Mahanth S. Joishy is Editor of usindiamonitor

Feel free to pop over to Chapter 1 for context if needed.

Long journeys like the one being chronicled here can be broken down into phases, or chapters so to speak. This applies to Marvel comic book movies, Harlequin romance novels, and to Homer’s classic works just the same. The first chapter of my little story was about discovering an unwelcome new problem in my life, the diagnosis of a specific and extremely rare brand of lymphoma known as Sezary Syndrome on St. Patrick’s Day, 2023, which was attacking my body in all kinds of nasty ways. The period spanning the first few months after St. Patty’s Day was defined by a roller coaster of new emotions and adjusting to the new reality. That previous chapter was admittedly scarier, and featured the revving up of the engines for a gamely counteroffensive, with a whirlwind of countless medical tests, endless doctor visits, and the initiation of a treatment plan. It was a ton of work but I was fortunate to have my dad guiding the entire battalion along the way, and lucky to have access to good medical care.

There’s a very long way to go but I am pleased to report the counteroffensive is going exceptionally well, when it comes to beating down the lymphoma itself with targeted therapy. Things got more complicated when it came to managing a number of known, but cruel side effects, as I hinted at in Chapter 1. These have generally gotten worse over time, so the decision was made around a month ago to reduce the dosage of Romidepsin, as much as I am grateful for this brand of drug for its effectiveness. This titration seems to be helping a bit so far. New goals have also been created by the doctors and I. If all goes well with the metrics being used to track the progress of my body’s response at the cellular level, I will be able to transition from these long IV infusions by October to a new oral medication for the next phase of treatment, a path that will hopefully involve fewer side effects and much less time off from work. Nothing is guaranteed but this transition would be unbelievably welcome if the timeline manifests and the side effects are better than present ones. So there is something exciting to look forward to soon assuming continued progress. This should open up my world in many ways, including the option to travel again.

However, the far more important progress has been taking place not in the body, but in the mind. It has become extremely obvious to me that mental health is easily more critical right now and into the future in order to beat this thing. At the end of Chapter 1 I set myself the challenging goal of being able to view my lymphoma diagnosis as a blessing. This strikes at the very heart of what defines my “fight”- not lymphoma cell counts or weathering gross digestive side effects or brain fog or fatigue. The biggest battlefield of all is my mind. We are not yet there, but I have gotten much closer than before to arriving at my goal of viewing my lymphoma not as an unwelcome passenger, but as a blessing. Tantalizingly close. How so?

The diagnosis forced me to re-think all aspects of my life, with a hard slap to the face, and to appreciate more than ever before how short and precious life really is. It also forced me to very rapidly work on improving my mindset if I had any hopes of successfully navigating the road that lay ahead. In very recent days, with the physical counteroffensive in progress, I have come to some revelations profound enough, at least to me, to compel me to write them down here as another distinct stand-alone chapter in the journey, partly in order to update those who care about me, and partly in hopes it could help somebody out there, and partly for myself as a form of therapy, as writing has always reliably been for me.

The epiphany I just recently had is that the way out of my lymphoma, as long as it takes and however challenging that it ends up being, will rely on universal truths that apply not just to me because I have health problems, and not just to you, but to all human beings in all endeavors. This is why I am sharing this self-indulgent drama and airing out my personal dirty laundry publicly. For life is hard for everyone, full of pain, problems and challenges at every turn, some of them health-related but others entirely unrelated to health altogether. Getting through it all will require drafting and living by some principles. Nobody else can do this for you, because it is truly a lonely, solitary effort and nobody knows you as well as you know thyself. And it’s never done. The document is a live one that can and should be edited over time.

I may have had some principles to live by prior to my diagnosis, but afterwards I was urgently and unexpectedly forced to dig deeper inside myself into dark places I’d never cared to go before. I”m chasing down the principles I’m focused on now with renewed energy, including those I would never have prioritized before my world completely changed. I wish I had prioritized in this way much earlier, but there should be no looking back now. The past is over, but the future awaits. This is why my diagnosis will hopefully end up being a blessing: because it forced me to do some really difficult things in the midst of unwelcome circumstances, that could actually make me a better person, that most elusive of endeavors I used to talk about a lot, and not do enough to get to. Talk is cheap.

(1) Learning to let $hit go. This one is extremely hard for me, and perhaps the most difficult part of my fight with cancer being chronicled here. It’s possible that a chronic inability to let things go over a span of many decades is how I even manifested this disease in the first place. My life used to be defined disproportionately by reacting strongly to annoying little or large frustrations every day, at work, at home, out at a restaurant, while traveling, etc. The endless ugly developments in US politics used to bother me to no end, almost making me feel ill. I came to realize that these were probably accumulating maliciously to have a toxic effect on my systems. And then maybe it helped manifest this blasted problem bigger than all of them combined to date.

