Speaker 1: Pushkin ring this bell three times. Well, it's told to
Speaker 1: clearly say my treatment is done. This horse has run
Speaker 1: and I am on my way. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1: That's Scott, a thirty three year old software engineer, ringing
Speaker 1: the bell on his last day at Dye Anderson Cancer
Speaker 1: Center in Texas. He just completed successful treatment for stage
Speaker 1: four bone cancer. I first talked to Scott on an
Speaker 1: episode of A Slight Change of Plans called The Life
Speaker 1: Changing Diagnosis when he was roughly two is the way
Speaker 1: through his treatment. I'm thrilled to share that today Scott's
Speaker 1: scans show no evidence of cancer and he's back at
Speaker 1: home in California, adapting to life after treatment. When you're
Speaker 1: given the command by a very serious and well trained
Speaker 1: doctor that here's what you must do, it's obvious that
Speaker 1: you heed that call. But now now nobody's really telling
Speaker 1: you how you should be spending your time, how to
Speaker 1: relish and enjoy what you did fight for, and that
Speaker 1: is like that is a more challenging puzzle. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: living on the other side of a life changing diagnosis,
Speaker 1: I'm Maya Shunker and this is a Slight Change of Plans,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. Before we dive
Speaker 1: into my recent conversation with Scott, here's a bit of
Speaker 1: background on him. Scott's self proclaimed health nut who has
Speaker 1: been relentlessly trying to optimize for his future health. We're
Speaker 1: talking veganism, adding turmeric to his food, intermittent fasting, and
Speaker 1: sleeping a specific number of hours every night. And so
Speaker 1: when Scott's ankle started bothering him in the fall of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and he soon learned that he had stage
Speaker 1: four bone cancer, he was shocked. After all, he'd spent
Speaker 1: the majority of his adult life trying to avoid this outcome.
Speaker 1: When Scott and I first spoke, he reflected on how
Speaker 1: his self identity was changing. In the midst of treatment.
Speaker 1: He had had his right leg amputated below the knee,
Speaker 1: a vertebra removed from his spine, and twelve rounds of chemotherapy.
Speaker 1: For this conversation, I asked Scott if he'd be willing
Speaker 1: to pick up where we left off. The final part
Speaker 1: of his treatment would involve six more rounds of chemo
Speaker 1: and one additional surgery where doctors would need to operate
Speaker 1: on his other leg. Of that surgery, Scott was given
Speaker 1: a choice. Option one, a surgery that would require Scott
Speaker 1: to stay off his leg for twelve months while it healed,
Speaker 1: but that could ultimately restore his leg to normal function,
Speaker 1: or option two, a surgery where he could bear weight
Speaker 1: on his leg right away, but that would limit his
Speaker 1: use of that leg in the future. I wanted to
Speaker 1: know how Scott decided between these two surgeries. Given my
Speaker 1: youth in general inclination toward activity, most surgeons were thinking
Speaker 1: that the former was the better procedure. But as a
Speaker 1: part of this ensemble of things that were happening to me,
Speaker 1: I think I had to think pretty hard about whether
Speaker 1: I wanted to dig in for another twelve months or
Speaker 1: more or just move on with my life a little bit,
Speaker 1: accepting that I would have limitations for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life. And so I talked to a lot of
Speaker 1: people about it, and I think my wife and I
Speaker 1: were in agreement that I don't always have to do
Speaker 1: the hardest thing and opt for the slog that I
Speaker 1: could say, you know what, I need a break. I
Speaker 1: want this to be over sooner rather than later. And
Speaker 1: even if this doesn't allow me to be a paralympian,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be able to get around. And it
Speaker 1: felt like when you're talking about this disease, it's quite
Speaker 1: possible that things come back in twelve months, and if
Speaker 1: and if I wanted to enjoy the next twelve months,
Speaker 1: and it does feel kind of dark, but if if
Speaker 1: you want to think about well, time is short. Time
Speaker 1: may be short. It's short for all of us, but
Speaker 1: it may be particularly short for me. Do I want
Speaker 1: to spend the next twelve months of my life on crutches,
Speaker 1: crushing on it? Sthetic when there might not be that
Speaker 1: much more than that. Yeah, I mean your decision to
Speaker 1: go with the surgery that was easier in the shorter term,
Speaker 1: potentially more complicated and longer term, it strikes me as
