Close on the heels of Olivia producing a faux million dollar bill a few weeks back, I had another great experience. Last evening I had gotten together with my colleague from a previous life and a personal friend now – Shari – for a drink at Ray’s on the River to catch up on a few professional and personal things. Somewhere, in between those sips of white wine and an Old Fashioned, as we were discussing a work related item, Ashleah who was working the bar, popped up with her “Can I get you something else question”.

As deep as I was in our discussions, I have never been known to pass up on an opportunity to repeat an old joke. Before I knew it, I had already rolled out my “A million dollars would help!” answer. It had the usual reaction of laughter all around and that was that as Shari and I went back to our discussions.

Now get this – when I asked for the check and it duly arrived, I signed off on those two pieces of paper (my copy and the store copy) and I thought there was one more piece of paper below that. Half curiously and half mechanically, I removed the top two pieces of paper. And there it was – the best surprise of the evening.

Apparently, not to be outdone by my smart Alec comments, Ashleah had gotten hold of a white piece of paper roughly the size of a bill and drawn all over it to look like a million dollar bill! With a picture of a girl – I assume herself – and the $1,000,000 clearly marked out!

Both Shari and myself realized what had happened and laughed out loudly. We then had Ashleah come over to where we were sitting and take a picture with the bill and myself. We were still laughing as we walked out of the bar.

Okay, Ashleah, we will give you this one. For that quick thinking, sense of humor and the effort taken, we will admit that you are a million!! 🙂

After last week’s coast to coast meetings, this week has been a repeat. Today was a very long day again. Those six hour long partnership negotiations don’t get any easier. And then I had to endure the two hour long Los Angeles infamous traffic on 101 and 405. Finally, when I sat down in the Delta Sky Club, I realized it was already 10 PM by my time and I was terribly hungry.

Came out of the Skyclub and sat at a bar in a nearby restaurant. After starting the evening with an Old Fashioned, I settled for chicken wings for dinner. The wings absolutely stayed true to their name – Five Flame. Just as I was gorging thru my dinner, a couple came up and attempted to settle down in the two chairs next to me.

I moved a little to make space for them. The guy looked at me and asked “Five Flames”? I can only imagine what he must have seen. I had shaved my head in the morning and on those days, having spicy wings undoubtedly meant that I was sweating bullets thru my pate. In any case, we got started talking…

“So, where are you headed to?”, I asked.
“Tahiti and Bora Bora. We are going on our honeymoon.”
“Congratulations. Where are you coming from?”
“Atlanta. She grew up in Atlanta. Her parents live there.”.

I looked at her and was incredulous. What is the chance that I would be sitting next to somebody from my town?

“Where in Atlanta?”, I asked.
“Alpharetta”.

Well, this was getting spooky.

“Where in Alpharetta”?
At this point, she had no idea who I was or where I was from. I am sure she thought I was weird (well, she was not the first one to think so), but she persisted – “Barnwell Road”.

“On the Old Alabama side or the Holcomb Bridge side?”. That pretty much did it. We had started laughing out hard by now.

It turns out, Maria moved to Atlanta before her high school and her parents still live there. And where they live is on my way from home to office everyday (when I am in Atlanta that is). Both she and her husband Ryan are in social media marketing. He grew up in the midwest and has lived in Indiana and Chicago. She spent some time in New York. We talked a lot about the Washington Square Park area where she used to live and as does Natasha now. In a total coincidence, Maria had targeted NYU and USC as her top two colleges. As did Natasha!!

Here is another coincidence… after their food came, the first thing Maria did was started picking up food from Ryan’a plate. That is exactly what Sharmila does (not from Ryan’s plate; I mean from my plate). I warned Ryan that twenty five years of marriage later, he should not expect anything different.

After having a lot of fun at the end of a rather stressful day, I had to say goodbye to the young just married couple. I did promise to check up on Maria’s octogenarian parents some time. Wait till they get the shock of their life – when a weird clean shaven Indian drops by for coffee!!

I want to see if her mom picks up food from her dad’s plate. Maybe I have some hope twenty five more years later that I can have my whole plate to myself!! 🙂

I had been waiting for this day for a few months. You never want to impose yourself on somebody who has been told that he has a few more days to live. But I was hoping that somehow he will figure out a way out of it and make time for me to meet him. Today was the day.

Over a cup of coffee, I caught up with Cuyler on the good fight he is fighting.

I got to know Cuyler about a year back and soon he joined our team at office. And then he relocated his family – wife and very young kids – to the West Coast to stay close to one part of our business there. After a run in the evening one day in June, he started getting into a lot of pain. A couple of days of medical tests later, he got the shocking news – he had a very advanced stage of liver cancer.

It was bad enough that he had to go for immediate chemotherapy. And that is where it got worse. The liver refused to respond to treatment. At that point, the doctors let him know that they had run out of all options.

They immediately moved back to their home town in Texas and soon he had to be admitted to a hospice. As he explained to me, at this point of time, he was in immense pain and just had no energy left. He had lost a lot of weight, his body looked like it was painted with a highlighter (jaundice from a non functioning liver) and his urine had the color of coffee (no filtering happening).

The pivotal moment was his so called “good bye lunch” when all his friends and family had gathered in the hospice. And he slowly waded thru them in his walker. As he recollected for me, it was as the guests were leaving, he was taken over by a compelling determination to fight back. “I am going to fight the good fight, no matter what”, as he put it.

Next day, he got up and refused to take the walker. Just walked a few steps and came back. And that was the start of things starting to look better. A lot of different advise from different doctors, trying out alternate medicine, different food regimen (he talked a lot about alkaline water) and every single day, he felt he was getting a little better.

A visit to the doctor showed that the liver had shown some sign of life. He believes that the chemo had a delayed reaction and did manage to kill a few bad cells. Or perhaps, it is one of those cases where your mind can prevail over the body. As he said, at that point of time, he was running on sheer will to live and determination to fight.

Over the next couple of months, he kept at it. The doctors were willing to give chemo another shot. Chemotherapy, as many of you know, is really putting controlled poison in your system. It tries to kill the bad cells but it also kills good cells. Your body and the different systems take an immense beating. But he said that after the first few days of being completely beat, one fine day, he thought he was feeling much better. In fact the best in a long time. Checks showed that the procedure did yield some results.

He is nowhere close to be outside the danger zone yet. Has gone thru four rounds already and has beat most of the tumors back to less than half their original sizes. He probably has another four rounds to go before any serious long term solution (e.g. surgery, transplant) can be contemplated.

It was pretty funny how he explained his chemo. He will go for a treatment on a Monday, on Tuesday he will be fine, Wednesday he will start feeling terrible (I guess the good cells and the bad cells are getting killed) and then be wiped out and sleep from Thursday to Sunday. Next week he will feel bad but then he will have a week when he feels much better. And then he will have to go in for another treatment.

This is one of those good weeks. He brought his family to Atlanta to visit their old friends. I was glad he could make time early in the morning to have a coffee with me before any of the families woke up. You know what else he does on those good weeks? He attends our office meetings (video) and starts working on office stuff. Every time I see an email from him or his face pops up on the video calls, I shake my head in disbelief and tell him “You are crazy”.

Talking to him today, I recognized that when doctors tell you that you are going to die in a few days and you tell them “No, I am not”, there is a level of craziness that is absolutely called for. Thank you for fighting the good fight, Cuyler Duncan.

As we got up and hugged each other before we left, between his words of heart felt gratitude for all the personal and professional support he has received from us and my sense of awe and inspiration from his life story, I am not sure who was fighting harder to hold back the tears.

That too, was a good fight, this morning.