Can Biscuits and Gravy Cure Cancer?

Biscuits & gravy. That was the warm, comforting part of our day this morning. Today I drove Alicia into San Jose to get three CT scans. It’s the start of what will likely be a lifelong fight with Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL) and its impacts on her body.

We left Kaiser radiology drained. She left drained and feeling the impacts of chemicals pushed through her veins to give her docs an accurate read of what’s happening inside her body.

Hungry. Tired. Cold. And hungry (yes, that hungry). We hit up Bill’s Cafe and skipped the fruit plate, and went right for the biscuits & gravy with all of its exceptionally bad ingredients. It was the treatment we needed at that moment. To reset. To refocus. To close our eyes and just hum, “mmmm.”

Last Tuesday, we awaited a potential Cat 3–4 hurricane. The tropical storm skipped us, but life’s storm tore through us with forceful abandon. Alicia’s doctor called. She told her Alicia has leukemia. Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL).

“Watching the fear-driven tears pour down my love’s cheeks was probably one of my most difficult life moments. Helpless. Wordless. Solution-less. All foreign concepts to me that instantly took me, hostage.”

This week, we’ll learn more about the fight ahead of us. HCL is not curable. It is very treatable. There’s been great success in beating it back into remission. That stated, it also leaves its patients susceptible to other cancers and illnesses.

So, this is a life-long battle.

My wife is tough as fuck. I know this. I’ve experienced it. She’s the soul of our family. Her passion. Her strength. Her grit is what’s going to carry her (and all of us) through this fight.

I guess normally this is when people ask the questions, “why?” I’m not. I have a more important question. “How?”

How can I be what she needs me to be, continuously, through the duration of this fight?

I promised her this weekend that no matter what, I will not let her down as we take on her fight. I have zero intention of allowing that to happen. But I’m scared as hell that somehow that’s exactly what I’ll do.

I’ve spent the last week mentally preparing for the fight ahead. It felt like the biggest, most important political campaign I’d ever have to run. I was ready. Until I wasn’t.

I lost my shit this morning. I cried like a kid (including the suck in the air thing). Out of the blue, as I was getting ready to shower and drive Alicia to her appointment. Worse, she heard me.

I felt like I let her down before we even got started. She’s hugging me. But that’s what I needed. To clear out my pain for a few minutes so I could be the one to hug her when she came out of radiology. When she felt tired, nauseous, and cold. And when she said, “I’m starving.”

Can biscuits and gravy cure cancer? Probably not. But it sure put cancer on pause for a few minutes…just long enough to scoop the last bite before the gravy went cold.