Photo: Chris Strong

My first reaction to the diagnosis was not utter panic. What popped into my head was literally this: Well, at least it’s fashionable; all the best people get cancer. Mine was colorectal—stage 4 because of a couple of spots spread onto the liver. Not one word of which remotely registered in my brain at the time. All I knew was I’d joined a very large and distinguished club. And that’s truly and weirdly what’s empowered me every step of this surreal three-year odyssey.

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I didn’t know what “stage 4” meant. When the doctors explained it, I heard it through layers of psychological gauze. Mainly, I heard their confidence that I could most likely be cured—with two major surgeries and a whole bunch of chemotherapy before and after. But of course, when I started telling people my cancer was stage 4, they heard it like a death sentence. Because that’s usually what it is.

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My oncologist told me, “This is your full-time job now.” That’s in the top realm of things you have to come to grips with.

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With cancer, you always hear the word “battle.” But the first thing I did was surrender myself to my doctors. My attitude was, I’m not going to understand a goddamn thing they’re going to tell me. And it’s too weird to consider who you are under your own hood. But you do want top-notch mechanics figuring it all out.

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I started spelling “chemo” k-e-e-m-o whenever I wrote it out because I thought that made it sound fun. And then “hot sauce” and “glow juice.” It’s so easy to fall into a vat of hopelessness. You better bring some levity to this. And you better laugh every day. Because if you forget how to laugh, cancer will just spin you out.

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I drove myself back and forth to keemo. I know it sounds strange, but to be able to do so much of this alone—without the frightened eyes of friends or loved ones on me and instead under the confident, cheerful gaze of the professionals dispensing the keemo—that was important to me. It’s like jumping off the high dive or anything else that’s scary or unpleasant in life—sucking it up and doing it yourself gives you a sense of control.

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My rule No. 1 from the get-go: Never look anything up on the internet. And to this day, I really haven’t.

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During my first months of keemo, it was clear that there were massive battles going on inside me, like outright war raging through my blood system. And it was deafening, that war, even though it was inaudible. It was so loud that I didn’t want to compete with it by talking. I needed to be more quiet than I’d ever been before. There was nothing to say.

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That’s why almost immediately I sought refuge in the Turner Classic Movies channel. I knew there wouldn’t be any commercials jumping in. Never anything overstimulating onscreen. Just gentle enough. Black and white. Safer, simpler times. Loveliness. And by throwing myself into film history, I felt like I was still being productive in a way.

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Because one complication always led to another, I spent 118 consecutive days in Presence Saint Joseph Hospital—from April 22 to August 18, 2014, the shank of two whole seasons. Except for a handful of those days, I was sealed away in the same 10th-floor room. Room 1045. Without knowing it, I taught myself a certain kind of meditation to withstand it all. I could take myself into a quieter place. I kept the TV off for the first months because I didn’t want the noise. I kept the drapes drawn because I didn’t want the intensity of the daylight. I wanted to feel subdued and Zen.

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While I was in the hospital, I made it a policy: No visitors allowed, other than a handful of the people closest to me. Mainly just my sister and my 88-year-old dad. Six is too many. I didn’t want the distraction. I didn’t want people trying to cheer me up. I did not have the energy for it. I just wanted to get down eye to eye with this thing and go at it. Outside meddling and second-guessing would have been the end of me.