Ask me about irony. When I was 20 years old, I hiked eleven hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Pennsylvania to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Now, 34 years later, my life depends on the work that they do. That’s a definition of irony if I ever heard one.
I want to live forever. I know that sounds crazy, but that is how I feel. I’ve heard people say it would be a curse not to be able to die, but I don’t believe that. Look at all the amazing things the people of this world have accomplished; supercomputers, improved space flight, self-driving electric cars, artificial intelligence, RNA antivirus, cure for cancer. I had to throw that last one in there. Some people are afraid of these changes, but not me. I embrace them. I want to experience them all, and someday I would like to own a Tesla. If I could, I would have my brain placed inside a robot before I died. Providing I knew who I was, I’d rather live as a metal machine before turning back to dust. It’s a shame that the only part of my body that makes me who I am is the part being attacked. There’s that ironic thing again.
I’ve always been told that it takes a very creative mind to think as I do. Remember those public service announcements, a mind is a terrible thing to waste? I think they were talking about me. I always felt that I could be a rocket scientist or supercomputer engineer. Unfortunately, money issues forced me to cancel those plans. I did what I could with one year of community college and trade school. But that didn’t stop me from trying hard. Before being diagnosed with glioblastoma, I was working a full-time job as a computer tech, a part-time job teaching technology classes at an adult-education night school, another part-time job doing website work at the local library, as well as doing side jobs fixing computers and creating websites for local businesses. In addition to my work, I was still able to find time for my favorite hobbies, such as photography and self-publishing books. I was a very busy person, and then one word stopped me in my tracks: cancer.
But I am getting ahead of my story. Who is Jeff Montanye? I was born in Middletown, New York, and have lived in the Hudson Valley all my life. I am a fifty-four-year-old technology assistant for a local K-12 public school district. The technology part means I have a very challenging job and work very hard. The assistant part means the income is low, which is why I do all the extra jobs. On top of that, I love to hike, bike, and kayak with my friends. I own an older home requiring a lot of TLC, all of which I do myself. I never had time for a wife so I have no children. I love my cat, Thumper, and I’m surrounded by friends and family. Until I got sick, I didn’t realize just how surrounded I was.
I like to get involved with the community. I’ve already mentioned that I had hiked the Appalachian Trail to raise money for the American Cancer Society. But that is only one of my many achievements. I also created a book and maps of a locally protected forest and provided hours of volunteer time to help make the place a valuable 6,700-acre resource for the community to walk, bike, fish, hunt, ride horses, and much more. For five years, I ran a scouting program in the local church, bringing outdoor fun and education to young boys and girls, opening their eyes to their environment and showing them how much fun the great outdoors can be. I have worked with watershed alliances to clean the local rivers by helping to pull hundreds of old tires from the water. And after all that, I still found time to teach self-enrichment classes in technology including photography, self-publishing, and website design throughout the local public library system.
I am always looking for new ways to improve myself. Several years ago, I learned how to self-publish and began creating my own books. I started by designing books of mazes for children. Combining my skills in photography and model building, I found a new way to create the mazes by constructing them from objects instead of drawing them the traditional way. After creating that first book, I spent the next several years designing and writing more books including four young adult novels. Writing became my passion and I’ve been doing it ever since. Then, on November fourth, just before Thanksgiving 2021, something very weird happened.
It was Thursday morning, I had just arrived at work and sat down at my workbench to read my email. After going through the first message, a stabbing pain shot through my forehead. I closed my eyes and put my head down on the desk for a minute before going back to reading, only something was dreadfully wrong. I couldn’t read. I could see the letters clearly, but I didn’t know what they meant. Imagine yourself picking up a book written in a language you didn’t understand and trying to read it. That’s what happened to me.
I felt like somebody was playing a joke on me. At first, I chuckled to myself and looked around for the hidden cameras. I thought, perhaps, something had gone wrong with the computer and began looking for other things to read; manuals, notebooks, memos, and such. That’s when I realized something was dreadfully wrong. Somehow, I had forgotten how to read.
I’ll spare you the boring stuff. Of course, I was taken to the hospital, had an MRI scan, blood was found in my brain, then a tumor.
“A tumor?” I asked my doctor. “Benign?”
My doctor shook his head, “You have what some people believe is the worst type of cancer anybody could get. You have a long road ahead of you, and I have to be honest with you, death is a possibility.”
I looked at him with the cool, calm face of someone who was just told he was going out for a stroll through the garden. “Okay,” I said. “When do we start?” I was on the operating table within an hour.
Obviously, there was a long stay in the hospital and visits from doctor after doctor including Neurologists, Oncologists, Surgeons, Phlebotomists; I can’t even remember them all. But the worst thing of it all was when I picked up something with words written on it, I didn’t know what it said. I couldn’t even order my own lunch. I was an emerging author and this was going to be my year to shine. I had planned to begin marketing myself and start selling my work. This couldn’t be happening to an author. Not now, when I was just starting on the road to discovery.
Everything ended with a crash. I took sick leave from work. I quit teaching night school. I quit the library website job. I quit giving photography lessons. I closed down all my websites. I shut everything down and settled in for my long journey to recovery.
Finally, after weeks of torture, I began recognizing words again. At first, I felt like a first grader reading “Dick and Jane” but words were coming back. Many words came back to me quickly once I saw them. I had to concentrate on them for a while before I understood them, which slowed me down, but they eventually came. My rehab manager explained to me that I didn’t have memory loss, just blockage. That meant the words may not be gone. I just had to find a way to pull them out. I installed two monitors on my computer, one for the document I’m writing, and one with a thesaurus as well as a spell-check program to help with this. These are tools I have always used in the past, however, I found myself relying on them more heavily now. Much more heavily.
Ask me about irony. With over 100 trillion neural connections in the human brain, my tumor chose to attack the ones that affected me the most. Ironic or just bad luck? I choose to look at the good side of this. I wanted to write, but my life was too busy. My cancer experience caused me to clear my plate completely. Once I recover, I’ll have all that time to finish my book and promote myself. Maybe this is a good thing. After all, everybody dies. If I don’t take the time to do the things I want to do most, they won’t get done. I’m going to write.
I will beat this. I will finish this book, and I will become known. I have to. I want to live forever. And right now, the only way to do that is through my books.
Jeffrey David Montanye
Hits: 286
