should I tell anyone? How much will this cost?

Eventually the nurse reappears and is able to draw blood. She hands me some papers and directs me to the check out desk. Follow the maroon tiles on the floor to the exit, she says, and hands me a card. I am walking away. She tells me to call the number on the sheet if I have any questions. I smile.

"My mother is going to call you," I say over my shoulder.

"That's fine."

I stop and turn to face her. "You don't understand. My mother is going to call you a lot. I'm sorry."

I proceed to the check out desk and pay a $20 co-pay. I walk back out through the lobby filled with gray haired men, past the welcome desk, through the double-glass doors and out into the Cordova heat.