Speaker 1: as such a foreign decision for Scott, like, given everything
Speaker 1: I know about you, you are you are through and through,
Speaker 1: like a suffer now live later kind of guy. You know,
Speaker 1: it does strike me. I mean, sometimes isolated decisions that
Speaker 1: we make in life can represent more global shifts in perspective.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder if this felt new to you
Speaker 1: in some way or represents something slightly bigger. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's a good observation. I think I'm definitely a delayment
Speaker 1: of gratification kind of guy, like I am an embodiment
Speaker 1: of the marshmallow test in that I haven't even when
Speaker 1: the researchers came back and gave you the two marshmallows
Speaker 1: to enjoy, you were like, Nope, I don't even want those.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's right. I think it did signal a
Speaker 1: little bit of self compassion, just a sense an acknowledgment
Speaker 1: of Wow, this has been a really hard year. I'd
Speaker 1: like to get off the ride now. I guess tempted
Speaker 1: by an easier option. I feel skeptical of it because
Speaker 1: it's a shortcut. It must be a half measure. But
Speaker 1: in this case, I just felt, you know, maybe I
Speaker 1: deserve the shortcut. You know, I'm mindful of the fact
Speaker 1: that you were going through this entire experience against the
Speaker 1: backdrop of a global pandemic, and I'm curious to know
Speaker 1: what it was like to navigate your treatment with this
Speaker 1: added layer of complexity. Yeah, I mean, there was something
Speaker 1: that was actually kind of fortuitous about it, because as
Speaker 1: I was kind of receding from my normal life, everybody
Speaker 1: else was sort of doing the same um and I
Speaker 1: was I didn't have to feel so self conscious because
Speaker 1: people weren't out in the world really, like nobody could
Speaker 1: see what was below the sort of the carnage below screen,
Speaker 1: which was kind of great. And so February March of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, vaccine started circulating, and I think there
Speaker 1: was a sense that the world was going to open
Speaker 1: up and people were going to get back to real
Speaker 1: life and start congregating. And I, while this was exciting
Speaker 1: to get my own inoculation, I also felt a little
Speaker 1: anxiety that, oh, you know, the gig is up, Like
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna be expected to you know, present myself
Speaker 1: and out of the closet as you know, somebody who
Speaker 1: is now disabled in a way. And I think I
Speaker 1: certainly had mixed emotions about it. In some ways, the
Speaker 1: pandemic and everybody's reclusiveness was suiting my lifestyle, and I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't quite finished, and I felt like I was
Speaker 1: going to get left behind when everybody just suddenly marches
Speaker 1: into the streets and I'm sort of I wasn't quite
Speaker 1: ready for that. Yeah. On the last day of your treatment,
Speaker 1: you participated in a ritual that MD Anderson has for
Speaker 1: patients where you read an inscription on the wall, you
Speaker 1: ring a bell. It's this incredibly joyous experience and you're
Speaker 1: surrounded by your caretakers. What what was that experience? Like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It was It felt triumph it
Speaker 1: in a way, I got to celebrate a little bit
Speaker 1: in the you know, such as it is in the
Speaker 1: cancer ward. It was a real pleasure to know that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have to come through those doors again, at
Speaker 1: least at least for a while and subject myself to
Speaker 1: that form of torture. You know. It's it's so weird
Speaker 1: that you're intensely grateful for the care and kindness, and
Speaker 1: yet at the same time you never want to see
Speaker 1: those people again because what they represent and what they
Speaker 1: leave you with. So yeah, it's funny to, you know,
Speaker 1: to say say goodbye to these people that I've been
Speaker 1: seeing almost daily for months and say like, you know,
Speaker 1: see you never and feel good about that and then
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong. But is it a few
Speaker 1: days after the bell ringing that you get the final
Speaker 1: body scan? Yeah. So in the first scan after treatment,
Speaker 1: everything looked good. I was clear of any overt signs
Speaker 1: of disease or tumor, with the one exception being a
Speaker 1: small little nodule that they saw in the lung, which
Speaker 1: they couldn't say much about except that there was something,
