An Unexpected Life.

Nobody really expects catastrophe or illness to befall them.

Even though we’re all aware of the cataclysm called death, we trundle along day-by-day as if it was not out there lurking, like Edger Allen Poe’s nightmare in the chimneys above our roofs.

That is, until you are confronted with your mortality.

That’s what I experienced when the doctor walked into my Denver hospital room. I’d been delivered by ambulance for some tests on my heart. But it wasn’t my heart.

He said, “You’ve got leukemia. It looks like it’s acute myeloid leukemia, probably M4, and about 40 percent of your blood is unusable to your body.” And then he walked out of the room, saying nothing more. What?!

That is how my journey—my unexpected life—began.

Within a few days of the doctor’s lovely (ahem) bedside manner, I was on a plane from Denver to Houston, Texas—wearing a surgical mask, scared, alone, and headed for treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center. During the next eight months, I would be placed in isolation, my immune system would be destroyed by chemo, I would contract chicken pox and shingles at the same time (because I had no immune system), and while in that room, endure the sounds of jackhammers when they started doing construction on the roof above my bed. I got a divorce. I was put on morphine for the pain of losing the protective membrane that ran from my throat to my lips. My closest friend in the hospital ward, James, was from West Texas, and had a wife and young son. He played music for the nurses, and would put up little notes all over the transplant floor. We would jam and trade songs, both in our masks and gowns. But, while we were undergoing treatment, he died from the disease we were both fighting.

And yet, there were these special, unbelievable moments and gifts that helped me on my cancer journey.

My sister Marty met me at the Houston airport and was there for all of the initial consultations. I’d received the family gift of tenacity—a trait at the core of our beliefs—inherited from our Southern-born mother who survived two radical mastectomies in her 60s and still lived well into her 80s. My two sisters, my brother, my son and his wife, and me—we all seem to have that “face it and get on with it” attitude that comes from our strong and stubborn mom and dad.

My doctors and nurses were incredible. In fact, all of the male and female nurses and technicians were incredible. Okay, except maybe that Russian one—she was tough. My caregiver Jennifer and helper Delores were unwavering in their belief in the power of healing. And my sister Jane gave me the gift of life: a bone marrow transplant via stem cells.

Nobody gets through cancer alone.

But none of those gifts would have mattered if I hadn’t found my own strength to fight.

It started with my self-talk: Get get out of bed and walk, Chris.

And so I did. It was nine paces across the isolation room and nine paces back. When I got out of the hospital and into the little apartment we rented near Herman Park, I could only walk 100 yards on the first day. But within a week I could walk almost a mile. And I’ve kept walking ever since—I do four miles a day and I’ve climbed two mountains in Colorado, a 14,278 foot peak and another that was 12,845 feet. I’ve been walking for seven years now since that first day in isolation, and as long as I can, I’ll keep walking.

There were two more things that happened:

I’m a musician and songwriter, so that’s what I did.

The chemo took all of the calluses off my fingers, so it hurt like hell to touch my guitar strings, but I kept writing and playing in the hospital anyway.

I wrote the songs for an album, Better Days, which was released in 2012. It won a ton of awards and was the best solo album I’ve ever done. And since then, I’ve been nominated for a Grammy with a group of musicians, including Dee Dee Bridgewater and the late Al Jarreau. I’ve performed with Amy Grant, Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, and John Oats to name only a few. I’ve toured Europe three times, been the subject of a movie about the first Colorado jam band that I’d joined in the 1970s. And my 15th album, Blues With Horns, is just coming out with the band I formed 33 years ago.

I feel pretty amazingly lucky. Focusing on music pulled me out of my fear and propelled me forward.

I’ve also been an assistant professor at the University of Colorado for about 11 years and a teacher for almost 16 years. Teaching was my second love. For an entire spring semester and the first part of the fall semester, I did what I knew how to do: teach classes, grade papers, and meet with students via Skype and the internet. They would put my big ol’ bald head up on the big-screen monitor in the classroom, and I would do the lectures too. When I got back into the classroom that October in 2010, one of my students said, “Hey professor, you’re much smaller in person.” I love these kids. I was even given the “Award For Excellence in Teaching” from my college.

If you sit in a hospital bed thinking about how awful you feel—you just feel worse.

My survival came from actions I took to overcome my fear, to become as fearless as I could be.

I faced and embraced all of the horrors of cancer treatment trying to live up to my mother’s example. I wanted to be worthy of the gift of life that my sister Jane had given me. And worthy of the love and encouragement from my family and my caregiver, Jennifer.

And that’s the hardest part when you are in the vortex of treatment: remembering that this is all a gift.

As a teacher, I see my students live on their cellphones more than they live in the actual moment. To a lesser degree, I also share that dependency. They get constant reassurance from social media that the world is wonderful, and that they are wonderful, smart, fantastic.

But when we are by ourselves, without the constant reassurance of those friends and networks, we must deal with the actual human condition, which is mortal. It contains fear and self-doubt and an understanding that we might not live forever.

This happens in illness. The world you live in, your competency, your value—much of which is reinforced by our constant communication with others via social media, is interrupted and sometimes completely taken away.

It was for me. My world, as it existed, stopped reflecting my competence and my “immortality” and started reflecting my condition. The effect was so powerful, that because I spent that time so sick, I couldn’t really communicate—and my world became small and very mortal.

So, I wake up every day, ask to be of service, and thank the good lord and the universe for one more day.

What I feel is more than gratitude—it’s forgiveness for the shortcomings humans have. We are mortal, and we have to forgive ourselves for that mortality and learn to celebrate it. I have this day. You have this day. This is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. The red light is on; the tape is rolling…what will you do with your day today?

For more info on Chris Daniels, visit his website. 

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Author: Chris Daniels
Image: Author’s Own
Editor: Catherine Monkman

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