Sailing in Rough Seas

Christmas Day 2025

What can I say but that life has been hard lately. My hours at the research job I love were cut from thirty-two to ten due to funding cuts, causing Emily and I to lose our health insurance just as I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. For a while, it looked as if I would have no income at all, but fortunately my boss secured a little funding for my position. I also experienced symptoms of a heart attack and was taken to the hospital on Martha’s Vineyard, where we were supposed to have a week’s vacation. It turned out not to be a heart attack but a bizarre vagal response to having silent pneumonia and too much stress. This delayed my biopsy by six very stressful weeks.

My beloved therapist Sandy used to say God gives us challenges and then sees how we respond. I think he was thinking about when he lost his wife very young to ovarian cancer. I would add that God goes with us through challenges giving us the tools and people we need to rise above them. I believe that is how he helps us grow and evolve spiritually. It’s not fun but, without challenges there would be no growth.

I’m doing okay now. Emily and I worked tirelessly as a team to secure health insurance. Emily signed up for Medicare, and I found affordable health insurance through Mass Health Connector. I had a prostatectomy, and Emily was my Florence Nightingale throughout recovery. She fed me when I was too weak and, in too much pain, to get out of bed. She made sure I stayed on top of the pain medication. She was always there when I needed something, and she took care of all the chores until I was strong enough to help. 

The experience made me realize just how much Emily loves me and how lucky I am to have her with me. We are a team and we take care of each other. Now that I’ve recovered, I’m helping by doing the dishes, being the sous chef or when she’s tired, I’ll whip up a nutritious meal. I’m also going in three career directions, all of which are possible at the institution where I’ve been working 11 years. 

First, I’m applying to research technician positions, hoping to get another part-time job that I could add to my current work so as to be eligible for benefits. The problem is that given the current administration’s position on academic research, labs are downsizing. 

Third, I’ve signed up for free training to be a certified nursing assistant, a job which is in high demand right now. I also think I’m well-suited for helping patients as I am very compassionate and caring. I tried to become a medical assistant once, when I quit a lab manager position at a prestigious university and became disillusioned with research, but I couldn’t land a job because I felt like a failure. Now, with authorship on 23 scientific publications, including first and co-1st authorships, I can feel like I’ve done my part and it’s ok to strike out in a new direction.

Second, and this is where my heart lies, I’m trying to create a position for myself as an expert in laboratory sustainability. For the past year and a half, I have led our lab in achieving Gold certification with My Green Lab. It was part of a pilot program at our institution, and since we were so successful at reducing our carbon footprint by 27 tons CO₂ and saving $10,899 per year, I’m hoping they roll it out to all the labs. My hands on experience and My Green Lab Accredited Professional training would make me the ideal person to help promote and guide laboratories in the certification process. Unfortunately, this essential work in combatting climate change may not happen as leaders at our institution tighten belts.

Luckily, my pathology report was excellent. The tumor was small, they got clean margins, and none of the lymph nodes they removed were positive. The most important thing for me now is to get healthier and keep putting my best foot forward. Something good will happen. I just have to be patient, and trust that God has a plan.

Where do I begin? It’s been four and a half years since I published my memoir. Emily and I are well both mentally and physically although Emily has been through another battle with cancer. 

Fortunately, the cancers they found were not recurrences, which tend to be resistant to treatment, but two new tumors, one in each breast. She was an incredible warrior going through another four months of chemo, a double mastectomy and reconstruction. I did the best I could to support her but was struggling with my own internal turmoil. More on that later, in another post. 

Miraculously, she had a PCR or pathologically complete response to the chemo, meaning they didn’t find any cancer cells in the breast tissue they removed. Emily retired from teaching kindergarten after four months of teaching under COVID restrictions. Two weeks later she was hit with the cancer diagnosis. In a way it was lucky it happened that way, because she could devote all her energy to survival.

Now that she is through treatment and her prognosis is good, Emily has begun enjoying her retirement. She has a group of walking buddies who call themselves the Strawberry Hill Gang (SHG). Strawberry Hill is the nickname for this neighborhood which had very rich soil that was good for growing strawberries.

The SHG is an amazing group of women ages 66-86 who are all very active socially and politically. Some are master gardeners, others have razor sharp intellects and are passionate about the community and world. Many like Emily love to travel. In fact, Emily is planning a week-long trip to Aruba with two of the women. Most importantly, they support each other in every way imaginable. I luckily am an honorary member of the group.

What have I been up to? Well, I’m going on my eleventh year working as a research technician II in the same lab I was at the end of my memoir. I still love my job and my line of work. It’s challenging and I feel like I am contributing to medical science which ultimately is about saving lives.

