Crossing Bridges

September 9, 2026

It has been one year since my first visit to Memorial Sloan Kettering.

I knew that trip was important when we made it, but I don't think any of us could have understood just how much it would change our lives. By that point, three different chemotherapy treatments had failed to get my cancer under control. Each treatment had started with some degree of hope, followed by waiting, scans, bloodwork, and eventually the news that it hadn't worked. We were running out of conventional options, which is what brought us to New York.

I originally came to MSK looking for possibilities. Maybe there was a clinical trial. Maybe there was an experimental treatment that would take me. Maybe someone there would look at my case differently and see something we hadn't seen before. We really didn't know. I was supposed to come up for a visit and some consultations. Instead, that visit became the beginning of an entirely different road.

My sisters came with us last year. Looking back, I am especially grateful for that. There is something about having your sisters around that allows you to stop pretending you have everything under control. They knew me long before cancer, before careers, before marriage, before kids, and before all of the other things we accumulate that make us think we are adults who are supposed to know what we're doing. Having them there gave me permission to just be their brother for a little while.

It also meant Maria wasn't carrying everything by herself. That mattered to me more than I probably expressed at the time. I knew that if I was tired, scared, overwhelmed, or simply unable to deal with one more thing, she had people beside her who loved both of us. Cancer may happen inside one person's body, but it doesn't happen to just one person. Knowing my sisters were there with Maria allowed me to relax in a way I hadn't expected. I didn't have to worry quite as much about taking care of everyone else while they were trying to take care of me.

A year later, things look very different. Today, my cancers are stable, and I continue to participate in the study at MSK. I'm now in month nine of a 24-month program. Later this month I'll be back for another PET scan, more labs, and all the other things that have become strangely routine over the past year. There are still plenty of unknowns ahead, but right now things are progressing in a good direction. After where we were a year ago, I'll gladly take that.

This trip to New York also felt different because Maria and I decided to actually spend some time enjoying the city.

Last fall and winter, sightseeing wasn't really on the agenda. New York meant hospitals, appointments, tests, treatments, hotel rooms, and figuring out what came next. Even when we had some free time, I didn't always have the energy or physical ability to do much with it. This time the weather wasn't scorching, I was feeling pretty good, and we decided to do something normal.

We went to The Met. We spent more than four hours there and somehow never made it past the first floor. I suppose that says something about the size of The Met, or possibly something about our ability to get distracted by just about everything. Eventually the museum started getting more crowded, my patience with people started getting shorter, and I began hearing entirely too many coughs and sniffles around me. My immune system and crowded museums are still not exactly best friends.

We decided we had seen enough for one day and vowed to come back in a few weeks to tackle the rest. At our current pace, I figure we should finish sometime around 2032.

From there we headed to the subway and caught a train to Brooklyn. Maria has wanted to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge for a long time. Last year, when walking any significant distance was difficult for me, I told her that crossing the bridge was something we could do when I started doing better.

Without really intending it, the Brooklyn Bridge became a goalpost. For the past several months, I have been working toward things like this. My walks around the mall aren't particularly glamorous, and neither are the walks around the neighborhood or outside when the weather cooperates. There are no dramatic training montages or inspirational music playing in the background. It's just putting one foot in front of the other, paying attention to what my feet are doing, trying to build a little more strength and endurance, and then doing it again the next day.

The neuropathy is still there, especially in my left foot. I still have issues with sensation in both feet, although the pain has decreased and they seem to be tolerating longer walks much better. Recovery from this has happened so slowly that sometimes it is difficult to recognize that it is happening at all.

That's one of the strange things about getting better slowly. When you live inside the change every day, you don't necessarily see it. There isn't always a moment when something suddenly switches back on. You just realize one day that you're doing something that would have been impossible a few months earlier.

Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge was one of those moments. I had spent months preparing for it and wondering how difficult it would be. I wondered how my feet would hold up, whether I would need to stop frequently, or whether I had overestimated how far I had come.

It turned out to be much easier than I expected.

A year ago, we came to New York because three chemotherapy treatments hadn't worked and we were looking for someone who might have another idea. I didn't know what the next year was going to look like. I certainly wasn't thinking much about walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. At that point, the goals were much smaller and much more immediate.

The bridge wasn't some grand finish line. I still have cancer. I still have neuropathy. I still had kidney disease. None of that disappeared because I walked across a bridge.

But for an afternoon, cancer wasn't the reason we were in New York. We were just Maria and me, doing something we had talked about doing when I got better.

That felt pretty damn good.

We'll be back at the end of the month for the next round of appointments, and I'm hoping to squeeze in a Yankees game while we're there. We just have to make sure they're actually in town. Before that trip, however, I have another busy weekend ahead. Farm Aid is in Virginia Beach the Saturday before my PET scan, and we're planning to be there. That means the drive back to New York is probably going to involve a very tired passenger.

A year ago, my trips to New York were almost entirely about trying to stay alive and finding a treatment that might work. Now I'm talking about museums, concerts, baseball games, subway rides, and walking across bridges with my wife.

The medical stuff is still there. It hasn't gone away, and I don't want to pretend that it has. The PET scans still matter. The labs still matter. The study still matters. There is always that little bit of uncertainty sitting somewhere in the background.

But life is beginning to take up more space again. Maybe that's the progress I've had the hardest time seeing because it happened so slowly. Somewhere between the mall walks, physical therapy, hospital visits, blood draws, and trips back and forth to New York, the distance I could travel started getting longer.

A year ago, MSK gave us a road forward when we desperately needed one. This year, I got to walk a little more of that road myself. Across the Brooklyn Bridge, with Maria beside me.