Kick It. Kick It Good.

Then I got really afraid I was going to die. People were asking if I should go to the hospital - I was hesitant but then I insisted I need to go. Someone help me!

I was feeling really tired and dizzy, and the airport was shutting down for the night and we were being asked to leave the airport in small groups - they were calling out names - so I had to wait outside for the ambulance though no one had called it yet and I was getting worried.

Two young girls started to harass me. I charged them and said something like “you don’t wanna try me” and I felt this violence coming up.

A young girl with long blonde hair was ran up to fight me, and it was feeling nervous that I was going to get beat up.

Then all of a sudden, the crowd started looping and hollering, and Angela Lansbury had come up from behind and punched her really hard to help me out. I was shocked that she was there. She walked away with that perfectly coiffed hair in a great fitting black suit.

You have these two women - beautiful, centered, strong - creating that moment for themselves. I can’t say that I “know” know either of them but from my little interactions with each of them (I offered a poster of the event I’d gotten as a peace offering to the family asking to sit in the saved space, and they declined but were so cool about it), they both seemed lovely.

These stunning women - if you saw other of them on the street, you’d think they were professional models (not that it matters) getting physical so quickly and then just ready to just ride it out. Both standing their ground. As Asian and Black women, how many times do they have to do that in small and big ways, a thousand times a day. Maybe that’s why they both bounced back from it so quickly, how many times do they have to square up and protect themselves, their space? Likely too many to count.

I went with some friends to see Patti LaBelle yesterday in Stern Grove, a gorgeous park here in SF. My friend’s neighbor had offered to drive, she was also going and meeting friends there.

We got there early to get good seats and she asked us to help her save space for her friends. I actually felt like we were saving an enormous amount of room for just four people who were on their way, it was rude.

A family encroached a little bit on the saved space - it was10 minutes before the concert started and these people we were waiting for were nowhere to be found so it honestly, it made sense that they wanted to sit there. They started yelling which was wildly uncomfortable.

It was crazy but what got crazier is the woman who drove us there got super animated and started screaming at the family to get off her space- that they were “encroaching”. The woman who’d sat down was quite heavy set. She didn’t listen and instead slid further back, which meant that she sat squarely on my friend’s neighbor. Right on top of her. Then the neighbor started screaming that she did not give consent to be touched and was trying to shove her off, but the woman sitting her didn’t really give AF. When she first arrived, she had such cool, positive energy. Then things took a turn. So for about 15 minutes, this amazingly beautiful woman was sitting on a stranger, dancing and singing to Patti LaBelle, neither of them moving and everyone around them paralyzed with shock. I swear to God no one is going to believe me but it really happened.

It was wild behavior, frankly from both of them – they were both right and both wrong. They were screaming at each other and finally, security came and they all worked it out. Kind of.

I was so mortified. I could barely focus on the concert, all of us surrounding them felt really weird about it. Finally, her friends came about 20 minutes later, which was so obnoxious.

Then the woman who commanded the seat space took it a step further – she got the police involved and wanted to file a police report. Nothing happened. She didn’t press charges, but they were there and had to interview a bunch of people. I refused because it’s none of my business.

After the concert, the seat saver dropped us off and we all went to my friend’s house to debrief. Half of me was horrified at their completely wild behavior and the other half of me was respecting how much they both stood their ground to the point where it got a little crazy.

I’m home, exhausted but energized. I ended up meeting some truly incredible people who are brilliant, focused on helping people live longer and better. I’m not around scientists a lot - the brilliance, the honesty, the passion that fuels what they do is remarkable.

At dinner we weee all answering the question “what would life look like if you led with aliveness vs urgency?” and they all said they don’t think about it as either/or. When I asked them to follow up, do they have such vitality in their jobs because they know they could literally be saving peoples’ lives if they’re successful, and the answer was no – we feel an incredible responsibility and sense of urgency. If we don’t do it right more people are going to die who don’t have to. One guy said “4000 people a day die from the disease I know I can fix. I work a lot of weekends.”

The good news:

my one job here is to record an interview with different participants who would like a profile from the human development model my clients have developed. The interviews are going well. They get extremely personal for some reason which is odd given, I’m with people in the longevity and health community who are running billion dollar companies and sitting down for these interviews. I was not prepared is an understatement. But they all say it’s a great experience so I’m good with it.

The bad news

I just finished an interview, which was incredibly personal where the participant told me some things about his marriage and his life and his child who has a very serious disease and it was very intense. The questions we ask are quite professional in nature but he chose to take it that way. It was an exhausting experience for him but I think really meaningful.

All up into the point where we were finishing up, and we both heard something in the phone that indicated that the interview had not been recorded. An hour. Of time and not just time, but a DEEPLY personal experience.

This is not a man who has an hour to waste, and when I tell you what my face looked like when that alarm went off and what his face look like, it’s something I will hope to push into the deep well of my repressed memories as soon as possible. He was as gracious as he could be, but he was upset, which is absolutely understandable. I had to go confess to my clients what happened and they were so kind. We’ve actually had a really good day here, so I think they were buzzing off of that but still, I felt terribly that I had let them down.

