It was fall 2021 and, other than the Omicron variant that would soon become prevalent, the world was trying to get back to normal. Due to the deft thinking of my two co-founders Christine and Jeff (and our soon-to-be-partner Kari’s excellent execution), MEA launched the successful Sabbatical Sessions and MEA Online programs in October 2020 and we saw people sign up for a minimum two-week Baja stay and keep extending it to two or three months. People felt so much joy with us in Baja and, remarkably, based upon our precautions, not one person tested positive for Covid in more than a year of running “SabSesh.” And, with development partner Skylar’s help, we’d closed escrow on our Santa Fe ranch campus purchase and were poised to buy a second campus in town as well.
In November 2021, my friend and MEA faculty member Dr. Danny Friedland’s brain cancer overtook him. What a joyful, lovable mensch! We recorded many videos that he put on his YouTube channel as a reminder that death is an exquisite operating system for appreciating life. One of my biggest irritations about the Silicon Valley biohackers who want to live forever is that they don’t recognize the value of that operating system.
Around the time of Danny’s death, I was told that my stage-1 cancer had moved to stage-2 and it was time to take action. It felt like a collection of medical specialists parachuted in to give me their advice. I lost track of who was who between the two urologists, the radiation oncologist, the urological oncologist, the medical oncologist, the functional medicine doctor, and my primary care physician and then was barraged with so much advice from so many people that I didn’t know what to do with all of this well-intended counsel. I felt like I needed to quit my job to handle all of this dizzying, disorienting information coming at me.
It seemed like my biggest decision was do we take the prostate out – with all of the collateral damage (no ability to ejaculate any more, risk of erectile dysfunction for awhile or forever, etc…) – or do we try this new treatment, HIFU, which my urologist recommended? HIFU meant that my prostate would be ablated in selective places where the cancer is further along. It sounded less invasive, so I opted for that even though there was a little voice in my head saying, “Hey, Stupid, take all of the cancer out of you as you sowed your wild oats in your 50s. It’s now time for some peace of mind.”
It turns out the HIFU surgery was more invasive than I’d expected. I was stuck with a catheter for 10 days, they ablated nearly half of my prostate because they found more cancer than they’d anticipated, and I wasn’t seeing much semen once my libido started coming back. If I was going to go through all of this, I should have opted for the radical prostatectomy. But, my urologist reassured me by saying there was just a 1% chance my cancer would metastasize in the next five years after this surgery. So, despite feeling a bit wounded from this surgery, I felt like maybe I’d made the right decision. Who needed my semen anyway? I’d already donated it to Laura and Susan years ago to allow them to create Eli and Ethan so my upwardly motile little swimmers had done their duty.
Two days after I’d disposed of my catheter, I was surfing with Christine and Jeff at Cerritos beach just as we were about to lead our first MEA workshop more than 20 months after we’d shut down due to Covid. MEA proved to be a beautiful distraction from any cancer worries. I also appreciated being in an emotional caregiving role to my friend and former boutique hotel colleague Ingrid Summerfield (and her husband Ron) who, at 64, was battling a metastasis of her breast cancer. She was also a neighbor in the Palm Orchard where Oren and I’d built our home, just a ten-minute beach walk north of Baja. So, because she was so frail and wanted one last trip to her home, we flew her down in a private plane leapfrogging crowded airports and planes. I’ll never forget spending timeless moments with Ingrid holding her hand and telling her that I would never forget her, remembering that this was the ultimate fear for the dead in the Pixar film “Coco.” I keep a photo of the two of us holding hands in the Palm Orchard.
Then, fifteen months after HIFU surgery, I was told by my urologist that – inexplicably – my cancer expanded to my seminal vesicles and my pelvic lymphs so I represented the 1% for whom a post-HIFU surgery led to a spreading of the cancer. I was now officially saddled with stage-3 cancer. And, I’ll explore more about that tomorrow.
-Chip