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I Still Don't Have Cancer (and I'm Still Scared)

2025-04-18 · letter vlog · Hank · 7:13 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Personal life · mode: Personal essay · tags: heavy topic, self promotion, fundraising ask

Hank leaves a Bernie Sanders and AOC rally in Missoula for an oncology check of sore lymph nodes, which his oncologist finds normal; that night he feels free-floating anxiety with no source, which he links to returning to the place of his cancer care and resolves to starve. He closes by plugging Good Store's Mother's Day bundle.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Rally exit and oncology appointment: sore lymph nodes, a normal check, worries about relapse and leukemia

  • ★★ Hank went to see Bernie Sanders and AOC in a packed basketball stadium in Missoula but left after AOC's speech to bike to the hospital cancer center for an oncology appointment. — 00:00:00 · Missoula, Montana
  • ★★ Hank says the lymph nodes under his tongue have been a little swollen and sore for the last few weeks. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Hank says that with lymphoma the swollen nodes tend not to be painful, whereas his are a little sore. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank explains that the lymphatic system barely connects in the middle, so people mostly have two separate lymphatic systems, one per side; swelling on both sides suggests infection, not cancer. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Still nervous, and nearing his two-year mark, Hank called and took the first oncology appointment available. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ Hank's empathetic oncologist checked his lymph nodes, now the only monitoring he needs given his cancer, stage and scans, and found them all perfectly normal: no current signs of cancer. — 00:01:27 · Hodgkin lymphoma
  • ★★ Hank says he is mostly, though not entirely, through the peak period when he would be likely to relapse. — 00:01:56
  • ★ Hank says he always expects modern medicine to be only modern, but it is also 1940s-style touching to see how things feel. (playful) — 00:01:56
  • ★ Hank says his oncologist asks his biggest worries and scolds him a little for knowing too much, as if he would research Hodgkin lymphoma less. (playful) — 00:01:56 · Hodgkin lymphoma
  • ★★ Hank told his oncologist he worries about rare but possible secondary cancers, above all leukemia, the worst one to get and one there is very little way to monitor for now. — 00:02:31
  • ★★ Hank says that 10 or 20 years from now, when leukemia would be most likely for him, maybe there will be better treatment or monitoring, if science continues, which he never used to worry about. (hedged) — 00:02:31

00:02:58 — Free-floating anxiety with no source after being told he has no cancer, and how to let it go

  • ★★★ Hank says last night in bed he felt more nervous than he had in a while, which made no sense since he had just been told he doesn't have cancer. — 00:02:58
  • ★★★ Hank says that more often now he cannot find what is making him nervous: he can attach the anxiety to many things, but none is its source; it floats around looking for a place to rest. — 00:02:58
  • ★★ Among the many places his anxiety could rest, Hank lists economic uncertainty for projects he cares about, maybe an actual constitutional crisis, and activists grabbed in the street and detained without being accused of a crime. (hedged) — 00:03:41
  • ★ Hank says losing one of his new earbuds, after losing one of the old pair, gives him anxiety not about money but about being bad at being a person. (playful) — 00:03:41
  • ★★★ Hank says knowing there is always something to worry about, and that this free-floating anxiety has no source, helps him see it is not him and serves no purpose. — 00:04:10
  • ★★ Hank says before he got sick his anxiety was mostly his body usefully calling him to figure out something important; now it sometimes just calls out for no reason. — 00:04:10
  • ★★ Hank traces the anxiety to a simple part of him reacting to his return to the place where all the bad things happened; he can appreciate that without agreeing he must find somewhere to put it. — 00:04:40
  • ★★ Hank says anxiety that comes from nowhere should go back there and die; he doesn't know whether he can starve it, but he will try. — 00:05:21

00:05:48 — Starve-the-anxiety sign-off, then the Good Store Mother's Day bundle

Humor (significant)

  • Hank renders his oncologist's verdict that his lymph nodes feel normal. — 00:01:27

    “I'm legally required to not lie to you right now and also it would be really weird if I did lie to you.”

  • Hank is surprised that modern medicine still relies on simply feeling the lymph nodes. — 00:01:56

    “it is both modern and also 1940s let's touch you to see what things feel like”

  • Among his anxieties, Hank lists having lost one earbud and bought a new pair. — 00:03:41

    “I already have lost one of the two earbuds that I just bought”

  • Hank describes his body sometimes calling out to him for no reason. — 00:04:40

    “It's just like, hey! Hey! And I'm like, what? And it's like, hey!”

  • Hank wonders how to get rid of anxiety that came from nowhere. — 00:05:21

    “Can we talk to a cognitive behavioral therapist about whether it is possible for me to physically murder my anxiety?”

  • Hank refuses to feed his free-floating anxiety his fear about being bad at keeping track of earbuds. — 00:05:48

    “Stay hungry and starve, jerk.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: anxiety disorder · Hodgkin lymphoma

Also: People: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez · Bernie Sanders · Katherine Green

Projects: Good Store · Keats & Co. · Sun Basin Soap

Works: Garden Party Soap

Organizations: Maternal Center of Excellence

Concepts: Cognitive behavioral therapy · constitutional crisis · leukemia · lymphoma · maternal death

Places: Missoula, Montana · Sierra Leone

Events: Mother's Day

Also centred on anxiety disorder: Brotherhood 2.0: March 7, 2007: Stress · My Hairy Ball of Anxious Anxiety · I'm Having a Lot of Feelings · Working Through a Crisis with My Brother · Hank's very messy post-cancer year of mistakes, meaning… · The ANXIETY IS PALPABLE

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