Speaker 1: and all we could do was kind of acknowledge it
Speaker 1: and wait because it was too small to really interpret
Speaker 1: visually and not advisable to interrogate it any further. It
Speaker 1: was just well, well, we'll wait and see. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I was assured that was likely nothing. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I heard a year before, you know, when
Speaker 1: my ankle hurt and it's probably just a sprain or
Speaker 1: probably just tendinosis or something. So obviously I'm concerned, but
Speaker 1: had to just sit with that feeling of concern and
Speaker 1: understand that there's nothing to do. The the evidence that
Speaker 1: it's anything will only emerge in time if it does,
Speaker 1: and that is the hallmark of cancer is that it grows,
Speaker 1: and so we have to wait to see if it grows.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a hard thing to do, to
Speaker 1: just sort of shut it out of your mind, but
Speaker 1: I guess maybe, Yeah, I guess at that point I
Speaker 1: had a lot of practice disengaging from all the what
Speaker 1: if thinking, because you could really just spiral. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's such an important characteristic of illness and
Speaker 1: disease that we often have to redefine what it means
Speaker 1: to actually cross the finish line, both physically and psychologically, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, essentially, Yeah, it's about learning to live with
Speaker 1: this permanent feeling of unease, to come to terms with that.
Speaker 1: And I hear you saying, you know, you had a
Speaker 1: lot of practice, but I know listeners who are going
Speaker 1: through similar situations want to know, like, Scott, what is
Speaker 1: your secret? How do you manage how do you manage
Speaker 1: the waiting game? Right? Like, how do you manage the
Speaker 1: anxiety that accompanies this kind of uncertainty? That's so interesting
Speaker 1: turning it over in your mind, Like unlike a rock tumbler,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily going to smooth out the gemstone. It's
Speaker 1: just gonna, you know, make it spikier and scarier because
Speaker 1: you simulate all the outcomes that are frankly terrifying, whereas
Speaker 1: actually kind of just turning away from it with standard
Speaker 1: you know, with a sane plan. It's not as though
Speaker 1: I'm going to ignore it, but we know that the
Speaker 1: only thing to do is wait and see and kind
Speaker 1: of follow up when the time comes. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think this whole ordeal Obviously, when trying to kind of
Speaker 1: muscle through a treatment plan like this, which feels interminable,
Speaker 1: your whole psyche is organized around getting through it, getting
Speaker 1: to the other side. There's a finish line, and that's
Speaker 1: what ringing the bell felt like. And now on the
Speaker 1: other side of that, you're kind of dumped into this
Speaker 1: ocean of of after time that that feels like it's well, A,
Speaker 1: it's of uncertain length, but b there's no there is
Speaker 1: no finish line now, and it's a little bit like
Speaker 1: you know, graduating from school or getting your degree, and
Speaker 1: then you enter adult life and there's no there's no
Speaker 1: definitive hurdles or milestones. You kind of just have to
Speaker 1: make those up for yourself. And likewise, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: fighting for survival, fighting to complete this treatment to give
Speaker 1: me a chance at at living a full life. And
Speaker 1: now that I'm in that, the question is, Okay, well, wait,
Speaker 1: what is a full life? Like it was clear that
Speaker 1: a full life is something you want, and so I'm
Speaker 1: very willing to fight for that, but now I have
Speaker 1: to sort of realize that life and you know, what,
Speaker 1: what does make for a meaningful, full, happy life. If
Speaker 1: you no longer have this very concrete goal to save
Speaker 1: your life, that is a more challenging puzzle. It's easier
Speaker 1: when you have marching orders. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: there's a psychological kind of purity to war or something
Speaker 1: where where it's just so clear what you have to do,
Speaker 1: whereas it's this kind of malaise of privilege, like a
Speaker 1: privilege of time and a concern that you might be
Speaker 1: squandering it. We'll be right back with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans. You through everything you had physically and emotionally
Speaker 1: into fighting for your life life, and now you're living
Speaker 1: that life, and it's up to you now to find
Speaker 1: clarity around what you want that life to look like.