The miraculous news

I got back to my room and was obsessed with figuring out what went wrong and lo and behold, the transcript showed up. Because I am a neurotic perfectionist, I had three backups of the recording and the first one that failed didn’t stop the other two. So we have the transcript and all is well.

I was waiting for my regular check in with my oncologist today when I read this, and it broke my brain too. I don’t think I realized how much guilt I feel over surviving. My life hasn’t really changed very much since my diagnosis and treatment – my spiritual life is still pretty shitty. I’m still avoidant. I spent a lot of time hiding from life instead of living it. I’m trying but probably not hard enough.

I assumed cancer was my wake up call and while it probably was, I spend an inordinate amount of time feeling afraid I’m not living up to it. Almost scared that despite having an intervention that was truly miraculous, I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing now that I’m still alive. I’m not grateful enough. I’m not living life enough. I’m not taking risks and loving people enough. I don’t volunteer.

I don’t want to spit in God’s face, giving me this chance and honestly, I felt like I have. Like I’m blowing it. It makes me scared that I don’t have the capacity for big changes so reading this was like dipping my head in a cool bucket of relief.

Maybe I made all that up in my head and I don’t have to worry if I’m not living up to some big cosmic expectation. I feel like I’m failing every day but maybe it’s OK to still hate hiking, not “use my gifts” and love watching YouTube until 1 PM.

And by 1pm, I mean 4pm.

Or that just might be an excuse for being really, really lazy. On my tombstone, it will read “she could not be trusted with her life, so maybe it’s good that it’s over.”

I know myself well enough that I use humor in these appointments, especially with my oncologist who is hilarious in her own right. So I wrote down some questions. I talked about the burning sensation in my boob that I felt a few days ago, but that it’s gone now. She said not to worry about it, but if it comes back and stays, to let her know. I mentioned feeling a pain when I moved my arm almost in my rib cage and I worried it was cancer in my bones and she reminded me that I fractured a rib during radiation, and that they were keeping an eye on it. They didn’t mention it at the time because I was having a pretty rough time of it, but then we laughed that I have such a high pain tolerance, I didn’t really even notice it until I complained about it hurting a little bit about three months after it happened.

So she’ll do a chest CT next February and I’ll know more then but she said they rarely come back when it’s this type of fracture, so I’ll just live with it.

There’s a lot to live with – the neuropathy in my foot that I don’t know if it’s getting better or if I’m just used to it, but she did say that by now, it’s permanent. I’m really lucky that it’s not worse than it is. I can still walk just fine, run, exercise all I want to, so it’s really too bad that I hate to exercise. It doesn’t impact my mobility at all, it’s just a silent little reminder of that nightmare, though, and of course I feel it right at night before I go to bed when it’s quiet which is a delight.

So I got all my questions answered. We talked about the anxiety of reoccurrence and how it ebbs and flows, but when it has you and it’s grip, it is incredibly tough to deal with. I was relieved to hear that that’s normal and she said it gets better over time. It’s like grief – it never goes away, it just gets easier to carry.

We spent the rest of the time laughing. I told her I probably need therapy but instead, I’m targeting all of my unexpressed rage and trauma on people online, especially those wellness grifters who recommend apricot seeds and ivermectin instead of chemotherapy, scaring young mothers away from traditional treatment and killing them in the process. I got pretty animated and said “i fucking hate those assholes and I love tearing them apart online”. To which she replied, “GOOD. I hate them too. They kill people. Tell them I said so and to fuck off” and we laughed until we had tears on our eyes. God I love her.

I made my six month appointment before I left because I told her she’s like the most popular restaurant in San Francisco, impossible to get a table. She turned around and said “that’s what happens when you’re the best.” Then she glanced at my labs, told me I’m still anemic, probably forever, gave me a peace sign and left.

Me before my 6am zoom call frantically trying to figure out how the Fireflies.AI app works because my client needed me to record it and I accidentally ended the meeting and I was frantic.

Me after I was ghosted and the person that was supposed to be interviewing let me know 40 minutes in that they needed to reschedule.

Here’s the hard truth I’m figuring out about myself – at Apple, I was in charge. The meeting didn’t start without me. I set the town. I made the decisions and frankly looking back, I was pretty disruptive. I didn’t always listen. I was frequently late. I didn’t always use other’s time well,. Not all of the time and I always made sure people got what they needed, I wasn’t obnoxious…or was I? Sometimes, yes. It’s embarrassing in hindsight.

Being a consultant. I don’t make any of these decisions. I am in service to the client and sometimes they listen and sometimes they don’t. In a weird way it’s good for me to not be in control, I used to be told that I had a “manager” vibe and I never got it entirely but I do now. It’s a little cringe but when we know better, we do better.

Then I confirmed an Airbnb reservation over Christmas in Vashon Island where my sister and her kids can stay, and my brother and his family can come over to. No one has the space to fit 19 people in their home comfortably so I had the idea to do this.