37 Tried to Kill Me. Your Move, 38.

It was Easter morning, 2023. Sitting around a table eating brunch with my wife and her family, which of course is now my family as well. My sister-in-law Holly looked at me and in a soft voice said, “it’s really good to have you back, Alex.”

 I had been out of the hospital for over three months so her statement seemed misplaced.  I asked her to elaborate. 

“We didn’t know if we would ever see this version of you again.” That simple statement has been tattooed on my brain ever since. This version. Fun. Silly. Energetic. Illuminated.

When I look back at the last 12 months, almost every day should be forgotten. In my mind, I have skipped directly from 36 to 38. You could call it a series of unfortunate events but that doesn’t do it justice. That’s like referring to the Oklahoma City Bombing as a bad day at work at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. 

Since the moment I turned 37, my life had flip-flopped. The cancer was already inside of me yet we didn’t know exactly what type. All we knew is that it was CANCER. Four months ago, Lauren and I had gotten married on a picturesque beach in Punta Mita, Mexico. We had been together in some form or another for 18 years by then. When we finally made our love official, boom! C-word. For someone who prides themselves on their timing, I rushed the punchline without giving the audience a beat to process the setup. 

The next three months were excruciating. Constant visits to specialists. The testing included blood work, MRIs, CAT and PET scans, bone marrow aspirations, etc. Something is seriously wrong and nobody can tell me what. I became lethargic and unmotivated. The unknown is far more scary than reality.

Finally, we had our answer. Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. How loud can a person mentally scream “FUUUCCKKKK?” While it was disheartening, it gave me comfort when the doctors told me they knew how to treat it. My prognosis was good. 

I could bore you with more details of chemotherapy but honestly, you can look at previous blogs if you need that story. The onslaught of misery and pain had begun. Everything was going swimmingly, until one day, it wasn’t. Something was horribly wrong with me and I was too confused to realize it. Luckily my wife saw right through my incoherent stare. She took me to the emergency room. 

When I entered that hospital on November 17th, completely delirious, I had no idea that I wouldn’t emerge for 33 days. Cancer was still in me. But now I had a much bigger foe: Sepsis. The surgery to install my chemo port in my chest had caused an internal infection. An invisible murderous bacteria that was hellbent on putting me into my forever dirt nap. 

Turned on yet? How about a heart vegetation, multiple embolisms, a spleen abscess, and edema. My body swelled up 25 pounds because water wouldn’t drain from my tissues. For the first two weeks, I was bedridden. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even roll myself over.

Doctors told my wife and family to brace themselves for the worst. My body had declared war on itself.  I was a civilian, caught in the crossfire. Eventually I was well enough to do physical and occupational therapy. One step at a time. Literally. My therapists treated me with the fragility of a 90-year-old cripple. I was a long way from the slacklining, tennis playing, ambulatory person I had worked so hard to be. 

To make matters worse,I had to have my knee operated on because it wasn’t draining properly. Another surgery. Was I worried? I’m in here because of the last one so I wasn’t exactly walking on sunshine at the thought. Fuck, I was barely walking on anything. Four more days while I watched colored liquids drain through a series of tubes sticking out of my leg. 

 If all of that wasn’t enough, while I was infirmed, my dad died unexpectedly. Not completely, he was 79 so at that age, anything can happen.  I could barely mourn the death because I had to primarily focus on my own survival. I still haven’t fully processed the fact that he is gone. He was my biggest fan. He loved hearing stories of my adventures. No one understood better than him how dedicated I am to not only my craft, but having an amazing life. He doesn’t believe in the afterlife and neither do I so I can’t even say he’s in a better place. He’s simply gone.

There’s more tragedy. But some of it is too painful and personal for me to reveal here. In time, I’ll talk about these instances. If all of this isn’t enough already, you have a level of sadism that should be studied.

I’ve thought a lot about this past year. It lasted forever and somehow it felt like seconds. 37 was not the magical year I had envisioned. So many times I thought I had hit bottom only to learn I was still in the shallow seas being dragged toward the Marianas Trench. Hit after hit. I was strapped to a wall being bludgeoned by a never-ending train of trauma. I’m a good person who leads with love. I strive to make others feel good about themselves. What did I do to deserve this?

Nothing. That’s the answer. No one deserves this. Well, maybe Andrew Tate and Donald Trump and…nevermind. I don’t have enough time to keep listing monsters. The point is this:  it’s not about what happens to you.

It’s how you react.