Speaker 1: And it feels like an overwhelming and pressure filled process
Speaker 1: that maybe a person ought not to face in their
Speaker 1: lives because all of a sudden, the stakes feel so high,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's unnatural. Like I almost don't in this moment.
Speaker 1: I'm struggling to know whether it's like a good thing
Speaker 1: for you to feel like you have to fully reorganize
Speaker 1: your life and your priorities and all that comes along
Speaker 1: with it. It's nice to feel enlightened. But I guess
Speaker 1: there's something lovely about also reclaiming a sense of normalcy
Speaker 1: and not feeling like there has to be or found shifts,
Speaker 1: you know, not feeling like you can't sweat the small
Speaker 1: stuff anymore and you can't begrudge the customer service agent
Speaker 1: who's giving you a hard time, because oh my god,
Speaker 1: that stuff doesn't matter, and so does it. Does it
Speaker 1: feel like a burden actually to have to to re
Speaker 1: enter life with like a new purpose and a new
Speaker 1: philosophical mindset. Yeah, that's a great question. I think certainly, certainly,
Speaker 1: I do crave a degree of normalcy, and it's like
Speaker 1: it feels like a triumph and a delight to go
Speaker 1: to bed and realize I didn't take a single medication today,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't have to swallow a single pill today,
Speaker 1: or there was no point during the day in which
Speaker 1: I needed to lie down. I just sort of conducted
Speaker 1: a normal adult life, and I think that feels great.
Speaker 1: But I also do notice like there's a tinge of
Speaker 1: sadness at just resuming as if nothing happened, or like
Speaker 1: noticing that I'm falling into patterns that I thought this
Speaker 1: experience had helped me outgrow. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I think I've gained from this experience is a little
Speaker 1: bit more flexibility in terms of my environment, what I eat.
Speaker 1: I just feel like less fussy about my physical circumstances,
Speaker 1: whether it's comfort or food or whatever. Not to say
Speaker 1: I don't still seek those things out, But so when
Speaker 1: I find myself being picky or fastidious about something, I
Speaker 1: notice like I can, I can chastise myself thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: have you learned? Nothing? Like, what do you you know?
Speaker 1: This is such a pre cancer pre illness thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I mean I think what I'm what I'm hearing,
Speaker 1: what I'm reflecting on in this moment, is that there
Speaker 1: is a tension, right. I think it's very tempting for
Speaker 1: us to come out the other side from a very challenging,
Speaker 1: difficult episode and feel, Okay, I am, I am enlightened,
Speaker 1: I have a new perspective. Let this all not be
Speaker 1: for not you know, please let me have learned things.
Speaker 1: But then there's this pull from the other side, which
Speaker 1: is there's some value in feeling some of the more
Speaker 1: familiar everyday feelings that I once felt, because it is
Speaker 1: signaling to my brain that the old constellation of things
Speaker 1: that I used to care about, that I used to
Speaker 1: get riled up about, whatever it is, still exists, and
Speaker 1: it's just like not knowing what the right balance is.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know if you felt that way,
Speaker 1: like you chastise yourself and yet at the same time
Speaker 1: something very familiar and comforting potentially about worrying about what
Speaker 1: you eat. Hmm, yeah, Like, how awesome is it that
Speaker 1: I have the luxury of worrying about what I'm eating
Speaker 1: right now? That's awesome that my brain has even the
Speaker 1: bandwidth to think about that, you know. Yet all said,
Speaker 1: I mean, it feels like getting my old self back
Speaker 1: in a way. Um, But then I think, oh, well, mate,
Speaker 1: it was my old self that great. My old self
Speaker 1: was the person who got cancer. So what were my
Speaker 1: decisions all wrong? Or was it, you know, some karmic
Speaker 1: retribution for for something. So it's like there's some aversion
Speaker 1: I have to my old self because my old self
Speaker 1: was some was something that got me in the place
Speaker 1: of getting bone cancer, which I know feels like somewhat perverted.
