Photo: Will Adler
Surging Seas and Turning Tides
An abnormal mass — which had iceberged into my small intestine, causing internal bleeding and thus the anemia — was discovered the next day. By the following Tuesday, it was confirmed cancerous — a neuroendocrine tumor on the head of my pancreas.
The bad-news call came as I was driving in Goleta to walk my dog at Ellwood, my wife and mother in the truck with me. I continued on toward the beach in a freefalling daze, stripping down to my shorts once I hit the sand. I walked slowly to the ocean’s edge, leaving Anna and Mom behind me. The heaviness of the news was too much for me to bear, and the tears flowed as I hot-stepped into the Pacific.
I dove under the first wave that came to me and screamed a word that isn’t fit for print deep into the depths. I stayed under for a long time, and, when I resurfaced, my tears and the Pacific were one. I noticed the water dripping off the tips of my fingers, the blue of the sky caught fleetingly in the little drops of water before they returned to the deeper greens and blues of the sea. Turning shoreward, my eyes locked on Anna and my mom, the two most important people in my life, and, despite the fear pulsing through my body, I felt an upwelling of something much bigger inside of me, something akin to gratitude but more complete and sweeping than I have ever known. It didn’t last long that first time, but it was definite and distinct and powerful and it gave me the courage to go back to the beach and all that awaited me.
Photo: Will Adler
The next 10 days were the most intense and humbling I have ever lived. During this time, I circled the wagons with my loved ones, stared down the barrel of my own mortality, and devised a plan. My cancer was rare, and the surgery I needed to save my life was no joke despite the fact that it is commonly known as a Whipple, a term that sounds more like a dance move than an eight-hour organ-removing and potentially life-threatening procedure.
My initial inclination was to have the surgery in Santa Barbara in the more-than-capable care of Cottage doctors. However, after a client of my wife’s helped open doors for us at Stanford Hospital, giving us access to the world’s undisputed expert on my disease, the choice was a no-brainer. I was headed north. My insurance company balked at the decision, but, thanks to the generosity and support of my family and friends, I was able to move forward with courage and deal with the details later. After all, you only get one shot at this life, and money — or lack thereof — has no business entering the equation.
I went under the knife on Monday, July 29, and I haven’t looked back. That feeling of otherworldly and uplifting gratitude that I felt that day in the Pacific has been my guiding light, undulating in and out of my being with an ever-increasing power and frequency. I have come to learn that it is fed by love and community and compassion, and the more I open to it and the more I look for it, the more it grows. I know this sounds like some seriously hippie-dippie stuff, but I promise you I am no crystal gazer. I simply, for the first time in my 35 years on this planet, not only know what truly matters but also am working to live a life that actually reflects it. It isn’t easy, and I don’t always succeed, but I try.
Ocean’s Affirmation
A few months ago, just as summer turned to fall — and well before I had my surgeon’s blessing to do so — I returned to the art of wave riding. It was mid-morning on a Monday, and I knew Rincon had a small perfect peeler bending into her cove. Before better judgment could sway me back to the couch, I was loading my truck and soon enough heading south on the 101, the whole world playing a symphony.
The first couple of rides were on my knees, quick little runners on the inside. The smile on my face was so big and stupid it hurt. After a good solid cry out the back reflecting on mortality, the pure wonders of this life, and how damn good the ocean feels, a solid waist-high wave seemed to pop up out of nowhere. Tears still on my face, my stomach still tight with the awkwardness of being a grown man crying in the lineup, instincts took over. I stroked into it and popped to my feet with no regard for the hundreds of stitches actively reattaching my insides and holding my stomach together. A brief fade to my left as I let the wall build in front of me before cranking back to the power source. Instantly I was locked in the sublime weightlessness of trim, and cancer was nowhere to be found. I let my right hand relax into the delicately breaking lip, pulled my feet in close together, and stood up as straight as I had since feeling the scalpel. There are no words to describe the sensation of that ride and what it meant to me. But I will say this: I have no doubt that there is an all-encompassing and transcendent power in this universe, and for me, it lives in the sea.
Back in the parking lot, blissed out and warming my skinny pale body in the sun before heading home, a guy, probably 20 years my senior with a face familiar to me from my past 15 years bobbing around the Rincon lineup, struck up a conversation. No doubt curious about the massive and still-healing chevron-shaped incision on my torso, he asked if I had actually “been surfing with that thing.”
Quickly we were connecting, and I gave him a CliffsNotes version of my recent history. I ended the blow-by-blow with an awkward, “So yeah, pretty much I should be dead, but, for some reason, I’m not. I’m here, and figured I’d try and have a little paddle.” At this, the man got serious, his brown eyes flashing with intensity as he reached out and grabbed me by my left shoulder. “Listen,” he said, “you’re not supposed to be dead, man. You need to stop that now. You are supposed to be alive.”
Editor’s Note: My Life: Paddling Through the Storm was originally published in The Santa Barbara Independent.
