On Photograp.....wait, no. On Cancer

     As I stated in my previous post, I came down with a touch of the cancers. I’ll throw you all a quick timeline bone without getting too much into it now. I’ll tell you all a more in depth story about it another time, but it’s pretty heavy and emotional so until then, you get this:

     June 5, 2015 I was living in Los Angeles at the time and I was out at some cover band night at Dirty Laundry, a bar in Hollywood. It’s a great spot if you ever get a chance to visit. You need to go down a dark alleyway, go down a creepy set of stairs, and walk into an unmarked, sketchy door to get inside, but once you’re in the party don’t stop. It’s in an old basement and there are different rooms set to different themes; Trick rooms, lounges, bar tops, music room complete with a stage and sound set up, etc. Very cool stuff. I was there with three of my roommates and a few friends from work to let loose a little. I’m not very good at attacking something half assed and when I drank it was the same thing. One whiskey ginger ale turned into eight in about an hour and I was feeling good on a Wednesday before you could say “Grande fat free, sugar free caramel macchiato please!”

     I stumbled on home at around 2AM (by stumble I mean took a cab because I lived in the Hills and I wasn’t going to walk up a mountain inebriated. Or ever. Because fuck that.) I didn’t sleep so well that night and had some general feelings of stomach discomfort, but I attributed that to the fact that I drank so much in so little time and I don’t sleep well ever. Totally normal, right!? Wrong!

     At the time I was working behind the bar at a vegan tequila bar in West Hollywood by the name of Gracis Madre. Once again, if you make your way to Hollywood check it out! It’s delicious and has easily the best cocktails in the city. Easily. Over the next few days my stomach really started to bother me. I was in severe pain from laughing, breathing, reaching above my head, and really any amount of movement. I was planning on just working through it and getting to my day off and hopefully sleeping away the pain as I’ve always done, but I was in the process of courting a lady, who also happened to be my boss, and one night at my place I woke up with night sweats for the third day in a row and the stomach pain was worsening. She told me not to go into work, if I did she would have me fired she said, and to go to the ER. So when I woke up in a pile of sweat the next morning, I hopped into my car and drove to Ceder Sinai in Beverly Hills. Because I’m a world renowned thespian and I belong in Beverly Hills.

     This post was originally supposed to be about my growing interest in film photography and photography in general, but apparently it’s not so easy to introduce the ol’ stage 4 cancer at 25 bit. I’ll finish this up quickly and my next post will be about photography.

            So…Cedar Sinai, great place. The staff couldn’t have been friendlier. Or better looking. I felt like I was in the middle of Grey’s Anatomy episode so in a way I achieved my goal of landing a role on a major television show within a year. I went in to sit in a waiting room for a few hours on a very empty stomach (I stopped at Wendy’s on the way, but I got suckered into giving my freshly purchased food to a homeless guy who just had his food thrown away by a police officer because he was protecting and serving.) I finally went to the back, had to submit a bunch of tests, and it ended with an ultrasound of my liver. All of the doctors were accusing me of being an alcoholic, having Hep C, or cirrhosis.

 Was I an alcoholic? Ehhh…debatable, but I was 25. I drank a lot, but c’mon. Hepititis? I mean I dabbled in some dibble I shouldn’t have dabbled in I suppose, but….nope. Cirrhoris? No. My only reason is because I hear about it in commercials. I’m not a commercial disease kind of guy. I saw the images. I’m not an idiot. My liver was riddled with almost two dozen spots and you don’t get that kind of liver damage from drinking on the weekends. I had an instant gut feeling that it was liver cancer as soon as they started questioning me. Now you’re probably asking: Hey, you said it was colon cancer!! Oh, I did. This shit is metastatic, son. Go big or go home.

            I’m going to leave you with that for now. It’s a good ending point. A routine ER visit turned into a weeklong stay at the hospital full of biopsies, needle stabs, bood tests, and scared parents coming in from out of town. The first week of June is really the beginning of my journey back to Arizona, my fight with cancer, and the stress it’s put on all my relationships (spoiler alert: My former boss moved states with me and became my girlfriend. DUN DUN DUN!!!)

As you can see, really like photography!