Speaker 1: When I was a senior in high school and got
Speaker 1: into Harvard, it was like validated everything I had done
Speaker 1: up to that point is absurd. But that's that's a mindset.
Speaker 1: And by the same token, getting diagnosed with cancer calls
Speaker 1: into question anything that's happened before. Was I doing something wrong,
Speaker 1: whether it's physically, nutritionally, spiritually, whatever, And so I do
Speaker 1: feel like at some distance from my old self because
Speaker 1: that old self kind of faced judgment. This, This all
Speaker 1: feels like weirdly spiritual and religious. And I don't I
Speaker 1: don't mean it. I'm implying no theology here. I'm just
Speaker 1: it's just I'm just noticing that my brain likes narratives.
Speaker 1: But if you think that, well, do the ends justify
Speaker 1: the means in some way? Or if I'm now more
Speaker 1: mature or have my personality has been smoothed out by
Speaker 1: this whole experience. This is just what I needed, was
Speaker 1: a good ass kicking in some way. Um, and I
Speaker 1: certainly got that. I'm listening, and I guess I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm lightly stunned by the agency you feel old Scott
Speaker 1: played in quote getting cancer, Like, why is old Scott
Speaker 1: carrying any moral responsibility for a physical outcome that old
Speaker 1: Scott didn't? I mean, how could that? How does that
Speaker 1: possibly work out logically? I don't do that even I
Speaker 1: don't think. I don't think it's rational, but it's feels
Speaker 1: feel it right. It feels like the other side of
Speaker 1: the coin of agency, to use your word, which is
Speaker 1: that if if I feel like I can move the
Speaker 1: needle positively, then it seems like maybe I somehow move
Speaker 1: the needle net right if if it's within your power
Speaker 1: to but some things aren't within your power, you might
Speaker 1: not might biologically just have had like no defense against
Speaker 1: this cancer. There's no counterfactual world in which you defeat
Speaker 1: the cancer through any sort of intervention. You accept that
Speaker 1: as being at least one reality, right, Oh, I rationally,
Speaker 1: I completely accept that, even hearing you say it. It's therapeutic.
Speaker 1: And the reason I'm so interested in this, Scott is
Speaker 1: because that self blame is our way I think of
Speaker 1: subconsciously exerting control. It's like we need to feel like
Speaker 1: our past selves had control and our current day selves
Speaker 1: had control. And it is an interesting quirk of human
Speaker 1: nature to play this game with ourselves, you know. And
Speaker 1: I do wonder whether when you come out the other
Speaker 1: side of treatment successfully, it can seduce you back into
Speaker 1: that older mindset of thinking we are in fact in
Speaker 1: control of our outcomes because you saw some version of
Speaker 1: an input output model play out in your favor. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love everything you just said. I think it definitely
Speaker 1: is part of this illusion of control, which is somehow
Speaker 1: comforting and definitely in the throes of treatment, I am
Speaker 1: being kind of passed around from clinic to clinic, doctor
Speaker 1: to doctor, and I don't feel like I have much agency,
Speaker 1: and so and that was that's a little freeing. I
Speaker 1: guess now as I regain my own agency and contemplate
Speaker 1: how I want to direct that agency, I do feel
Speaker 1: more more prone to that narrative of control. But right, so,
Speaker 1: either it feels like you should own the good and
Speaker 1: the bad, and if you're entitling yourself to own the good,
Speaker 1: then you should take responsibility for the bad. However, the
Speaker 1: truth is probably more that you shouldn't take much ownership
Speaker 1: of anything, the bad or the good. But it feels better. Yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I want to dig in a little bit on
Speaker 1: on this topic of identity because one of the most
Speaker 1: memorable parts of our first conversation is when we talked
Speaker 1: about your changing relationship with your identity. You said that
Speaker 1: the things that you felt had to find you like
Speaker 1: your physical fitness were perhaps more quote negotiable than you thought,
Speaker 1: and that you said something so evocative like, you know,
Speaker 1: even though I can't do handstand, I'm still me. And
Speaker 1: I want to know what's your current understanding of what
Speaker 1: makes you you? What are those defining traits? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what makes me me? Every report that I can do
Speaker 1: a nice hand stand again is at the opposite of
Speaker 1: the point. Um that's awesome, though, yeah, um yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: I've become a little less me, which might be for
Speaker 1: the better. With this weird experience where we went up
Speaker 1: to the Russian River a group of friends, and we
Speaker 1: stayed in a house and it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: this sort of quiet get away, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that in the open meadow across the street that weekend
Speaker 1: was scheduled a rodeo. The rodeo was in town, and
Speaker 1: like the front yard was essentially a parking lot for
Speaker 1: this rodeo, and I think there were there were sort
Speaker 1: of two camps in responding to this. Half of the
Speaker 1: folks were annoyed that it was disrupting the intended vibe.
