Stories We Should Tell

Blogger doesn’t make it easy to comment on posts, so thanks to all of you who’ve taken the time and trouble to navigate the process. I really do appreciate hearing from readers and receiving your kind and encouraging comments. Or, for that matter, any comments. Otherwise, I’m left to wonder whether site “pageviews” are merely the result of Google sending unwitting ‘net surfers here when they are really looking for something entirely different. For example, Google recently directed somebody to this Hotel who apparently wanted to know how much Ativan he needed to take to become completely numb. I hope he didn’t find an answer, here or anyplace else.

I’m kind of late to the ‘awareness game’. It took me several years to muster up the courage to “come out of the closet” and share stories about my times at this Hotel. Back in 2003 when things were really crazy, I was telling almost no one what was really going on. It was just too difficult to talk about how much trouble I was really in. And my ‘medical update’ e-mails tended to put a lawyer’s positive spin on bad facts. My wife and I didn’t let anyone (immediately family included) come to the hospital during my biochemo treatments because we just didn’t want anyone else to see how very ugly they were. I was doing nothing to raise public awareness that melanoma isn’t “just skin cancer”. That’s why I so admire everyone at this Hotel who’s brave enough to share difficult experiences as they are happening; by dropping the veil of privacy you are doing good for others that just might save some lives.

I regret that the Hotel Melanoma isn’t a real place where we could all congregate and swap war stories, and not more than a metaphor for life with this stinking disease. (Like a swanky all-inclusive beach resort on the Riviera Maya in Mexico, where the bill never comes due.) So, I’ll leave you with a new version of Jimmy Buffett’s “Stories We Could Tell”…



Talkin' to myself again
Wonderin' if this bloggin’ on is good
Is there somethin' else for doin'
Should be doin' if I would

But ah, the stories we should tell
And if it all blows up and goes to Hell
I wish that we could sit around the bar in this Hotel
Swappin’ all the stories we should tell

Stared at black cancer in those hospitals that ain’t for free
Nametags on our docs bring back twenty nightmare dreams
Tears upon our faces tell of all the times we fell
Sharin' all the stories we should tell

Ah, the stories we should tell
And I'll bet you they still ring like a bell
I wish that we could sit around the bar in this Hotel
And listen to the stories we should tell

So if you're on this road strivin' for your every night
Fightin' for more livin' between searching scanner times
And if you ever wonder why you ride this carousel
You do it for the stories you should tell

Ah, the stories we should tell
And if it all blows up and goes to Hell
I wish that we could sit around the bar in this Hotel
Just listen to the stories we should tell

Yes, I wish that we could sit around the bar in this Hotel
Listen to the stories it could tell