My earliest interests in Engineering came from trying to decipher what my dad did for a living. That same profession, working in and with semiconductors, took my family to Singapore where I found out building lego sets and programming them to do things counted as real coursework. Those middle school engineering courses were led by my professor Jim Deibley who recently responded to an email I sent him when I stumbled across the certifications I earned in his class:
“Love this!!! Thanks for sharing. I am very surprised indeed you still have these sheets of paper after the lengthy time, overseas moves, etc.. You must have gone to the Brett Kavanaugh school of keeping school paperwork! haha!
How are things? I haven’t heard from you in awhile.. no musings?? Where are you and what are you doing cool or interesting??”
Ask, and it shall be given you, Prof.
On a warm Indian evening in Bangalore I stepped out of my apartment briskly walking to pickup my daily routine of healthy sandwich and salad at a nearby shop called Bhukkad. Once you exit the oasis that is Raheja Residency Apartments, the world was grimier. The sidewalks, for the few that exist, were rugged mountains of concrete with a particular lack of care provided to them.
There was a young man, clearly destitute, laying unconscious on the ground half on the concrete and half on the dirt by a tree. As I walked around him, while also avoiding a sidewalk pothole, I wondered if he was dead. I couldn’t tell, and even if he was I had no idea whom to call. What is the 911 in India? I never learned or cared to learn.
That’s because I’m a piece of trash, and it was me that was dead.
Oh yeah, what was this essay supposed to be about?
Well, given I don’t live in India anymore I won’t be able to serenade you with the many grievances an entitled American can offer from abroad. I’m more or less back in San Francisco still piecing together what happened in the last few years — not just to San Francisco, but the USA too. Maybe it’s more than me that requires intervention.
I’ve decided I will pick up writing again and to that end this has been driven by a great urgency in needing to explain to various family members what it is I do (or at least fake that part). Had I been born two generations ago, I doubt they would be so interested in how my day in the mango farms had transpired. After all, they were the ones that brought me to the USA, nourished and nurtured me, provided me an education, and supported everything and anything I’ve done. You could almost say the confusion surrounding my eccentricities are of their own fault.
The farming was fruitful, I might cheekily quip.
I was standing in a backyard the size of the block I grew up on with QNY pestering me with questions I actively avoid asking myself (a good hallmark of an annoyingly great friend). Yes, I’m non-committal to stuff. No, I don’t have a real idea of what I want to do. Yes, I know what I’m doing. Yes, I’m lying. Then he hit me with this:
“Life is boring. That’s the truth!” — QNYOnly QNY, an immigrant from a village in Pakistan who relocated to the USA’s equivalent of a village in Pakistan, Detroit Michigan, could drop something so casually and bombastic that it would volley in your mind for months. It’s unclear if he was messing with me or gifting me the key to life itself.
“We don’t get to choose our time. Death is what gives life meaning. To know your days are numbered, your time is short. You’d think after all this time I’d be ready, but look at me. Stretching one moment out into a thousand just so I can watch the snow.” — C. Robert Cargill, Screenplay Writer for Dr. Strange.
It was an early morning somewhere in my third cycle of chemotherapy when I realized I might not make it.
Long gone were the days of research on what is cancer and how to treat it, along with the surgeries where a testicle and all of my abdominal lymph nodes were removed to prevent its further march. That all occurred in a matter of 8 weeks.
The first few cycles of chemotherapy had gone well. I was chirpy and confident. My friends and family assured me: Niket, if anyone can do this it’s you. You are so strong. This is another line on your resume of life. I had expected nothing but success. I received letters and cards, and countless thoughts and prayers.
But it wasn’t cancer that was about to relieve me of this life. It was me, Niket Desai, born August 2nd, 1987 into a lovely and supportive family that made their way from India to the US in search of a better life and better future for me. For all of their many sacrifices and hardships, I secretly planned on throwing it away. I told my Dad an early February morning that I wanted to cease my chemotherapy. The cost of living had finally broken me.
No more, please, I begged him.
I didn’t want to die.
I just didn’t want to live anymore.
It wasn’t his belief in what I was saying that scared me, but how much I could see he wished this curse upon himself, rather than me. He blamed himself for something that was no fault of his own.
The wonderful women and men at Stanford Cancer Center’s infusion rooms are Gods amongst humanity. You wouldn’t ever be told, by speech or in their face, of the two people died of pneumonia the evening before, a common occurrence when your body has destroyed its own protection mechanisms. You wouldn’t know by their mood how their day had been going. If their marriage was in shambles. If they had slept the night before. If they had eaten or were hungry. You, the patient, are the first priority. The person obviously dying, as if everyone else in the room wasn’t.
Chemotherapy is different depending on what kind of cancer and treatment you have. Some people come in weekly while people like me came in daily. It would take around 10 hours a day to transfer the cisplatin, cut with a lot of saline, into my body. The angiocatheter, out of respect of the few non-collapsed veins remaining, would be left in when I went home where the small blood in the end of the tube would blacken overnight.
