Part One - Entering the Valley

Chapter 1

The Call That Changed Everything

Early on July 5, 2025, a Saturday morning, my phone rang.

I did not recognize the number, so I did not answer.

Persistent telemarketer, I thought.

This was not an unreasonable assumption. My phone receives a steady stream of calls from people who want to renew my duct cleaning, improve my internet, sell me something I do not need, or inform me that my computer is infected with a virus.

The irony of that last category would become more apparent later.

The caller left a message. It was the hematologist I had seen the day before. He said he would call back in ten minutes.

Ten minutes is not a long time under ordinary circumstances.

Under extraordinary circumstances, ten minutes can become a country.

Leslie and I waited together, trying not to let our imaginations run wild, and usually towards disastrous conclusions.

There are moments that arrive without warning but divide life into before and after. This was one of them.

When the doctor called back, he told us he had “snuck a peek”—my translation—at the preliminary bone marrow results. My bone marrow was seventy percent full of leukemia blasts.

They had not yet moved significantly into my bloodstream, which was good.

The rest of the news was not.

The doctor had already arranged for me to be admitted to Juravinski Cancer Centre in Hamilton, Ontario. I was to pack for what we expected would be approximately a month in hospital.

One sentence remained with us:

“Consider this a medical emergency.”

There is something unsettling about packing for a hospital stay that long. A person normally packs for a trip by asking what he might need to enjoy himself. Packing for cancer treatment is different.

You think about chargers, books, toiletries, comfortable clothes, music, and anything that might make the room feel less foreign. You choose objects that remind you who you were before the hospital became the place where so much of your life would happen.

I remember putting things into a bag and wondering whether I would ever use them again.

Would I return to this house?

Would I drive my car again?

Would I sleep in my own bed?

Would the ordinary routines that seemed so permanent still be waiting for me?

I can thankfully say that this was the only time I seriously entertained the idea of dying.

That does not mean I was fearless.

It means the thought came, announced itself, and somehow did not remain in charge.

Before going to the hospital, Leslie and I called dear friends and met them at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington. It might seem strange to visit a garden on the way to a cancer centre, but the timing felt right.

We needed beauty.

We needed familiar faces.

We needed a moment that was not yet entirely medical.

The trees did not know I had leukemia. The paths did not change because I had received bad news.

The sunlight continued to move across the landscape. Birds went on eating, flying, arguing, and generally refusing to acknowledge the seriousness of my situation.

That was comforting.

The world had not stopped, even though mine had.

Then we got into the car and drove to the hospital.

The road had turned.

The enemy had not yet fully introduced itself, but the battle had begun.