Speaker 1: And I think two years ago I certainly would have
Speaker 1: been in that camp, just outraged and indignant and feeling
Speaker 1: sort of this urban smugness at the rodeo. But for
Speaker 1: some reason, I found myself I was viewing it like
Speaker 1: a as if I was a sociologist, like I was
Speaker 1: curious about, I guess, the treatment of animals. Notwithstanding, I
Speaker 1: was interested in the cultural novelty of it and kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to explore it and understand it more rather
Speaker 1: than just feeling a need to flee. And I do
Speaker 1: think that was a that's a shift in my personality
Speaker 1: that I'm grateful for. I think your life is just
Speaker 1: easy when you're less pissed off by stuff. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, you said you're you're less pissed off right
Speaker 1: in the face of things you would have coded as
Speaker 1: disturbances before, right, But it seems like there's more there.
Speaker 1: It's not simply being less pissed off. It seems like
Speaker 1: there's some exploratory side of your personality that's well. Your
Speaker 1: show is called a slight change of plans, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get curveballs, and I was just sort of
Speaker 1: curious about what was in store, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: who's to say that my plans would have gone out
Speaker 1: without a hitch anyway, Right, I've had this experience in
Speaker 1: the past where things got off track despite my best intentions,
Speaker 1: and so maybe it matters less that things are executing
Speaker 1: according to plan. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's so
Speaker 1: fascinating what you've just said, because you can easily imagine.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the common narrative would be,
Speaker 1: after are a wildly unexpected stage four cancer diagnosis, we
Speaker 1: cower in the face of slight changes of plan. Right,
Speaker 1: we were fearful of unexpected, unexplored terrain because you know what,
Speaker 1: last time we went there, we didn't like it. But
Speaker 1: what you're saying makes me think from a totally different perspective,
Speaker 1: which is you're coming at this from having so carefully
Speaker 1: crafted your plans and and like you said, despite your
Speaker 1: best efforts, things went off the rails, and so maybe
Speaker 1: we should be embracing some of the curveballs more generally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And guess what, I think that it saved me a
Speaker 1: few hours of consternation, because like so, I was better
Speaker 1: off in my subjective experience, and it's like, it's pretty nice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember, Scott, when we talk to you, you had
Speaker 1: said that, and this is while you were in the
Speaker 1: middle of treatment, you are resisting any big changes to
Speaker 1: the way that you lived your life. And I pulled
Speaker 1: a clip from that from that conversation, so let's take
Speaker 1: a listen. What has it been like to confront death
Speaker 1: in this way? How I confronted death? Or have you
Speaker 1: confronted it? I mean, maybe you haven't, which is also
Speaker 1: completely fine. You know, in order to undergo this hideous
Speaker 1: array of treatment, I have to operate in the assumption
Speaker 1: that I'm going to come out on the other side
Speaker 1: and live a long life, because otherwise, what's the point.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe you should change your behavior in some way,
Speaker 1: or change your the lens with which you look at
Speaker 1: the world, but you also should if you're to survive,
Speaker 1: probably act as if you're going to survive. You know,
Speaker 1: fake it until you make it. So. Now that you're
Speaker 1: no longer undergoing treatment and you don't need to carry
Speaker 1: this mindset in order to power through, I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you have made any changes to the way you live
Speaker 1: your life. Hmm let me sounds so young. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I think at this point, I think I've
Speaker 1: internalized the sense that life might be for me more
Speaker 1: compressed than it than I thought it would be, and
Speaker 1: that it does create a little bit of pressure to
Speaker 1: use time wisely. And I think, if I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: sometimes I find myself a little more like impatient. I
Speaker 1: do feel encumbered with the responsibility to like use time fruitfully,
Speaker 1: and by fruitful I mean in a way that is
Speaker 1: satisfying and enjoyable and kind and has value to me
Speaker 1: and others. When you have decades ahead of you, as
Speaker 1: most people assume, you could sort of kick the can
Speaker 1: down the road and say, well, there'll be time for
Speaker 1: that later, or I'll figure it out in time. And
Speaker 1: now I'm thinking, well I should figure this out now.