In the first week of chemo, I would speak with other patients who sat next to me and who hadn’t elected to use their dividing curtains. He was a veteran of the Vietnam war, and spent time diving into rivers to defuse or pre-explode bombs setup to destroy American convoys. Can you imagine that: Diving into a dark abyss, feeling your way around for a high-explosive device meant to explode a war ship? It was exhilarating, anxiety-inducing, and despicable at the same time! He died two days later, I found out only after badgering one of the nurses. There is no glamour in death no matter how interesting the circumstances. I stopped talking to other patients in depth from there on out.
And the days, which blended together in a muddied few months, were similar. I would come in and take note of folks I expected to see, and those who weren’t there anymore. The rooms would change time to time and I wondered if that was done to prevent patients from realizing who was missing, and wondering if they would be the next to go.
The morning I woke up and couldn’t carry on I thought of the Vietnam veteran. Was this my abyss? I had stopped taking showers when I realized a strange and unpleasant smell emitted from me that proper scrubbing could not remove. A metallic, acid-like, taste had invaded my mouth, ruining most food and stealing from me the satisfaction of freshly brushed teeth. I had no good reason to look in the mirror, where an ET-like shell of myself crookedly stood. My senses had gone stale, and in that moment I felt stale. And like anything that has become rotten, you discard it.
I had not slept that night and filled the time wondering how it must feel to leave. Maybe I would fall asleep into a pleasant dream staying there while the rest of time and reality moved on without me. Despite my own dramatic tendencies, I wanted to skip any theatrics like being rushed to the hospital. At the same time, I had never considered surrender honorable.
Call Kourosh, I instructed to my Dad. I needed strength from a warrior.
We showed up tardily to the infusion center where I was put into a private room and bed with more monitoring than usual. I laughed, and cried, at Kourosh and my Dad argue on retirement investing strategies which pulled me through the day. And the rest of my friends and family pulled me through the remainder of my chemotherapy. (Hey Mizono.)
I try not to think too much about that day or any of the days from that period of my life. Time to time I’ll catch a waft of rubbing alcohol and be transported into a terror-inducing anxiety. A large part of me is embarrassed and ashamed by the matter as a whole. If I had been more resilient perhaps I would have been kinder and manageable, especially to my family. Looking back I wish I could have owned it more graciously, more genuinely. If I didn’t do it then, maybe I can do it now.
We are led to believe that life is preferable to death. There were days before, during, and well after my cancer diagnosis for which I wasn’t sure. I never considered the cost of survival.
I received a piece of paper with a few examination results as part of my official medical discharge, and my official entry into the cancer survivorship community (at least statistically).
For my parents, I could sense great relief in them. I felt no different from before: a boy that went through a process in which some people come out and others do not. If I had any power over my circumstances I would have skipped the years of anxiety and gripping fear that my disease would return to finish me off — especially if it possessed even half of my own trademark stubbornness.
On exit from treatment a number of Februaries ago, I made a promise to deepen my relationships with my friends and focus on them in the bonus time I was given. The other side of that coin was shutting myself off from others, especially new people and significant others, so I could not disappoint them in case I ended up dying after a scheduled checkup.
On the first day of 2013 I was in Los Angeles celebrating the New Year when a beautiful young woman had come into the carnival that is Saddle Ranch at 9am. We hit it off and decided to stay in touch to which I meekly admitted I would be entering chemotherapy soon and wasn’t sure it would be a good idea if we chatted further. A small part of me was already preparing for failure, expecting death.
After some reflection, and prodding from folks like Alshak and Joanou, I came to realize those were not specific behaviors. It was repeated, in different forms, across work, friendships, dates, and any meaningful commitment. Looking back, a part of me was dead amongst the living parts.
Chemotherapy is a treatment with the sole purpose of destroying malignant cells, and any other that might assist these bad actors. It is ruthless, thorough, and careless. It has no nuance nor thoughtfulness in its targeting. It is bred and unleashed for destruction.
At my last examination I was surprised to learn there remains platinum in my blood and joints deposited from this destructive process, far after my treatment. So much of cancer treatment is ridding yourself of cancer in body and mind that I was too obtuse to realize something might remain. And in that blindspot I allowed some of my darkest tendencies and thoughts to fester unchecked.
My mom describes GOD as the cycle of Generation, Operation, and Destruction. I didn’t pay enough attention to her wisdom, and the outcome of cancer, to realize I am not the remainder of what was destroyed, but the summation too of what was re-created and added.
People often compare their ails to my condition, back then, and even today, minimizing their position. I remind them any problem affecting them, no matter how trivial, is of equal weight as something like cancer. We prioritize our challenges by which we allow to affect us and should not be ashamed nor minimized by their contents. We all share in the struggle and miracle of life; they are often the same thing. To that, I say:
“That guy writing long emails, who does he think reads that anyway?” — Carlota Salvadores Nolte circa 2015
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