There is no Crystal Ball. Focus on Your Plan.
This is a guest post by Andrew Allers, 62, who was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2015. Andrew lives in Connecticut with his wife Carole, children Lee, Chauncey, and Harrison, and his three dogs Persie, Jessie, and Becks. Read his prior story “You Only Live Twice”.
I looked at my wife and asked, “Where is she?” She pointed — to our son’s girlfriend, standing right beside her. I looked. Nothing. Until I turned my head a couple of inches to the left — and there she was. “Oh.”
By the following morning nothing had changed, so I called my doctor. “Go to the ER,” she said. “You could be having a stroke.” COVID rules meant my wife, Carole, could only drop me at the door — she wasn’t allowed to come in, wasn’t allowed to wait. I was alone.
Hours later, after an MRI, the ER doctor came back. “I like your hat,” he said — I was wearing a hat that said, bluntly, what I thought about cancer, and it had become something of a signature. Next, in the same breath: “You have two brain tumors. One in your right occipital lobe, one in your left cerebellum.”
I had walked in mildly worried. Now I was terrified — the kind of terrified where you realize you have no next move. I have a PhD in Applied Mathematics. I built a career on thinking my way through hard problems. But in that moment, I couldn’t even think.
The doctor stepped out to give me some space. I called Carole, blurting out between sobs, “I have two brain tumors.” This was the first update she’d had. She had spent the whole day at home, surrounded by family. But entirely in the dark.
We stammered sentence fragments back and forth, getting nowhere. COVID meant we couldn’t even be in the same room to comfort each other. I was supposed to take care of the family. Instead I was helpless and alone in an exam room, my mind cycling through nightmare scenarios. The same chaos as before, just louder, because now it wasn’t only me in danger. It was all of us. Thirty-one years of building a life together, and it felt like all of it was coming apart at once.
Katie, a young Neurosurgery PA, walked in and started talking me through what was happening.
I’d been on immunotherapy for a few months, and a scan weeks earlier had shown real progress. She explained the blood-brain barrier in clear, layman’s terms — a protective design feature that keeps potentially destructive things out of the brain, which, as it turned out, had kept my immunotherapy from preventing the metastases from growing there.
She took me through the proposed next steps — surgery, then radiation — and touched on the risks. At one point the neurosurgeon came into the room mid-explanation. Katie gestured for him to take over, and he immediately passed the baton right back to her. That told me something about this team and how they worked together. Without consciously deciding to, I was already sizing up my confidence in and comfort with them.
“So what do you want to do?”
Although there was never really another option we would have chosen. We were never going to watch and wait.
“Let’s do it.” — ultimately, the decision was mine.
Having a plan is what let me actually lean on hope, instead of hope being the only thing I had.
By the time they left the room, I had a plan. I knew what was next. I knew the risks, at least in outline. I still didn’t know if any of it would work. But I had a plan — and for the first time since I’d walked into that hospital, that was enough to feel calm.
There were two separate fears in that moment — not knowing what to do next, and not knowing if I was going to be okay. Nobody can remove the second fear. No plan can resolve it. So you stop spending energy on it, and put everything you have into figuring out what to do next. That’s exactly what a plan removes. It doesn’t guarantee the outcome. It just gives you real steps to take.
A plan can feel clinical — steps, not comfort. Hope filled that gap. It sustained us. Hope is what you want to happen. A plan is what you do next. Only one of them gives you something to act on. Having a plan is what let me actually lean on hope, instead of hope being the only thing I had.
There’s a mantra we use now, every time: What are we doing right now? How will we know if it’s working? If it doesn’t, what do we try next?
Chances are, you already know how to do this. A job that fell apart. A mortgage you didn’t understand. A kid who needed something you didn’t know how to give. You’ve taken steps toward something, watched to see if it was working, and changed course when it wasn’t. You’ve done this.
A month ago I woke up and couldn’t keep my balance — the room tilting as I moved. Off to the ER, where an MRI showed a bleed and a likely recurrence — same spot as before. Three and a half years of stability. Gone.
The fear came back, but it never took control. This wasn’t our first rodeo. The doctor left us alone in the ER, and we held hands for about twenty minutes, neither of us really speaking.
There was still a lot to figure out. After three days of visits and discussions with specialists, my team landed on a plan: surgery, then GammaTile radiation implants.
I still don’t know if I’ll be okay. Nobody can tell me that. What I do know is when my next appointment is, what we’ll be looking out for, and roughly what happens after. That’s still the whole point. Not the good outcome. Knowing what we’re doing.