Systems Check

How I thought about my ability to return to Jeopardy! for the Invitational Tournament

As I was driving to work on Friday, December 13, the little text message notification showed up on my car console with a contact I recognized. I was getting off the highway and I pulled up to a red light. Then I took a look at the preview of the message on my phone’s lock screen. It was an unexpected invitation to the next Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament.

If you’ve been following along with me for the past year and change, you’ll know that things have been very bad for very long stretches. But my health has been improving. I got off of chemotherapy in August and have been taking progressively larger steps in recovery since then. My daily life may involve more planning to ensure I have bathroom access when needed, but it’s recognizably my life again. With planning, I’ve been able to travel again. I still have neuropathy in my hands and feet but they’re nowhere near as sensitive as before and they no longer have episodes where they quit functioning. I can write, I can type, I can walk up and down stairs.

But can I play Jeopardy!?

Assessing the Physical

Thinking about the invitation, my actual physical ability to play was the least of my concerns. Credit here to Dave Maybury, who generously works on a lot of infrastructure and opportunities for “training,” and who put together an event where I was able to play on a buzzer in September. I was still wearing liner gloves nearly all the time and I wasn’t comfortable standing, but I could manage the physical situation through a combination of adaptations. The buzzer didn’t work with a glove on the hand actually holding it due to lack of friction, but my natural stance has the buzzer in my right hand wrapped in my left. I was comfortable with a glove on my left cupping an ungloved right.

As for standing, I had dealt with it in September by doing a three-quarter sort of lean onto the back of a chair. However, I knew that I could request a chair and sit if I needed to during an actual game. I prefer the feeling of standing while playing, but the option would be there. I took opportunities between December and February to test myself in how long I could stand comfortably, and I thought I would be fine.

There was also the question of stamina. There are still days when I feel like I wear out faster than before, although at this point maybe that’s just a question of growing older. Still, I’ve been in a tournament setting before and the only time I’d be likely to play games consecutively would be if I made the finals — a problem I decided to deal with if it actually happened.

Finally, I needed to be able to control my digestion. This actually had a sharp increase in positive results through December and January, as I tested how light doses of medications affected my system to find a balance of comfort and movement. I wouldn’t want to medicate myself for more than a couple days at a time, but I could get through a tournament without worrying about this too much provided I controlled the food I ate.

All physical systems go.

Assessing the Mental

In some ways my mental ability to play was easier to work through because I’d been scoring myself throughout. I never sat down to do an actual statistical summary of my self-scoring after chemotherapy like I did for during it. That was because I was inconsistent with games in October and November, recording them and catching up, playing out of order. (If you know my work, you’ll know that a successful year means a busy October… and this was a successful year). However, even though I didn’t have statistical testing on it or anything, I had a sense of the numbers and I knew how I felt. My brain was working again.

At least I thought it was. This was the same brain that told me I was doing fantastically great every third week during chemotherapy and it was only sort of right. All the surrounding evidence was in support, though. I could work, I could write code, I was having ideas again, and playing the game from my couch wasn’t a mental struggle. My scores were improving.

All mental systems go.

Assessing the Emotional

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I tried to tightly control the information about it. I only wanted to talk about it when I wanted to, and I hoped it was going to be a thing that happened to me during one short weird time in my life. And the best case for the cancer treatment actually would have been something like that: a surgery with six to eight weeks of recovery, a period of adaptation to a shorter colon, and continued contact with the process only through occasional scans and follow-ups for five years. But I didn’t get the best case.

I got the second-best.

But the second-best case was still six months of chemicals. It was much more invasive. And it was so much longer. The combined recovery from the surgery and the chemotherapy together is six months to two years to reach whatever plateau the body reaches, and you can work on long-term adaptation from there. It’s possible the neuropathy in my hands and feet will fully heal, but it’s possible that it won’t and this is just what they are now. That this is part of my life, forever.

This took an emotional toll on me, but it also gave me new ways to think about it. Far from refusing to talk about the cancer, I feel like it’s been a part of every conversation I’ve had since last summer. It’s always there, a series of consequences. Under control, but still present. A part of me.

I did not expected to be invited to this tournament. I thought maybe one of them, sometime, but I didn’t think that was particularly likely either. Still, in even thinking about it at all, I knew that if I did get called for it again, cancer was either going to have to be part of my story or it was going to be something I deliberately ignored. Credit here in particular to Juveria Zaheer, who talked with me about these ideas last year and left me feeling more confident in using my own story in the ways that would work best for me. She was a huge help in working through the thought process that resulted in the chemo post last summer, and that work helped again on a morning in December.

I got the invitation and I knew: I would go. I would go, and I would be the person recovering from cancer and its treatment. I would be open about it, and I would take the adaptations needed. When I wrote about chemotherapy and playing at home last year, I said, “I’m not the player I was when you saw me on TV. I don’t think I’ll ever really be.”

I’m not. I’m the player I am now, and that’s enough to try.

All emotional systems go.

I’ll have more to say as the tournament progresses. But for now: Can I play Jeopardy!?

Yes.

You can see me in the quarterfinal on Friday, February 21.