Updates: Sesame & Me ❤️

On Losing Sesame

Big loss always makes me think of my mom. She died by suicide some fifteen years ago. The grief that I was visited with afterwards laid waste to me. It came in tidal waves of anger, choking clouds of confusion, of course so much sadness, but also bouts of harshly blaming her, myself, other people, and about a hundred other things. Suffice to say, it was what they call complicated grief.

Our cat Sesame, who has been a part of our family for eleven years, is about to die. The sadness and grief that has started to arrive feels more pure, in a way. My heart feels twisted and torn open right now, and how much I’m going to miss him can feel briefly overwhelming, like it’s too heavy to carry. But if I can just slow down for a few moments, I can touch a familiarity—my Self, the space around me, and a sense of connection. Then I’m able to orient better to Sesame’s absence, as well as the presence of my feelings of longing and love for him.

I’m going to miss him like no other. Here’s a little something I wrote about him.

Ode to Sesame

Sesame, you were the epitome of an easy-going guy. At home, you were almost always willing to play second fiddle to Ginger, even though Ginger was smaller and more temperamental. The first time I visited the Tokyo airport, you were with me. We had both just survived a 15-hour flight—you with no bathroom breaks and still waiting, good-god! And you silently endured my frantic zig-zag sprint across an unfamiliar airport in a foreign country. You were so acquiescent to it all that I could almost forget that you were slung across my shoulder the entire time. 

Yes, you had your desires and your plans and your preferences, but you always seemed to know when not to rock the boat. For years you swallowed pills everyday without a struggle; you would just walk away when Ginger expressed jealousy for our attention; you would even wait until he was asleep to finally ask us for playtime or snuggles. You liked me to chase and wrestle you, jump on Gigi's back and bite her hair, and got every last chance to be at the window to the outside.

But perhaps most of all, you lived by the motto: to eat is to live! Ah, that most sensuous of worldly pleasures, the satisfaction of treats on the tongue, the excited anticipation of their arrival, the spirited conversation about their imminence—you answered to the word “fooood” as readily as you did to “Sesameeeee.” 

Your kitten-ish energy delighted and enlivened a more aloof Ginger, indeed even I think invited him to discover the joys of touch and play with us mere humans. You had such a natural and easy way of illuminating the light-hearted fun of simple pleasures. Your eyes shone with an adorable spark that we could hardly look away from, and that light will live on in our hearts.

My Health Update

I recently had my final visit with my oncologist of the last 3+ years. We discussed my CT scan from a few days ago, which showed 3 spots in my lungs that are new, small, and probable metastates. He also shared his view that he doesn't think my current chemotherapy protocol is effective anymore, and that I should consider a third line or experimental treatment.

From 2022-2023, I was following a first line chemotherapy protocol, until that stopped working. Then I took a second line treatment from 2024-2025, and now there’s some evidence to suggest that may have stopped working, too. Third line treatment is often much less effective, but I remain hopeful, if also sober, for the time when I may have to transition to it. 

In some ways, it's an appropriate time to transition treatments because I'm also getting an entirely new medical team in the U.S., where I'm hopeful there will be one or two more treatment options accessible to me. Getting a new medical team at an unfamiliar hospital in a different country feels a bit like diving off the proverbial cliff—but I've never done cliff diving, so I don't have much justification for the analogy. Instead let's just say I'm scared and excited.