I used to snap so very easily at things. Recognition that getting frustrated or not by any external factor outside of our control, is entirely within our control, has been incredibly powerful. Nowadays a new problem at the office, something Donald Trump says on social media, someone dangerously cutting me off on the road, waiting in long lines at the rental car desk due to someone’s incompetence, long flight delays, or a waiter bringing out the wrong food while eating out, will all just gently roll off of me. Take a deep breath, and smile. Nice try, universe! You ain’t gonna rile me up today, dangit. So what if yet another vendor you do business with ripped you off on purpose or accidentally? So what if some reckless moron on the road almost hit you? So what if the project you’re working on has like 12 new roadblocks? So what if the food you overpaid for tastes like crap? Life goes on as long as the event didn’t terminate you. I try my best to handle each new situation with grace, without anger, and without letting it ruin minutes or hours of my day like it used to. I am trying hard to apply this principle to all daily interactions with people and objects in the external world. Even now it doesn’t come easily to me, and I’d even argue it’s about unlearning my own very nature. Getting angry and frustrated is a choice, not a given. People and objects coming at you in an annoying way constantly is as certain as death itself. Snapping repeatedly is unhealthy, and everyone knows that.

(2) Slowing Down. In all aspects of my life I used to operate in the fast lane, and it was a core part of my identity. In fact it’s something I was always proud of. I worked hard and played hard. In my new degraded state I simply cannot operate at those speeds anymore. This is a simple matter of capacity. I can’t move as fast, I can’t do everything I want to, I can’t play music as loud as I used to, I can only have a fraction of the social interactions I used to, I cannot be out and about late at night much, and I cannot be in the office as much as I’d like. My energy levels are nowhere near where I want them to be. I can’t even write as much as I’d like to because that requires a type of intense energy too. All of the above were core to who I was as a person, but living the old way is no longer even an option. Adjusting to the new reality continues to be hard, but acceptance of it has been very rewarding. Today as a principle I have slowed down, and I don’t apologize for it to anyone, most importantly of all to myself. Call it being okay with being selfish or self-centered. The world, I’m sure, will go on. All of this is possible if we take stock of all that we’ve already accomplished- and are proud and satisfied with that body of work no matter what happens from here. It’s time to spend time looking forward, and not backward. It’s time to leave behind the trauma and pain of the past. Slowing down should mean less stress.

(3) Mapping out the Rest of Your Life. Speaking of. We all know all too well we are going to die one day, but we almost never can know exactly when. I am planning to outlast my lymphoma, but the nefarious dance has forced me to confront my own mortality, and make an effort to better manage whatever amount of life I have left. I have been staring down Lord Yama, the Hindu God of Death, in the face for the first time. I may only be 44, but my mental lifespan timeline has drastically taken on a new urgency. This means not putting things off further into the future, as kicking the can down the road was something I was always way too good at. I am now determined to squeeze in significantly more world travel when my health allows. I worry less about my finances (a barrier toward living your best life), and worry more about living a full and productive life with whatever health, resources and relationships I have, which are the real wealth. I aim to accelerate my career and writing goals with renewed urgency. Retiring at age 50 used to be a fantasy I toyed with; now having that option open when the time comes is an urgent priority I badly need to configure into reality. Nowadays I spend more time thinking about the legacy I want to leave behind when I am no longer here. Confronting your mortality like this is both liberating and frightening. But you cannot be truly free until you confront your fears.

(4) Achieving that thing called Balance. If these principles seem to be bumping up against each other or even contradictory, you would be right. Life is full of contradictions. So are the Bible and Bhagavat Gita, or the writings of Mahatma Gandhi. For humankind has been confronting competing ideals and trying to stumble through them since the beginning of history. How do you make an effort to slow down while at the same time racing towards the legacy you want to build within a finite amount of time and space? How do you let $hit go if becoming a better, healthier person requires being meticulous and relentless? The answer is, in one word, balance. Trying to find it is a worthy calling for us all. The battle is ongoing.

I don’t have all the answers, but this is the new program I am on, and I was coerced into this path by higher forces I cannot pretend to comprehend. Should I be grateful for having to tangle with my disease? I think I should try to be. It would be an incredibly powerful and liberating way to think, and to live, whenever I get there. For above all things in life, I value winning, and winning in this case will require moving on to the next phase: from acceptance to embracing, from revelation to execution, from planning to finishing.

The next chapter awaits us all, in my case that would be Chapter 3, and the greatest beauty of it is that it has yet to be written.