Hey, what's up?

Today, news was confirmed for me that I have contracted what is rapidly becoming the Family Disease. I have breast cancer. That seems weird to say--I have breast cancer.

It's hardly a shocker, though. Well, maybe it is for all of you. It isn't for me. My mom is a 7-years-and-counting breast cancer survivor. That's long enough that they officially call it "cured." Her mother was not so lucky, because she contracted it in the early 1950s when treatments were not nearly what they are now.

But back to me, because right? There are still more tests to come, but right now things look pretty good. Other than the I HAVE FUCKING CANCER part, I mean. This is probably because I get mammograms and ultrasounds like all the damn time. Of course they caught it early, it would be practically impossible not to catch it early. Early tests show it is a "Grade One" tumor, which is the kind whose cells are the closest to normal and tend to be slow-growing. It is also less than 2 cm so pretty small. And right now they don't have any evidence that there are any additional tumors anywhere else, although they're going to do an MRI in a couple of weeks to make sure.

They're going to do surgery, of course, and then radiation, but unless they find more tumors or get some kind of further test results that contradict what they know now, that will be it. So with any luck I will be spared the privilege of taking a regimen of expensive poisons that make me throw up and make my hair fall out. I will leave it to the Browns to take care of that.

I know my Facebook friends well enough to know that many of them will say (and mean) that they will pray for me, and I do appreciate that. Honestly the last time I prayed really hard it probably went along the lines of, "Dear God, please don't let Kevin Love be out for the playoffs!" But I didn't really have any expectation that this would work (I was right). I further know that many of you will point out that I am too much of a foul-mouthed badass to let cancer beat me. I genuinely appreciate that sentiment, but I can't help but think of my friend Janice Balistreri when people say things like that. Janice did not die of cancer, but she did contract an autoimmune disease that gradually robbed her of her vitality and mobility before it killed her in her mid-40s, and Janice was as pugilistic a foul-mouthed badass as I've ever had the privilege to meet. God, I miss her still. She fought because she thought fighting was fun. So personality does not, in my estimation, really have an effect one way or the other on the outcome of a disease. It does, however, probably affect how one treats it in one's Facebook posts, which I hope to make as entertaining and hilarious and NSFW as possible, because I'm here for you like that.

In closing, thank you all in advance for your well-wishes. Please send booze.