After I published my memoir, for a while I bathed in the satisfaction of having completed the project. I also gave my recovery story for the NAMI Speaker Series, and Emily and I both presented in a webinar for McClean Hospital. I tracked my book sales on Amazon and was delighted by each sale and even more so by the reviews readers left on Amazon.com, but soon sales all but stopped, and I was faced with the daunting task of promoting my memoir. I believed I had written something honest and inspiring that could motivate people in recovery to step out of their comfort zone and reach for their dreams.

As a first-time author with a demanding job, who also needed to keep his memoir a secret at work, I really struggled with the promotion piece. It took a while to figure out how to set up an email under my pen name and much more time to learn WordPress that I used to create this author website. But, the website hasn’t helped me sell the book very much. On the contrary, now I need to learn how to promote my website. I take heart in the fact that nothing worthwhile is easy.

Lisanne Finston, the director of Gould Farm, offered to sell my memoir at Gould Farm’s Roadside Store, which had just been completely renovated and was serving the public. She asked for ten copies and then for fifteen more! They sell for the same $7.99 that they sell on Amazon and, either way, Gould Farm gets to keep half the profits.

The latest bit of promotion was convincing a bookstore to carry it on consignment. I sent them an email, then followed up with a phone call. Finally, I perfected an elevator pitch and went to the store to ask them in person, only to be told they weren’t accepting any more books until September (this was in March). Unwilling to give up entirely, I found the psychology and self-help section and perused the books. On my way out I smiled at the lady I’d been talking with and said, “You have a great psychology and self-help section. Maybe one day my book will be there.” She smiled back and said, “Yes.”

The next day I crafted a compelling follow-up pitch and emailed it to her. She replied the next day with a link to their consignment application and said I should submit my memoir. I did and in another two weeks, I got an email asking for two copies that they would put on their shelves. Woohoo!

I hope to post again soon. In the meantime, remember, don’t give up!

Emily and I had the pleasure to present our recovery stories during this week’s McLean Hospital Crafting Support Project 2023 Family Webinars. 

With the help of 22 Power Point slides and photos from my childhood, Gould Farm, work and more I shared my experience with mental illness from 14 years old to the present. Highlights included a tribute to my parents who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself and a picture of Emily and me hiking up to Zealand Falls in the White Mountains of New Hampshire (see slides below).

Emily talked about her mom’s tough love, forcing her into Payne Whitney Hospital’s psychiatric ward. Her mom had to literally peel Emily’s fingers from the doorway and coerce her into a cab, saying she wasn’t going to let her back into the house.

Emily talked about how hard it was for her when I was too depressed to get up in the morning, and how support from her family helped her stay in our relationship. We both said how proud we were of each other: Emily citing my determination to succeed in a fast paced, cutting-edge research laboratory and I her bravery in the face of cancer diagnoses.

Several friends, including my childhood friend Marvin with whom I’d lost touch with for 25 years attended the webinar. Dr. Patterson, our psychiatrist of 25 years, called to congratulate us minutes after the webinar ended. It was immensely gratifying that these people who have had a big influence in my life were there to support me.

To tell or not to tell?

I used the pen name Alexander Bela Kirk when self-publishing my memoir about my struggle with mental illness for a lot of reasons. There is a lot of fear and misunderstanding about “mental illness”. The first and last time I voluntarily told an employer that I took medication for depression, I was forced to quit within a few days. Granted, I wasn’t doing as well as I am now, but the stakes are much higher. I have a career I love as a research technician. Even more importantly, my wife is a two-time survivor of breast cancer, and we both depend on the excellent health care coverage we receive from my job.

Part of me aches to tell the truth about how hard things have been and what an effort it is to manage my illness and hold down a responsible, demanding job in a cutting edge research laboratory. Another part of me worries that the added stress of self-consciousness, should my co-workers and superiors find out, would tip the delicate balance I have achieved and sink my ship. Hence, I live a double life, one as an extremely competent research technician and the other as a writer and person who still struggles with depression and the accompanying distorted thoughts.

I also would like to take ownership of my memoir, because I have written it to break down barriers and give hope to people living with mental illness and their families. I stand by every word in the book. It is the truth, it is my story, and it is the story of many like me. And so, for now, only those in my family and my closest friends know I wrote this book.

I hope now that you know my dilemma, you will not judge me harshly for concealing my real name, and that it will not detract from your experience should you decide to read my memoir. If you haven’t yet done so, feel free to look inside the book and read the reviews by clicking on the link to the book on Amazon.com at the bottom of the homepage. I would love to hear your feedback about the book or this website. My email address is in the contact page. Thank you!