Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters (6 page)

Eating took place as a necessary provision of life, period. No socializing. Failure to follow instructions resulted in a tongue-lashing. And the daily rituals often included at least one “Kobayashi Maru” (no-win scenario), where the
intent
was to be unfair.

I later learned there was a purpose to the entire approach: nothing goes according to plan in combat. Chaos reigns supreme. If a person can’t survive the scripted unfairness and silliness
of life in a training environment, there is no reason to believe he or she is capable of doing so anywhere else. But knowing it was scripted never made things much easier.

I was a virtual expert in basic military etiquette, but I knew very little about how to actually function under stress. Our very first lesson was learning to stand at attention, which was child’s play for me. But stress turned the task into quantum physics. My heart raced, and I inadvertently tightened my hands into a fist instead of keeping them loose and slightly curled as I’d mastered years earlier. One of the instructors caught sight and bit hard. “Hey, lookie this one, Drill Sergeant!” he screamed to his partner in a deep Southern drawl. “He look like he gonna knock someone out! Unclench doze fists, Private, and get inta da proppa position of attention!”

My seventeen weeks of basic training and MP school were filled with noteworthy experiences, but in sum it is best described as an immersion in life without convenience, comfort, or familiarity.

The entire experience redefined my understanding of adversity and hardship.

At home, going to Sunday Mass had always felt like a chore; in the army, it was an oasis. At home, I could just walk away from or ignore the people who bothered me; in the army, I had to learn how to work with them—and I saw that I could. At home, I didn’t think I could function if I didn’t get eight hours of sleep; in the army, I realized my body and mind were capable of far more output on half the sleep. In essence, I found perspective, and experiencing it in such an intense way inspired me to seek it out later in life—whether I was in combat in Iraq or in combat with my own body.

Ultimately, I learned how true and valuable it is to actually live one day at a time. It was the mantra I recited to myself over and over when I was alone with my thoughts in the shower after a grueling session of physical training, in my bunk after a difficult
day, or lying under the stars during field training exercises. It worked then. It still works now.

*   *   *

Eighteen months before my cancer diagnosis, Kristin watched helplessly as her father battled his prostate cancer during our brief assignment in Minnesota. The cancer had been in remission for years, but it was back, and it seemed to have the upper hand. Faced with uncertainty and an immense feeling of compassion for Kristin, I decided to make a career choice that would cause any career army officer to shudder.

After sixteen years, I resigned my active duty army commission and joined the full-time Minnesota National Guard so our family could remain near him. For once, I wanted Kristin to come before career, when she needed it most.

To say the decision didn’t sting would be dishonest. Peers and mentors reacted as if I had committed suicide, and part of me felt as if I had.

I had enjoyed what many considered to be an improbable string of wild successes: national recognition as one of the best junior officers in the army; early promotion to the rank of major, despite an unorthodox career path; selection to attend a fully funded master’s degree program at Georgetown University; assignment to the personal staff of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; being handpicked by General Petraeus to serve on his personal staff in Iraq; and finally, selection to work in the Office of the Provost Marshal General of the army.

I knew Minnesota would not challenge me professionally in the same way. Worse, there was a blunt reality to joining such a tiny slice of the army. My unique experiences in places like the Pentagon were of little use in Minnesota. And unlike the regular army, where there were over 8,500 lieutenant colonels, Minnesota had only 17 such positions—and I would be “the new guy.”
I was candidly told that any promotion would be dramatically delayed, if it happened at all.

My decision in light of all this was so unconventional and uncharacteristic that even Kristin was in disbelief until she saw my discharge papers.

I did feel uncertainty and fear about such a dramatic personal and professional shift, but just one look into Kristin’s eyes brought comfort: I knew it was the right thing to do. And the truth is, looking into Kristin’s eyes is all the comfort I’ve ever needed.

“I could never do what you have done.”

Boys, I’ve heard this comment countless times during my time in the army, and even more so during my fight with cancer. I’m always hesitant to challenge such well-intentioned comments, but I can tell you a reply does echo inside my head: “Actually, you can do it; you just don’t want to do it.”

Everyone has things they don’t want to do—there’s no crime in that. But there’s a big difference between “can’t” and “don’t want to” when it comes to facing the path of comfort or the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge
.

I’ve learned “can’t do” is much easier but requires nothing and produces nothing. “Can do,” however, will often require you to challenge what you thought you knew, to work with others when you don’t want to, to look for perspective where you don’t want to look, to risk being wrong, and to actually experience defeat and humiliation. Each of these represents the price of learning, growing, and living a full and examined life
.

I’m
not
telling you to run out into the oncoming traffic of every difficulty and challenge. I
am
proposing that “can do” is often just one or two short steps beyond “can’t do,” and the territory in between is fertile ground for personal growth and professional achievement
.

 … 
NOT TO SUBSTITUTE WORDS
FOR ACTIONS.

January 2009, the Snow Fort (seven months before diagnosis)

AUGUST 2010

I open my eyes, and I cannot move. I feel like a piece of dead wood. My head is thick and my vision is foggy. The room is dark with a faint haze of light, just enough so I can make out the various things around me
.

I am on my back in a small room with white walls. A large monitor is up to my right, and a shiny, metallic-looking material is along the ceiling in front of me. I slowly turn my head to the left and can make out a U.S. flag. The noises in the room are as faint as the light
.

“Where am I?”

I doze off
.

When I open my eyes again, I still don’t know where I am. A rhythmic swooshing sound is followed by a barely audible, repeating beep. The room is otherwise so silent that I can make out the distinct hum of electronic gear all around my head, as if I’m in a cockpit
.

