Good Morning John It is one of the days.
For you, it’s Friday. For me, it could be any,
could be any of the major ones. Any of the major seven of the days.
So there’s this young guy I started following on TikTok
after I got cancer ‘cause he was talking about his cancer stories.
And he’s still posting videos, uh-- but he also died?
So that's– And the video’s aren’t like–
I’m dead. They’re just like his normal content.
They’re just like funny videos. So I don’t know whether he scheduled them
knowing he was going to be dead or not knowing that, but either way,
it makes you think. So knew that there was going to be
a bunch of side effects to cancer and chemotherapy
but I did not realize that there would be a bunch
of side effects to stopping chemotherapy and cancer.
I don’t know if that’s the right way to say it. One of the side effects of not having cancer
anymore that is kind of a bonus. I’m a universal donor O negative.
So I always feel guilty whenever I’m not donating blood.
I don’t have to have that one anymore because they will no longer let me
donate my blood, so– freedom!
I’m free of that one. People told me that this would happen–
when you lose your hair because of chemo and then it grows back.
You basically like, re-roll your whole head. Like, it's a dungeons and dragons character,
you’re rolling for charisma and for strength and stuff.
That happens for all of the hair. Now you don’t get to choose what you roll,
but you do re-roll. So if you had curly hair,
you might have straight hair. If you had straight hair,
curly hair. If you were bald,
you might get hair again.
If you had hair, you might be bald. People will lose their gray hair,
they’ll gain gray hair. They will become gingers.
Like, this is not lining up with how I understand these things are supposed to work.
And I haven’t found any research talking about how it works,
cause it doesn’t seem like it matters that much.
I mean compared to all the rest you go through, it is fairly trivial.
So, having rerolled my whole head, I now appear to have less head hair.
I’m more bald, I think. I’m gonna be more bald than I was.
Now it might be important for me to say here, that I have been traditionally been
the kind of guy who could like, get on a first name basis with like
all of his facial hairs. I’ve been mostly ok with this.
I’ve attempted to do the goatee thing two times.
Outcomes, not fantastic. But now, I might, kind of able to grow a beard.
Now, I’m talking a big game here, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen
but you may be looking at me and you may be thinking
“Oh my God. That doesn’t look like Hank Green. That looks like a nerdy Jason Statham.”
You weren’t thinking that. Noone was thinking that.
I find myself staring at beards. Like I was at a housewarming party
and I got, really quite close to a friend of mine, who’s more of a former colleague than a friend.
And I’m just like, oh, I’m just looking at
how your beard hair grows in. Cause I don’t know how that works.
Like do you have longer or more or darker or thicker hair than me.
Like, what’s it gonna be like if all of this hair grows in.
Am I shaving correctly? I’m not really, I think I went too high.
I’m over here, like a 43 year old man asking like, teen boy questions.
Like, is it normal for it to be itchy? Now, I’ve never been personally worried about
my facial hair situation, but this does make me concerned,
cause I know there’s a lot of guys who work really hard to try and get facial hair
and I’m worried if they find out chemo can do that,
they will find a way to start getting chemo. And I just don’t want to see
chemobeard trending on TikTok. I think we all kind of get to keep posting
after wer’re gone. Not like on TikTok necessarily,
but in a way, right? You know all the words I’m saying right now
are words that some person that we’ve forgotten, came up with.
Like, culture, and thus I am made up
of millions of tiny little influences from people that I don’t know about.
I can never know about, will never know about.
Like, me making words and having thoughts is kind of them all still posting.
What a thing to get to be a part of. Another weird side effect of getting done
with chemotherapy is ocular migraines, which have not been fun.
Where I see like a little light show before I start getting nauseous
and my head starts to throb, but they don’t last very long for me.
So that’s something, I guess, to be grateful for.
And of course the last of the most interesting side effects are all psychological.
We’ve got, you know, health anxiety. And I thought, I thought, I honestly did–
that my work anxiety would help distract me from my health anxiety,
but it turns out, at least so far, that ‘s not how it’s worked.
Like I get work anxiety,
and the feeling of the anxiety triggers my health anxiety.
Why does it work that way, ya’ll? And also, I didn't’ think this would happen to me,
but I have a little tinge of the surviver guilt.
I feel like I don't have any like, space to talk about cancer,
because it didn’t hurt me enough. And I know that’s irrational,
but so are a lot of my thoughts these days
and we’re just working through them. And then of course,
there’s the most me-specific side effect,
which is that despite me feeling
tremendously necessary for the last many years,
I was able to just stop, and go do what I needed to do.
And that comes down to a lot of help from a lot of people.
It comes down, of course to you John. But also, of course,
there’s lots of stuff that you didn’t know, and there are many people who are
sort of able to make it work and keep everything, not just working?
But, moving forward.
And that felt really good. Taking a step back for me,
slowing down a little bit
you know I think it would have happened eventually.
but I did get my hand forced a little bit, and so we did it!
And it turned out it was entirely doable. So, despite the fact that I felt
like I was needed for everything, I wasn’t.
And that’s great news, and also a lesson to learn.
I mean it’s not surprising that I would be fascinated by the idea of videos
still coming out after you’re gone. Like, what is it trying to do?
What’s it trying to say? Is it trying to say, like,
even though I know I’m not gonna be here,
I still care what people are gonna think about me after I’m gone?
Or is it saying, this isn’t about me. I wanna make people laugh,
whether I’m here to see it or not. I want people to leave comments whether
I’m there to respond to them or not. Maybe what it’s saying is the things that we make,
aren’t really about us.
And it’s interesting to ask, what would you make,
if you knew people would watch it,
but you wouldn’t be there to see how they felt about it.
That’s very different from how I imagine creation.
Oh, and having thought through what this video’s gonna look like,
just for clarity. I’m not dead.
I didn’t like make a bunch of videos, edit them, and then die, and schedule them.
Like, it seems like, cause especially in the beginning
I didn’t know what day it was that that’s what I was implying.
No, I’m alive.
I just legitimately didn’t know what day it was.
John, I’ll see you on Tuesday.