Speaker 1: I definitely think it changes the calculus, this whole having
Speaker 1: a life threatening diagnosis definitely changes the calculus of whether
Speaker 1: you're investing in the the very long term. It's like
Speaker 1: you you could say, well, you know, when I'm older,
Speaker 1: when I you know, when I feel economically secure, then
Speaker 1: I'll then I'll invest in having a gratifying life. But
Speaker 1: now now it feels like if there's ever a time
Speaker 1: to do it, it's now. In our last conversation you
Speaker 1: mentioned you mentioned something that surprised you, which was that
Speaker 1: the emotional thermostat had prevailed. You were you were pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprised to find that despite your worst fear happening, the
Speaker 1: good moments felt just as good. You know, you had
Speaker 1: more lows um and I think you said, certainly it's
Speaker 1: a pain in the ass, don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 1: you would achieve some kind of happiness equilibrium. And I'm
Speaker 1: just curious to know if this is still the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like there's there's enough in life two either
Speaker 1: rue or have regret for, or take joy in and
Speaker 1: find gratitude for that you can. There's just enough going
Speaker 1: on that you can kind of pick and choose what
Speaker 1: to highlight or not. And it's really less about the
Speaker 1: sum total of all the good stuff and the bad
Speaker 1: stuff is more about just what you shine your mental
Speaker 1: spotlight on. And so in the course of all this,
Speaker 1: obviously it was debilitating and not fun, but they were
Speaker 1: also you know, a lot of unexpected silver linings. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny that one's mind can drift towards gratitude in
Speaker 1: the face of tragedy. And I've been pleasantly surprised that, Like,
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy for me to focus on the nice things.
Speaker 1: It takes it takes reinforcement, but it's definitely there. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Join me next week when I talk
Speaker 1: to author Michael Pollen about the power psychedelics have to
Speaker 1: change our minds and what he's learned from his own
Speaker 1: psychedelic trips. One of the things psychedelics does is it
Speaker 1: takes all that ironic crust we cover the world with
Speaker 1: and it scrapes it off really effectively, and suddenly things
Speaker 1: appear with the profundity and beauty of first sight. I mean,
Speaker 1: awe at the ordinary is a really you know, a
Speaker 1: piece of music, a flower, I mean, and that's a
Speaker 1: wonderful aspect of psychedelic experience. A Slight Change of Plans
Speaker 1: is created, written an executive produced by me Maya Schunker.
Speaker 1: The Slight Change family includes Tyler Greene our senior producer,
Speaker 1: Jan Guera our senior editor, Then Talliday, our sound engineer,
Speaker 1: Emily Rosteck our producer, and Neia LaBelle our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Louis Skara wrote our theme song and Ginger Smith helped
Speaker 1: arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries, So big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: including Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, Lee, tamlat and Heather Fain
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Schunker See you next week. I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear about your return flight home, like do you
Speaker 1: remember the kinds of thoughts that were going through your head?
Speaker 1: Or like what it what it felt like to be
Speaker 1: leaving um Well. I was thrilled to be making the
Speaker 1: journey and generally find air travel hellish, but at that
Speaker 1: point I was thinking, what can United do to me
Speaker 1: that M B Anderson hasn't already done