It was inevitable after binge-watching Jeopardy for a whole month like MJ and I have that we'd get to the Cindy Stowell run of late 2016. MJ and I watched a pretty long run (12 game winning streak) by PHD student Seth Wilson on Hulu, agreed that Seth was kind of bland and didn't have much personality other than knowing a lot about movies and theater/film products, and we were ready for a new run, which happened to be with a science content-developer from Texas. I noticed right away that Cindy didn't smile much and had an odd expression even when being introduced (when every contestant tries to smile or give a little signature gesture), but Cindy was hard-pressed to smile, giving a very forced expression that seemed pained. Little did we know that Cindy Stowell had stage 4 cancer during the taping of the show and would die soon afterwards, even before the TV taping of her episodes aired. (This all happened in 2016, by the way, the year many celebrities passed away and all kinds of election craziness and world craziness happened). A heartbreaking yet inspirational story, proof that inspiration and emotion can be found anywhere, even on a trivia quiz show like Jeopardy.
Cancer has 5 stages, 0-4, where 0 is not actually cancer but the identification of abnormal cells that might become cancer, and then each stage is progressively worse up to stage 4, where the cancer in one area has spread to other areas of the body and becomes increasingly more difficult to treat, to the point where stage 4 cancer is almost a death sentence to anyone who has it. (Alec Trebek, the host of Jeopardy, recently was treated for Stage 4 cancer). It's why Cindy Stowell auditioned for the show even knowing (or perhaps because of knowing she had terminal cancer), because it was a life long dream for her and something she needed to cross off her bucket list, a list she needed to complete sooner probably than she would have liked. Not having known any terminal cancer patients personally (I knew one fellow classmate in high school who had Hodgkin's disease, a blood cancer, but was able to be treated and is living happily as far as I can tell from Facebook nowadays), it is difficult for me to imagine having terminal cancer and knowing that the clock was ticking on my life. I don't react well to upcoming deadlines and being pressed for time anyway, getting anxious and thinking about it all the time, so that ticking timeline would be devastating for me. I would, though, do what Cindy Stowell did: pursue what I could before I passed away, live my life to the fullest while I could. It appeared that Cindy had difficulty even being on stage and standing at the podium playing the game: producers had to help her out during commercial breaks regain her energy. Sometimes, though, life has a cosmic rhythm to it: Cindy got some lucky breaks on a couple games despite not achieving a super-high score (perhaps the cancer contributed to not being able to ring in quickly or think of answers as fast as she could have if fully healthy), and she wound up going on a 7-game win streak, a great way to spend a portion of the remaining parts of her life. I hope she relished and enjoyed that experience as one of her crowning achievements. Oh and she donated most of her winnings on Jeopardy to cancer research to help others who had cancer, a noble act indeed which makes her more of an inspiration to me than sports stars like Lebron James, politicians running for political office, or celebrities who gain fame just because.
MJ has an important decision to make soon in her nursing career: what kind of hospital setting she wants to do her preceptorship (4th and last semester of nursing school) in. Whichever one she chooses would pave a path to getting a job right out of nursing school, then that first job would help her get a job a few years down the road, and so on and so on. So this first step is pretty important to set the tone: (it's like getting a summer associate position at a law firm which would lead to a full-time job offer after law school). There's tons of good options to choose from, from maternity (delivering babies!) to pediatrics to adult health to ICU, but one option available is oncology, the treatment of cancer patients. To me, I wouldn't necessarily choose oncology as my career, but I would definitely consider doing an internship or "clinical experience" or some sort of hands-on experience with oncology if I could, if only to speak to cancer patients and spend time with some of them, and understand their condition and give sympathy if it was a terminal disease. Some of the nurses in MJ's program have already met a patient who later passed away afterwards, which will probably happen to one of MJ's patients eventually, but that is certainly one thing I admire MJ and other nurses for: their job puts them in position to interact with people who are sick or dying, and just being there has inherent value, probably more than any lawyer arguing over whether their client is liable for money will bring. I do donate to a cancer research charity once a year in very small amounts, but I do hope to one day contribute in some way to easing the harmful effects of that disease, if not find a cure, or just allowing cancer patients a way to achieve their lifelong dreams before they can't anymore.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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