Monthly Archives: November 2022

And then I was 50

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I really did not have a master plan in mind when I sat down to write this post. Because it is me, I knew I wanted to write a post to mark my 50th birthday. I also felt that I should put an update out there around my cancer status. These two things are Big Deals in my life right now, so they got mashed together into what is going to be a very stream-of-consciousness type of post.

Let’s begin…

I will start with the health stuff. Last Wednesday I met with my new oncologist at Moffitt. For those of you who skim the headlines for the important details, all the testing I have had done since July has reaffirmed my original diagnosis. I have a well differentiated neuroendocrine tumor on the head of my pancreas. It is approximately 13cm by 11cm by 2cm. It has been growing for a very long time, has not metastasized, and is not posing an immediate threat to my life. In fact, if it had not been discovered during an unrelated ultrasound of my circulatory system, I still would not know it was there. This is not to say that it would not eventually become a health risk. These types of tumors release lots of hormones that cause other health issues (in my case it may be the cause of my Type II diabetes), and they can eventually grow to a point where they start interfering with the functions of the organs they are coming into contact with (also something I have run into, but I was unaware of why).

The meeting I had on Wednesday was primarily to determine how to go about getting my body ready for the surgery necessary to remove the tumor. There were two options on the table – radiation and chemotherapy. The goal of either option was to shrink the tumor so that there was less contact with the surrounding organs. Radiation would have been a more aggressive type of therapy, but (for reasons that I am not entirely clear on and ultimately do not matter) I am not a candidate for that type of therapy. My oncologist also does not feel it is necessary to put me through intense chemotherapy that would require a port to be installed and multiple visits to a medical facility. What I will be receiving instead is pill-based chemotherapy I can do at home that is minimally invasive with few major side effects. The tumor is made up of two different components. There is a hard, “solid” tumor that is surrounded by a larger, fluid-filled one. The chemotherapy should shrink the hard tumor, and a procedure will follow to aspirate and drain the fluid from the larger area. All of which is designed to make it easier to get the entirety of the mass removed surgically.

Which is all wonderful news. Unless you are me.

This type of therapy takes a long time to be effective. In setting my expectations for what I am facing, my doctor said it could be up to a year before we know if the treatments are making a difference. This is, honestly, not the answer I wanted.

I want this to be over, friends. I’m tired of being tired. Tired of worrying about how this is going to impact my life. Tired of every plan I make having a big asterisk on it that indicates “depending on how I feel at the time.” Tired of feeling like this whole situation is a huge burden on everyone around me. Just…tired.

I broke down and had a good cry over this whole thing on Saturday when I realized that I did not have the energy or will to deal with the stress surrounding going to an event I had been looking forward to for months. I am also looking ahead to the next year and realizing that I am going to have to plan the things I do even more carefully, and I am likely to be forced to continue my hiatus from acting as my therapy cycles are not going to be conducive to rehearsing.

The cry I had on Saturday was cathartic, though, and I knew that once the initial shock of what I heard on Wednesday wore off I would start to feel better about things. The news was GOOD news. My prospects are still wonderful. I have a long road ahead of me and it is not going to be easy, but I have no reason to think the outcome will be anything but positive.

Which leads me to my 50th birthday. Today.

While I was out for my walk this morning, I found a $1 bill on the ground of the park I go to. I am considering it a sign. I am putting it with my collectibles in my office and I am saving it until I am officially declared cancer-free. I realize I cannot really buy much for one dollar today, and I will likely be able to buy even less ten years from now, but that is my plan anyway.

I had a wonderful celebration yesterday with some of my family members and several friends who I have known since I was a teenager. I had some of my favorite foods. I received some lovely gifts and even lovelier cards with some sentiments in them that moved me to the core.

This morning I received a birthday present from my wife that absolutely blew me away beyond any expectations I may have had. It is so perfect I am not sure any gift I have ever received, or will receive in the future, will top it. Tonight, she is taking me to Ruth’s Chris Steak House for dinner. While we have had to scale back a few of the activities we planned for the rest of my birthday month, we still have a lot of exciting things to look forward to this weekend and beyond.

My life is fulfilling. I am happy. I am surrounded by good people who love me.

Everything else is noise.

I’m excited to see what the next fifty years bring.

Ambush

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One of the first things I had drilled into me when I first started dipping my toes into the madcap world of organizational change was that you never, ever, “ambush” someone in a meeting with questions they are not prepared to answer. This was particularly important in cases when you had concerns or questions about something another person in the meeting was attempting to accomplish. These types of discussions, I was told, should ideally happen before the meeting so that when you go in front of the rest of the group you were presenting a “unified front.”

In other words, you and the other person hash your issues out in a meeting-before-the-meeting, come to an understanding, and then go and present your decision to the group as the “right” decision.

This scenario is one of the many reasons why I have a long-standing reputation as a person who hates meetings. It represents a fine example of collaboration theater, and it is just as wasteful as the meeting-after-the-meeting where decisions that were supposedly made tend to get undercut.

I have been trying to get my head around why this happens for years, and I have landed on what I think are a few main reasons, but they all tend to circle back to two root causes – Lack of psychological safety, and lack of trust.

Psychological safety gets tossed around a lot these days, and I feel like the importance of the notion has been dampened as a result. It seems like there is a common misconception that when someone says uses the phrase “psychological safety” they are implicitly implying that there should be no conflict. I interpret psychological safety to mean essentially the exact opposite. For me, psychological safety represents situations in which healthy conflict can occur. Ones in which people felt free to express their opinions, ask questions, challenge assumptions, and otherwise contribute without fear of being negatively impacted by doing so. Negative impacts can range from being characterized as a troublemaker, being complained about to a supervisor, being passed over for promotions, being bullied, or even losing a job (to list just a few things).

Trust can also be interpreted in a variety of ways in this context. Trust that the other people in the room have common goals for one, but it also includes trust in the competence of people outside of your immediate sphere of influence. Trust that those you are working with are operating with the best of intentions and at the best of their abilities is another.

Neither of these concepts is new, which is one of the reasons why I find myself surprised that both things are still a factor in many modern professional settings. Perhaps surprised is not really the proper word. Creating trust in the workplace is hard. Creating cultures where team members feel genuine psychological safety is hard. These things require dedication, diligence, and a significant amount of time. Time that can also be spent trying to “get things done.”

Completing tasks is easy. Much easier than changing the way we work, and treat, each other in the workplace.