Honda Pilot Systems Go
My pops has kidney cancer, a year and a half after an insane heart surgery and seven and a half years after miraculously surviving cardiac arrest on random pavement thanks to a stranger named Jim Sanders. It brings to mind a scene in “Speed” when Sandra Bullock scolds Keanu in exasperation after he punctures the gas tank of a public bus that will explode via terrorist detonation if it goes under 50 miles an hour:
“What, you felt you needed another challenge or something?”
He should be fine. We think. The tumor tripled in size over 20 months but doesn’t appear to have spread beyond the kidney wall. The plan is to remove the whole kidney and send personalized versions of the same thank you card to God and evolution for including two of this organ in the blueprint.
The doctors took their sweet time scheduling the life-extending operation, and of course the big day fell in the middle of a winter storm and had to be postponed until next week. I asked my dad what if the cancer spread in the meantime, and he said well, that’s life. I did not find that answer satisfactory.
What can you do… Control what you can control and roll with the rest. I am excellent at controlling what I can control, attempting to control what I can’t, and not going with the flow. I am a control-freak show. That’s why when I heard the news, I finished playing tennis with my cousin rather than dwell on more ambiguous outcomes. (And lost the set for the first time in a while, but likely due to experimentation with my forehand grip rather than a burdened mind.)
Then after another call with the parents, instead of researching kidney cancer or reconciling my feelings, I did a deep dive into how to fix the sagging headliner on my 2007 Honda Pilot (twist pins) and Alcaraz’s grip (semi-western, rotate torso from sideways to front at point of contact). Actionable things I can control and use as distractions.
Yet the universe seemed to want to talk, or I was reading into things normally ignored. The only football game on was the Trust & Will Holiday Bowl. ABC News ran an in-depth segment on living wills, followed by Trump’s speculated health issues. There was an Ethos life insurance commercial and another that was a master class in ad targeting, playing out some long emotional narrative of father and son with a doctor’s appointment circled on the calendar and montage to Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying.” I didn’t catch the product though, so maybe not the best advertising.
I really need to be a proper 41-year-old and get a will together for my kids and a game plan in case my almost-72-year-old father loses his game of roulette. My wife celebrates how he has nine lives, how this cancer wouldn’t have been caught without a scan for his heart problems. Yes that’s pretty cool, but you know what else would be pretty cool, Pops — not getting cancer and heart disease.
Those are two of the four horsemen who ultimately usher you out of this life according to Peter Attia’s “Outlive,” the others being neurodegenerative and metabolic, e.g. Alzheimer’s and diabetes. I am excited to see which one my dad will be sampling next.
Like the Honda Pilot, this is just how it goes until it doesn’t. There will be issues to be managed rather than solved from here on out, with the goal of making it to a hopefully clear stopping point when it doesn’t function anymore or requires too much relative to the quality of functioning to not call it a nice run and scrap for working parts.
My family talks bluntly and makes unfunny jokes about death. It’s not clear whether this is because we operate on more muted emotional wavelengths or are afraid to face emotions. Just yesterday, my mom was vaguely describing how they want to do the paperwork to pull the plug on my dad if the doctors have to… and then she motioned up and down her throat.
Mom, what? I think or hope she meant permanent vegetative state. For the record, he had a tube down his throat after the heart surgery, so this is one of those times when specificity is important, like my haircuts at Great Clips.
I would say it’s probably easier to talk a big game when the prognosis is good. My aunt volunteers at the hospital and says even people who look like they’re ready to go don’t want to when it’s time. I kind of saw that in my dad’s eyes when he was being wheeled out to surgery in 2024, and I love the idea he’s just not ready to go.