My New Augusta National Quest - Post 1

Your author in happy and healthier days at Augusta National

I have a tradition on my website, which is to post a year in review summary each January. Well, I didn’t have much to write about last year since I only played one round of golf because it was a true annus horribilis, to coin a Latin phrase. There is no other way to describe my dreadful year. You may have noticed I haven’t posted since May 1st 2018, which is fitting. On May 2nd I was diagnosed with leukemia. My demise began when I was feeling generally tired and having cold sweats at night. I just chalked it up to too much work and travel, too much flying, and too many nights in hotels. “The wife” thought it might be Lyme disease, so scheduled me to have a blood test on the first of May.

It’s never a good sign when a doctor calls you, right? It’s impossible to get an appointment at most doctors and once you get an appointment you sit for extended periods of time in the waiting room while being forced to watch The View. Once you actually see the doctor the visit feels rushed and they mostly do administrative work while staring at their computer. Aside from Joe’s Stone Crab, what other business model do you know that survives while making people wait? Ok, airlines and railroads also, but you get the idea.

I was driving to work on May 2nd (Black Wednesday), and my primary care doctor calls first thing in the morning to tell me that the blood test he drew had a bad result. And that I had to go to the hospital immediately to have another blood test to make sure it was not a mistake. I asked what he thought the problem was and he said that my white blood cell count was sky high and it could be leukemia. I didn’t know what leukemia was and had to ask. It is cancer of the blood.

I drove to the emergency room in Princeton where they re-did a blood test and confirmed that my white blood cells were through the roof. A normal range is between 4 and 11. Mine was 90. Leukemia requires such a specialized treatment that I couldn’t be treated in a good-sized, respectable hospital in a university town. I had to transfer to a hospital that specialized in leukemia treatment. I told the ER doctor that I wanted to go home and get a change of clothes, get some toiletries and that I would have “the wife” drive me down to the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania. Body language and expressions tell far more than the spoken word. He didn’t have to say a word, the look on his face told me my imminent heartbreaking fate.

When he did begin speaking he said that my white blood cell count was so high that I was at immediate risk of death by stroke or blood clot and that the only place I was going was into an ambulance after they began an oral dose of chemotherapy.

I must say that in the world of medicine I am naive. I thought when you get cancer they had to run a battery of tests, you could get a second opinion, you could think about which course of treatment you wanted to pursue and weigh your options. At a minimum, you could go home to get your favorite sweatshirt. It turns out there are two types of leukemia, chronic and acute. I had an acute version which essentially requires emergency intervention and treatment on the spot.

The next 48 hours were easily the worst of my life. Upon arrival at Penn I was greeted by a team of doctors and nurses and admitted to a specialized floor for patients with blood diseases. The veins in my arms endured more than twenty incursions by needles so that my caregivers could run a variety of tests and begin to give me more than a half dozen medications intravenously. You’re heard of death by a thousand cuts. My journey began with death by a thousand pricks. And that was the easy part. The real fun began with my first bone marrow biopsy. In order to properly diagnose the exact strand of the disease the doctors have to extract marrow from the bone in your lower back. Let’s call it an invasive procedure and one where there really is no good way to anesthetize the area.  The procedure takes about 15-20 minutes and you can actually feel the marrow being pulled out in about 20 seconds of pure terror.

My life as I knew it was over.

And the day had begun simply enough. I had woken up, had breakfast and coffee and had a full day of work planned. Now I was under intensive treatment for a dreadful disease and would be in the hospital for the next 30 days. And the worst was yet to come.

Anyhow, the purpose of this post is not to depress you or to seek sympathy. I find writing cathartic and hope it helps. As my normal readers know I have always been a big believer in fate and to switch my metaphors from Latin to Roman mythology, Fortuna had different plans for me than the ones I laid out. Readers had always asked me, what will you do now that you’ve played the top 100 courses in the world? I didn’t really have any meaningful golf related goals so I thought I would wait and see what happened.

Well, this debacle happened.

It has been almost nine months since that dreadful day in May and I now have some new goals I want to achieve. As far as goals go they are basic:

1. Survive cancer

2. Go to Augusta this April to watch the Masters in person one more time

3. Play golf again

For those that have the fortitude for it, I will chronicle my new quest through the blog.

God willing, more to come over the next 12 months on my trials and tribulations, chronicling my fight, with observations about modern medicine, fairness in life, opioids, and golf  . . .

I still have some significant hurdles to overcome but can’t wait to immerse myself in the greatest game once again.