“Where am I?” The disorientation reminds me of waking up during a sleepover at a friend’s house. But back then, I could figure out where I was. Why can’t I figure it out now?

I doze off again
.

When I open my eyes again, I am immediately aware of a tapping and clicking noise, and it’s happening at a furious rate. I turn my head to the right, and a woman is standing at a console. The light from her monitor gives the room a faint glow. She appears glued to the screen and her task. I ask, “Where am I?” She does not reply. Didn’t she hear me? I ask again. No response
.

I don’t know how much time has passed since I first opened my eyes,
but it feels like an hour. Then it hits me. My powers of deductive reasoning have finally kicked in. The monitors, the shimmering Mylar, the American flag, all the electronics and the cockpit feeling
.

I’m in a spaceship!

I close my eyes, confident in my conclusion. But after just a few moments, I feel disgusted with such thinking. What in the world would I be doing in a spaceship?

I feel a hand on my arm. “How are you doing, Mark?” It is the woman I had seen earlier at the monitor. She looks familiar to me, but I don’t know who she is
.

“Where am I?” I ask in exasperation. “Why are we in a spaceship?”

She’s neither amused nor upset by my question. “You’re in the hospital.”

My senses are still very dull, but not because it is the middle of the night and I am tired. It’s because I am stoned on pain medication. But I finally understand—the woman is my nurse. My eyes well up with tears as I remember this is a nightmare from which I cannot wake up
.

I have stage IV cancer, and things have gone from bad to worse as the complications mount from my surgery
.

As I lie there, completely inactive and having just awakened, my heart beats one hundred times per minute, which is a jogging pace for me. It’s been banging away nonstop like this since the surgery three weeks ago (and will continue for another four weeks)
.

I’m aware my internal organs no longer resemble the human design. It’s a marvel anything works, but it does. My surgeon explains he’s hit some snags in the “plumbing redesign.” The undamaged part of my pancreas is still healthy, which is unexpected for pancreatic cancer. However, sewing a healthy pancreas back onto the intestine is like sewing a banana to a condom. And sewing the Pixy Stix–size bile duct into place is an equally challenging task. I was warned that approximately 20 percent of Whipples develop a fistula (an intestinal leak) as a result, and I am a lucky winner
.

In the days following my surgery, I could look down at my abdomen and see a neatly sewn pattern traced along the bottom of my entire rib cage
.
But not today. The fistula has allowed most of my abdominal cavity, from my ribs to my hip, to fill with bile and pancreatic fluids. Last week, the surgeon had to open all the stitches along the seventeen-inch-wide incision
.

Now I look like a cut-open deer carcass
.

“Are you going to put the stitches back in?” I ask
.

“No,” the surgeon says. “It may be hard to grasp this idea, but your entire wound has to heal from the inside out—no stitches. It’s what we call an open wound.”

Telling me that this might be hard to grasp is an understatement. One section of the incision is big enough to allow two fists inside my abdomen. The muscle looks like ground hamburger, and it is bathed in a constant yellow ooze of digestive fluids that will require bandage changes every few hours or so—for the next fourteen weeks
.

As I reach down to lift the bed sheet away from my abdomen, I can feel the tug of the tubes hooked to my right arm. I glance up at the four bags of fluid hanging from the IV stand. I cannot eat because my new plumbing can’t handle the pressure or the task of processing food. So two of the IV bags provide my only nutrition (total parenteral nutrition, or TPN)
.

A fifth tube runs to a pump of Dilaudid (morphine times ten), which I can control. It comes with a detonator-like button I hit with my thumb when the pain becomes too much, which is about once an hour
.

One of the side effects of the pain medication is the worst cotton mouth I’ve ever experienced in my life. But even worse than that is the fact that I can’t drink anything, and I feel thirsty twenty-four hours a day. The only water I’m allowed is ice chips or a moist sponge to keep my lips from drying out. In fact, I wouldn’t be allowed to drink until day twenty
.

I think about how long it takes for a small cut on my hand to heal, and then I look down at that big incision. “There’s no freakin’ way, man,” I whisper
.

*   *   *

The weeks that preceded and followed this single day were pure torture. The heavy narcotics, massive abdominal wound, drains,
and lack of nutrition made it difficult to get out of bed, let alone walk, pee, or pass gas.

Every day, I would stand and plead with God for that pee to flow, because a nurse with a catheter was the only alternative if it didn’t. You can imagine how painful it might be to have a catheter pushed up my urethra three times a day to drain the bladder.

“Can’t you just leave the thing in there instead of cramming it in and out every day?” I begged the nurse.

“Not if you ever want to be able to pee again.”

To keep my digestive system moving, prevent blood clots, and maintain any kind of muscle tone in my body, I was required to walk. I couldn’t physically do it as often as I needed to, but I tried my best. I shuffled in slow motion for a couple hundred feet or so, one painful step at a time.

My inactivity and “sleepy” organs made it harder for fluids to drain, which resulted in about thirty-five pounds of water-weight gain. My legs and feet were swollen beyond recognition, and my testicles swelled to the size of oranges. (Noah, you laughingly referred to me as “Big Daddy” after you accidentally caught a glimpse when I climbed into bed.)

The fluid retention also restricted my breathing, which led to fluid buildup on my lungs, all of which made it even harder to walk, sleep, or even think straight. I felt like a bloated deer tick. “Can’t you just drain the fluid off the lungs?” I asked.