Intermission - Photos of progression

I feel like this is a fairly important thing to include in the chronicling of this experience to help give everyone visual familiarity with the development and progress, the rising and falling action, if you will.


This was taken when I was living in Providence, Rhode Island. This was September of 2008. I unforunately can not come up with a more accurate date. This is a decent “before” photograph. I look normal, a little sleepy, but normal…healthy.


This was taken in late December after my first biopsy, you can see a little bit of a lump towards the back of my neck, this is also around the time that the area between my trachea and the outside the left side of my neck began to swell, but at that point if I kept my head up straight you couldn’t tell that it was there. I actually think this was taken very early on Christmas after I came home from Midnight Mass with my mother.


February 1st 2009. You can see pretty well what is happening there (note: medicine cabinet gives a separate angle & tracheal deviation) excuse the effeminate pose.


Also February 1st 2009 at a better angle to emphasize the size (note: scar from first biopsy & tracheal deviation.)


March 6th 2009 with HR from the Bad Brains - after a Bad Brains/Propagandhi show at a small venue. Unbelievable night that included, entirely against my typical behavior, indulging a little marijuana because when you get the once in a lifetime opportunity to stand in a parking lot and have conversations with the fucking Bad Brains it’s worth it to partake just so that you can say, “Yeah, we hung out and smoked and when we passed the joint to Dr. Know he said “Nah Mon, I’m good” - (note: size of the swelling and SEVERE tracheal deviation.)


Scar from the second biopsy. Just for fun.


I am going to go ahead and date this April 10th 2009. A few days out of the hospital after the first intake of chemo. (note: some swelling, but significantly less.)


April 12th 2009. Some swelling, but pretty much normal. (note: left side of the picture, not the right side - I flipped this for some reason.)


Also April 12th 2009. I am posting this because I was feeling so good that day that I decided to style my hair as it was designed to be styled and it looked good. I like to believe that is a quiff that Morrissey would be proud of.


April 18th 2009. Doing my best H.P. Lovecraft. I am mostly posting this because I think my Dad will like it.

Now that we’re caught up to speed with that I can go to sleep. Very quickly I’d like to thank everyone that is keeping up by way of either being related to me, AFL, b9, moz-solo, livejournal, or howherever else you may have been directed here. Everyone on all of those sites has been extremely supportive and I extend my deepest gratitude to each and every one of you, this is the best way that I can deal with exactly what is going on and will probably be my best method for remembering exactly what it was I felt and what it was I was thinking through this unique period of my life and if anyone can get anything else out of this that is an incredible thought. I encourage all tumblr users to follow and I will follow you back in return, I also encourage you all to take care of yourselves and to face any adversity with a proverbial arsenal of optimism, positivity, and some sort of sense of humor.

Godspeed.