Looking back, I am a very proud boy. Dammit. Remember when we could say that and it didn’t mean you were a nazi?

I handled my cancer with courage. I was transparent and allowed others in on the journey. I constantly cracked jokes and turned the darkest moments into hilarious material. Making strangers laugh while I had a noticeable PICC line in my arm was the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced as a comedian. These people paid for babysitters, came to laugh, and now they are staring at someone with cancer. I’m sure many thought, “we should have gone to the movies.”

I did it for myself. I needed to take ownership of the situation. I have been told many times that my approach helped others who were going through similar struggles. I alleviated my own fears by sharing them with the world. I could have switched from a beacon of positivity into a dismal sack of hopelessness. Yet, I didn’t. I found myself bitter at times and checked myself. I can’t change what happened. There’s a reason why the front windshield is bigger than the back. Move forward.

Those 33 days in the hospital were the most painful of my entire life. Even when I got out, I could barely move. Everything hurt. I was on intravenous antibiotics for almost a month, attached to a fanny pack that kept reminding me: YOU ARE SICK. YOU ARE WEAK. But every day when I woke up, I did more than the recommended physical therapy. I made it my job to rehabilitate my body and mind. I listened to “Unstoppable” by Sia hundreds of times. Goddamn, that woman can infiltrate my psyche with empowerment. I got my meditation schedule back on track. With every painful step, I kept telling myself, “This is temporary. This is not your life. This will all be a fever dream if I keep doing the work.” 

I always knew I could bounce back. I kept journaling almost every single day. Most of it was goal-setting, positive affirmations, visualizations, manifestations. I kept track of how I felt and if I look back at the first entries of the year, I recognize how far I’ve come. I was hours away from death, unable to move, completely detached; and now I am literally climbing mountains. My wife and I spent two weeks traveling around Japan where I headlined a show and judged a Japanese Roast Battle. To answer your question, it was in English. I taped a set with Comedy Central where I made fun of my cancer. I’m not hiding from it. I’m using it. I will use every ounce of struggle for personal gain. I will not allow any of my misery to control who I am supposed to be. 

I thought 37 was a year to forget. Now I realize, it may have been the most pivotal year of my entire life. I was forced into lessons that I may not have ever taken the time to learn. I was the hare, running as fast as I could hoping to get to a finish line. Now I’m the tortoise. Methodical. Paced. Able to look around and shove my face in the fragrant, vibrant flowers while still knowing, I have plenty of time to win. Allergies to pollen be damned. I will smell those fucking lilies. 

While trying to burn me to a pile of ashes, all of this ignited a fire inside of me that cannot be extinguished. I am inflamed and it’s not just from my eczema.  I did everything I could to not only get back this version of myself,  but to shed my outer shell and have a complete metamorphosis. I was already a butterfly. But this winged-insect has turned into a fucking eagle. I have proven to myself that through the absolute worst pain, both physical and emotional, you cannot take away my spirit. I am meant to spread love, give joy, and make people laugh until they can’t breathe. None of it was easy, but it was necessary. 

With all of that behind me, I am here to say: Come at me, 38. Show me what you got. I’m ready for every single moment.

33 Days in Hell

Phew! That was a close one. If you’ve been following my journey, you know that I’ve been swinging my dick at a super posh palazzo in Sicily. I almost didn’t come home considering I was surrounded by incredible artwork, delicious pasta, and an endless array of Aperol Spritzes. It was paradise.

Wait. No. Scratch that and reverse it. I was not in Italy. I spent 33 days at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, which, unless you are an unhoused human, is the furthest thing from a resort vacation. Yup. One month in an East Hollywood hospital. Completely unexpected. In speaking to a few friends, I learned that most people have never been in a hospital overnight, let alone for the entire length of a menstruation cycle. So I figured I’d relay my experience and let you know what it’s like to be out of the moving world for that amount of time. Period. 

By early November, I was blasting through my treatments for Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. My oncologist was already telling me that he could probably scrape off a cycle or two if my body kept responding in such a positive way. I was doing a ton of standup, kicking ass on the tennis court, and experiencing minimal side effects. I appeared to be so healthy, audience members at my shows were questioning if I even had cancer. 

“Is this all for a bit?” I was asked that countless times because when people hear the “C” word, a picture goes through their minds. It isn’t a person on stage making them laugh. I’m not strapped to a chair, frail and weak, dozens of tubes running into every vein of my body. I’m not closing my shows by puking into a bucket, even though that could be hilarious in the right circumstances. I’d be like Gallagher. Front row is the splash zone so grab your raincoats, everyone. 

