Thread by @CQ__MD

A short #medtwitter thread about one of my best friends.

He is brilliant, vibrant, loud, proud, caring, and joyful.

One of the most magnetic and mesmerizing people I've ever known.

So, of course he was diagnosed with cancer two years ago.

1/

It was a rare cancer of his salivary gland.

By pure serendipity, he lived in my city, and his cancer was my specialty.

I walked him through the diagnosis, went with him to doctor visits, was there with him through a disfiguring surgery and the agony of chemo and radiation.
2/

He slowly got better.
Learned to eat again, this time with a prosthetic hard palate and teeth since half of his upper jaw was gone.
He moved to Houston, started a new job.
We planned a trip to NOLA this July to celebrate his recovery.

Then he called me--his legs felt funny.
3/

Within a week he couldn't move his legs.
His cancer was back. It had spread to his spinal cord and was growing rapidly. He needed emergency neurosurgery.

The NOLA vacation was off.

I bought a ticket to Houston immediately.
4/

I was so nervous to see him.
I knew what this new development meant--he woulnd't beat this cancer.
All my medical knowledge was of no use.
I just had to be there in the uncomfortable reality of pain and illness without a plan--a position I'd always fled throughout my life.
5/

I arrived the day after his surgery--they'd resected as much tumor as they could.
We joked and laughed, and all the while I wondered--how could I bring him relief in a way others could not?
So that night, when we were alone, I asked him:

"Have you been thinking about death?"
6/

I knew it was something he couldn't talk to his mother about. And any conversations he'd have about it with his husband carried so much weight.
But my training had granted me a certain fearlessness in the face of death.

He smiled and answered, "All the time."
7/

"This cancer has been strangely analagous to my life story--a rare, unique circumstance with short odds of success by any stretch of prediction based on where I started. I've taken each hurdle and setback and lived as well as I could.
I'm 36. I've lived a great life."
8/

"I know I'll most likely die from this. But God, does not seem to be done with me just yet. And since He made me a fighter, I'm finna keep fighting.
He's been trying to tell me something. Something He's trying to teach me. So all I do is listen as hard as I can."
9/

We cried together for hours as we spoke that night.
I left Houston in the morning, feeling a bit lighter, because I knew he was feeling a bit lighter.

I'm not sure if that was the last time I'll have seen him, but if it was, I hope I made it worth it.