Adam Hayden

5 days ago | cancerhealth.com | Adam Hayden

Most days I’m wandering myself back home to who I am. It happens out on that porch over there, with cheap wicker, the frayed outdoor rug, and the Rose of Sharon. I never quite say good bye to myself in the morning, but without fail it’ll dawn on me that I’m somebody else walking around right now. Folding laundry. Maybe warming up the Madras Lentils pouch. Work happened. I ate.

2 weeks ago | cancerhealth.com | Adam Hayden

We broke the news on Facebook like this: Friends, we wanted to provide an update following our MRI last week. The short of it is the radiation held a large tumor mass stable but without any shrinking of tumor. A couple of other mass-like spots in a different location but same hemisphere grew in size. These concern us because they indicate spreading disease. It is too early to know whether the new chemo is having an effect.

2 weeks ago | cancerhealth.com | Adam Hayden

Ooh, they had to dig that IV needle around today. “Easiest enough for them to order it that way…” I smirk. “Oh yeah,” my tech says, fishing for a vein for the perfusion needle—a little larger than what’s needed for a scan only with contrast. It has to do with the higher pressure the perfusion stuff is pushed with to show the network of vasculature in your brain during the MRI. That shit is so cool to me. But we were fishing in my arm. We’re buds. You can’t not be.

3 weeks ago | cancerhealth.com | Adam Hayden

My philosophical preference wasn’t popular in grad school. The field of philosophy had become more specialized, as all disciplines have, and the name of the game was dissection, disaggregation, break down structures into their granular components and figure out what those things are. Can we rebuild the whole from the summation of the particulars? Here’s an example, and I can already hear my wife rolling her eyes. Is this a table, or are these atoms arranged “table-wise”?

2 months ago | cancerhealth.com | Adam Hayden

“Rats!” Some time ago, Whitney started saying “Rats!” every so often when minor mistakes or slight inconveniences arose. “I got stuck by the train. Rats!” “We’re out of milk. Rats!” “I meant to switch the laundry before leaving. Rats!” Like all serendipitous things that land in your lap at just the right moment, I don’t know the full story behind the phrase, but I do know that all credit goes to Erin, one of Whitney’s best friends. I think of her as one of my best friends, too.