Other than not going on the road, almost nothing in my life had changed at all. Until it did. Without going into full detail, a few days after treatment #4, I developed an internal infection. At first, I thought it was fatigue from the chemo. But one night, things took a turn for the worse. My wife knew something was very wrong and with a couple of close friends, they got me out of the apartment and to the Emergency Room. I was confused, didn’t know my own name, and was immediately triaged to the front of the line. Take that, Woman with a Broken Arm! I’ve got celebrity status.

The next few days are a blur. It was mid-November and as everyone prepared for the approaching holidays, I was met with a team of new doctors who visited me like I was The Candyman. The fun one who distributes sweets, not the terrifying one who shows up and kills you when you say his name in the mirror. I learned that I was about 24-48 hours away from death which looking back, is absolutely terrifying. I haven’t even picked out a crematorium! Score one for my wife and friends for responding as quickly as they did or that would have been a wrap on Ol’ Crusty over here. (Don’t ever call me that).

No one told me how long I would be in the hospital and as days turned into a week, I began to get restless. I learned that my infection had spread and I had suffered a litany of internal ailments because of it. Thanks to lifelong terrible eczema (it’s not a sunburn), my body and I have always been in a dance. This time it flat out told me: I’m sitting this one out. 

Week one passed with no sign of when I would emerge from my cave. As someone who loves being outdoors, not being in the sun had a serious effect on my mental state. For the first couple of weeks, I was too weak to leave my bed. I had lots of visitors who were eager to see me and family/friends alleviated me from going batshit crazy. Even still, laying down 24/7 made it impossible for me to enjoy my life. 

There are other factors as well. I was drugged up to reduce pain and swelling, but also needed constant antibiotics, which had to be changed every couple of hours. I was woken up at 6 AM each morning to do blood work. I estimate over the course of my stay I was pricked no less than 200 times. I called them The Excavators because they would often miss my vein due to the swelling and have to dig around until they found one. All this before the sun came up. 

Uninterrupted sleep became impossible. Machines are constantly beeping and if it isn’t yours, it’s someone in the room next to you. This isn’t the Four Seasons. Doors are always open which means you hear conversations from your ailing neighbors, many of whom are not doing well upstairs. I switched rooms three times due to different needs, but somewhere on my admission application I must have checked a box that said “Room Preference: Next to Screaming Guy.”

Nurses told me this was typical for winter. People use the hospital to escape the cold for as long as they can. I know I can be annoying but at least I’ve never thrown a plate at a nurse while calling them an uncaring bitch. No matter what, I was always kind and grateful. I would constantly let the medical and cleaning staff know that I was grateful for them. Some of them would even slip me extra pain meds as a thank you. Hello hallucinations!

Being in the penitentiary, I mean hospital, for 33 days, means you are eating that food the whole time as well. For the first two weeks, I was on a “no solids, minced food” diet. Everything was pureed sludge and it tasted like nothing. No seasoning, not even on Thanksgiving. It was brutal. I never thought I would despise mashed potatoes but try eating them for a month straight and you’d just as soon shove them up your ass than put them in your mouth. Eventually, as my situation improved, I was upgraded to almost real food. It was better, but marginally so. It was still cheap powder sculpted into what looked like a piece of chicken. 

The combination of food and constant meds wasn’t helping my bowels. At one point, I had gone 7 days without pooping. I wasn’t eating much, but it was enough that I should have been pushing something out the back door. Presenting: My First Enema! For those of you who get queasy, feel free to skip the following paragraph.

The nurse told me I would have anywhere from 2-15 minutes after the enema before everything inside of me would escape. At the time, I could hardly shift from side to side. Getting out of bed and to a commode with a time limit scared me, but I knew it was the only option. She took the bottle, shoved it up my butt (told you I was basically in prison), and squirted about 15 ounces into me. Did I enjoy it? Yes, you sick fuck. I did. But then reality hit. I need to get to that bedside commode; fast. As painful as it was, I made it there in about 90 seconds and I had zero time to spare. As soon as my butt hit the plastic, the process began. The potion didn’t have much time to break it up, so while this poop was relieving, it was also extremely painful. Try to squeeze a basketball into a golf hole. That’s how it felt. 45 minutes later, I was back in bed, and ready for all the intravenous pain medicine they were willing to pump into me. It felt like I let the whole cell block take me to pound town. 

IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST SECTION, WELCOME BACK! 

