Real Life #1: A Non-political Personal Diary about Post-NYC, Post-Lockdowns, Post-dad cancer diagnosis life in Santa Barbara, CA

Santa Barbara, CA

Photo by Don B on Unsplash

Hey everyone! Not sure who’s listening or not yet. I purposefully did not transfer my subscribers from my current Substack, “Sincere American Writing” because I want this one to be a few things which are different: 1. Non-political; 2. Short; 3. Current and very personal. Mainly I want to write about my day-to-day life and how I got to be where I am now (spiritually, culturally, emotionally, geographically).

Today, for example, was typical. I live in Santa Barbara, California. This was not expected. For ten years I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2019 I followed my writing dreams and moved across the country to New York City at age 36. I had one glorious year and then Covid happened. I lived in East Harlem, at 130th and 5th Avenue, and it got scary. (I have since written a “fictional memoir” about it, some of which is on my “Sincere American Writing” Substack.) After eighteen months of not seeing California (where all of family and most of my friends are) I finally came for a visit in June, 2021.

Then my dad was diagnosed, only weeks later, with Stage Four Melanoma.

I never returned to NYC. Several good friends went to my Manhattan apartment and gathered all my stuff into boxes, shipping them to me express. They chucked or took the few pieces of furniture and the rest got left out on the street. That was in September, 2021. In October of last year I scored a nice little (overpriced) studio apartment at the base of the mountains near Highway 192 in Santa Barbara, ten minutes from my folks.

From July 2021 to February, 2022 my mother and I were basically fulltime caretaking for my father. He was 76 (now 77) and hadn’t been in a hospital in nearly a half-century. That all changed. Every day was a constant scramble for meds, medical equipment, biopsy appointments, doctors’ messages and visits, lifting heavy things and carrying them from the garage up two flights of stairs to the main part of the house where my folks resided, cooking meals, doing dishes, helping my father get dressed and undressed, etc, here and there punctuated by last-second trips to the ER, stays in the hospital and in physical rehab. It was exhausting in the deepest way. But I was glad (and still am) that I came, that I prematurely left Manhattan, my writerly dream, to be there for my dad.

Today, November 2nd, 2022, my father is overall much improved since those days, thankfully. Last year we thought we’d lose him many times. First it was the fact that the cancer metastasized to his brain and he had to get brain surgery. Then it was the rare neurological disorder called Myasthenia Gravis he developed from the newly-okay’d-by-the-FDA incredibly powerful immunotherapy. The “MG” as we called it caused three harsh symptoms: 1. Near loss of eyesight for a while; 2. Actual loss of understandable speech for sometime (he had to write things down to communicate; 3. The nastiest one: He stopped swallowing for about nine months.

Re the swallowing: He had to get a “peg-tube” (a feeding tube) inserted into his gut and we used a machine to feed him through it. Just a few months ago he finally started partially swallowing.

But then the cancer recurred in his brain.

They did one blast of radiation. We’re waiting for the next MRI which won’t be for a couple months. Meanwhile he has slightly regressed again in general. Starting around February all his symptoms began to get better. Now he can talk, see and swallow…mostly. But lately he’s been sleeping a lot every day again, which he’d stopped doing for several months. For a little brief crack of time he’d had real energy again. This was exciting. But now…naps. Constant naps. And coughing. And gurgling.

The cancer originally (strangely, being skin cancer) presented in his lungs. (Yes, I know, it’s weird: We also didn’t think skin cancer could show up internally versus on the skin physically/externally. But it happens.) They used immunotherapy for this but now we’re wondering if it might be back in the lungs. This would explain the coughing and relapse into fatigue.

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As far as my life, what can I say? I’m two months shy of 40. Which is bizarre. How did that happen? Just yesterday I was 27, drinking, going wild. And now I’m sober 12 years and living near my folks of all things. Hadn’t I moved to NYC? Where did that go?

This morning I did my routine, which includes reading (a biography on Andrew Jackson; I recently finished McPherson’s “Battle Cry for Freedom: The Civil War Era”); drinking copious amounts of Irish Breakfast tea; reading some more; showering; Substacking (writing and reading other SS/commenting on other SS); emailing; going on Upwork searching for book editing clients (writing is the passion, editing is the bread); obsessively glancing at Linked-In; ignoring Instagram; playing with my Tuxedo cat, Lucius; realizing I just got paid for a partial memoir I edited; getting dressed and going to Lighthouse Coffee on Cliff Drive in SB, near the ocean; listening to Meghan Daum’s “The Unspeakable” Substack; driving home; starting this new “Real Life” SS.

Tonight I’ll probably go on a nice evening stroll in my hood. (Which is quiet, safe and suburban, the total opposite of Manhattan.) Tomorrow I am doing a few dog-visits. (Besides being a book editor and writer, I started dog-walking a few months ago. And actually: 1. I love it; 2. I make pretty decent money doing it! I have walked all kinds of dogs from foo-foo little lapdogs to (I shit you not) 135-pound English mastiffs and 155-pound Great Danes. It’s lovely. It warms my heart and makes me smile. Animals are so perfect and safe and good. Much superior to we human beings.

Alright. More later. I will start with this as a free newsletter. Some will probably be paid as we go, but most will likely be free.

Michael Mohr

https://www.michaelmohrwriter.com/

Other Substack: “Sincere American Writing”