Most days I had to endure some type of procedure. 3 MRI’s, 5 ultrasounds, 4 CT scans. Due to the edema (swelling) of my entire body, these were very painful experiences. I had to be completely still while my legs and arms were twisted into unnatural positions. In more than one of them, I cried for over an hour as the machines took pictures of my insides. I did anything I could to think of happier times, but nothing worked. My tolerance for pain was being tested on a daily basis. 

Two and half weeks in, I began physical and occupational therapy. Finally, I leave my bed. At first, it was only a few steps, but by the end of the first week, I was using a walker and going down the entire hallway. A long way from smashing balls on the tennis courts but progress nonetheless. I was advised by nurses to not do “too much” because insurance would see it as me ready to leave the hospital, when in fact, I was not. Mentally I could have danced the cha-cha straight out the goddamn doors but physically, I was still dealing with the infection and overall weakness. So alas, escape was still on the horizon.

PT and OT were nice breaks from my days of watching TV. Because of the drugs, I couldn’t maintain the attention it would take to read a book or write. My mind was there but my eyes were filled with those worm-like streamers that float by without a care in the world. I was constantly hallucinating but not in a way that caused existential thought. So when I would spend an hour climbing into a fake car or picking up bean bags on the ground, it took some of the boredom away. Plus, it felt great to move. It hurt like fuck, but I’m athletic by nature so even going up and down four steps was a way to let me know, this is all temporary.

On December 11, my dad unexpectedly died. Fuck. Me. I sat in my hospital bed and sobbed for hours, my wife by my side to soak up the tears with her love and sweater. Emotionally it was her loving embrace that consoled me but that crimson wool top absorbed most of the moisture. At that moment, it felt like my entire world was collapsing in on itself. Everything I loved about life, aside from the people, had fallen to shit. No comedy, no sunshine, no real food, no dad, and the new fucking crazy psycho next to me is the loudest one yet. It was 3.5 weeks in and I was ready to be OUT. 

I’ll be honest. Multiple moments I wished for death. I was ready to pay my tab and check out. But alas, that isn’t my style. This too shall pass. If a horrible sequence of events is stacking up at the same time, then surely an abundance of riches will shortly follow. Think positively and everything will be cool. I combatted every negative thought with a happy one. It was all I could do to not slam my head into the fucking beeping blood pressure machine. 

The day my dad died, I did get some good news. I was told that I would be discharged tomorrow. Thank the patron saint of whatever because my tears were turning my place of slumber into a waterbed. I went to sleep, thinking about joining the outside world. Only, it wasn’t my time.

The next day an orthopedic surgeon came in and told me my knee wasn’t draining properly. I would need minor surgery that would keep me in for another 5 days. I was crushed. Every negative emotion spilled out of me like a turned over 18-wheeler on the side of the highway. Whatever joy I had left had evaporated. My kind demeanor had been tested and I snapped at my wife in a point of desperation. She was there every day and I apologized profusely when she called me later. It wasn’t like me. None of this was. This is not my life.

Surgery went well and on day 33, it was time to leave. Nurse Aleesha pushed me in a wheelchair toward the parking lot and I carefully and painfully, climbed into my wife’s car. BYE ALEESHA. I cried the hardest I’ve ever cried. The weight of this ordeal was hitting me. It was beautiful outside and I was elated, enthusiastic, depressed, deprived, confused, etc etc. Have you ever felt every emotion at the same time and your body was shaking because it didn’t know how to react? I can now say, yes, I have. I don’t recommend it. I had survived and I was going home.

As I write this, I’ve been out for 12 days. I’m attached to an IV bag 24/7 that is feeding me a constant stream of antibiotics. I need it for almost a month. It’s in a fanny pack and thanks to many years of festivals, I can rock a fanny. I’ve stopped using a walker and am hobbling around at the same speed as my 12-year-old pug. Progress. Every day brings new challenges and fortunately I am motivated to heal. Getting back to my daily routines is bringing me back to what it means to live a healthy life. I’m cooking my own breakfast, doing the dishes, pretty soon I might even have sex with my wife. She isn’t holding her breath.

Everything is a lesson and I’d be insane to not allow this to teach me. It has brought perspective on simple things. I never thought it would be difficult to poop. I never considered Taco Bell gourmet cuisine. I never realized that three continuous hours of sleep is a blessing. 

I pray that you never have to go through anything like this. But if you do, know that if I made it, so can you. I just hope that the crazy man is on a different floor.