My 39-year-old pregnant wife, Lisa, is lying in an ER hospital bed. I'm too restless to sit, so I lean against the wall, although leaning instead of sitting does nothing to calm my nerves. We've been waiting hours for the test results. We wait in silence. But outside our closed blue privacy curtain, there's constant noise from busy doctors and nurses, announcements over the intercom, and patients moving in and out of ER stalls. Our curtain finally moves. It's a new doctor we haven't seen tonight, but Lisa recognizes her immediately and sits up a little as if an old friend has come to visit.
Dr. Benton, what a surprise. What are you doing here? That name hits me hard. Although we've never met in person, I know that's Lisa's current oncologist. I've had my fair share of ER visits in my life. I know oncologists don't just hang out in the ER on a Saturday night waiting to see if one of their patients happens to show up. No, they called her in for this. She smiles at Lisa's friendly greeting and continues towards the bed.
Dr. Benton gives me a quick look and a smile. I return the look, but not the smile. She places one hand on the metal rail of the bed, and her other hand finds the top of Lisa's head. She takes a deep breath and speaks. Lisa, if I'm here, it's not good news. You're listening to All Under One Roof, a husband's journal. An up-close and intimate chronicle when Lisa, a 39-year-old wife, mother of two, discovers her cancer has reemerged while she's two months pregnant with her third child.
Weeks later, there's unexpected news of her mother's cancer returning as well. Mother and pregnant daughter, each battling cancer. When Lisa was about to start chemo, my brother Mike mailed me a journal with a note that read, You should write down your thoughts while you're going through this. It might help. And so I did. The following entries were written in real time and represent exactly what I was thinking at the time. October 27th, 2007 Naming Rights Hearing Dr.
Benton telling Lisa that, if she's there, it's not good news, is the worst fear I've ever realized. We've been on edge through this entire pregnancy. The latest red flag happened just a few hours ago. Earlier today, Lisa was climbing the stairs to our bedroom and got to the fourth step before she had to sit down. Her left hand gripped the railing. She breathed as if her chest were made of glass and a strong exhale would shatter it to pieces.
She looked like a scared child using an escalator for the first time. I ran to get the phone. Our girls, Haley, seven, and Kelly, two and a half, were in our kitchen eating lunch. The situation we're at now is, we're currently living with Lisa's mother, who she herself has had some recent medical issues and has needed help. It's a tri-level house that's in desperate need of repairs. Cracks run through the ceiling. The basin floods with heavy rain.
And because of all the flooding throughout the years, all that water has now shifted to foundation. Bedroom doors swing shut on their own. We now need to use small knick-knacks acting as door stops to prop them open. It's in better shape than a fixer-upper, but not by much. Our girls continued eating and were unaware their mother was having trouble breathing. Haley was biting off the corners of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Kelly was being a little food scientist and dunking her carrot in milk.
I ran past them to get the phone in the kitchen. Kelly saw me. Hey, Dad! I created carrot milk! You want to try it? Can't write this second. Keep eating, girls! I ran back to my wife with the phone in my hand. I leapt up the first series of stairs on my knees buckled. My thirty-eight-year-old body didn't appreciate that sudden burst of physical activity. I handed Lisa the phone so she could call her doctor. Doctors diagnosed Lisa with breast cancer two years ago.
She had a mastectomy as well as some of her lymph nodes removed. Her latest scans were clear. But she's pregnant now and health scares still put us on edge. Lisa had mentioned to her doctor the intermittent shortness of breath. So he told her, You're thirty-nine. You're pregnant. Don't worry. Lisa was worried. Hi, Dr. Leo. It's Lisa. I'm so sorry to bother you. Again, I was walking up some stairs. I had to sit down. I feel my chest squeezing.
It hurts. I watched Lisa's face to see if her expressions offered a tell on what he was saying. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me.
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She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. She looked at me. Once upon a time, I ran away to join the circus. No, wait. Strike that. That's not right. Once upon a time, my mom kicked me out of her car on the circus's front steps. Yeah, that's more accurate. Ever since I was young, my mom always knew I wanted to get into performing. But attending an all-boys Catholic high school offered limited theatrical opportunities.
One day, towards the end of my senior year of high school, my mom comes home from work and pulls me into her room. Matt, I just heard on WGN radio that Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is traveling to different cities and holding clown college auditions. I honestly thought she was telling me this because she wanted to run away and join the circus. Which I found strange. But you know what? Good for her. So I said, Wow, Mom.
I didn't see that coming. Well, you raised five kids. You know what? You should totally go for it. But don't you think you should be telling Dad before telling me? No, not for me, she said. For you. For you. I balked. Mom, clowns are strange. And Stephen King just released a book last summer about an alien killer clown shapeshifter called It. Hard pass. Then she told me that this college thing was in Florida for ten weeks.
Hmm. Ten weeks in the Sunshine State as an 18-year-old? Clowns suddenly seem more normal. But I still had a problem. I knew nothing of clowning other than I lived in Chicago and watched the Bozo show. So unless this clown college thing was going to teach me how to play the Bozo Buckets Grand Prize game, I'd have no idea what I was doing. But my mom insisted it sounded fun. So that weekend, both my parents drove me to DePaul University where they were holding the auditions.
When we arrived, I saw a room filled with people in full makeup and costume. Some of them were juggling. Others trapped themselves in imaginary boxes. On the far side of the room, there was a little dog wearing a small hat riding in circles on a tiny bike. I turned to my parents and said, Um, yeah, we're leaving now. Thanks. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. My mom said. No, this looks like fun. Okay.
Clearly, I was there for my mom. Fine. I'll play along. But I'm not taking out the trash for a week. During the audition, Steve Smith, the director of clown college, performed a physical comedy routine. We were then to get up and perform the same routine. He instructed us. Now do exactly as I did. Well, I'm lucky I didn't go first because I got to witness people getting up there and changing the routine. They were trying to make him laugh with their improved auditions.
But Steve didn't laugh. He just shook his head. My confidence started to grow. I still wasn't sure I could be a clown. But listening and taking directions? Yeah, that I could do. Turns out, I found out later, Steve was looking for people he could teach his vision of the art of clowning. My inexperience and in no makeup or costume was actually an opportunity. At the end of the audition, they sent us home with an extensive 12-page questionnaire to fill out, which I didn't do.
But again, my mom kept pestering me. Oh, just fill it out and send it in. So, eventually, I filled it out and mailed it in. I forgot all about it, and a few weeks after graduating Notre Dame High School and having already enrolled at Oakton Community College, I received a letter from Ringling Brothers. I opened it up, and confetti spilled out all over the carpet. I was accepted! My real-life Hogwarts! You're a clown, Matthew! A few weeks later, I was on my way to Florida.
Still, by the way, having no idea what to expect, still picturing that I was off to learn how to do birthday clowning and make balloon animals, I had no clue how intense and serious this program would be, how big of a deep dive it would be into all things comedy performing. Let me tell you, for a kid who loved comedy, Clown College was a comedy lover's paradise. Six days a week, ten-hour days, right by the beach in Venice, Florida.
We analyzed Bugs Bunny cartoons to understand how to construct a gag. Wild E. Coyote and Road Runner showed us perfect examples of the formula, set-up, set-up, blow-off. Laurel and Hardy movies were our teachers in comedy timing. Buster Keaton films, our professor of pratfalls. We'd write and perform original variety shows every Saturday night. We'd custom-made our own costumes. I learned how to sew. Some clowns learned trapeze, while others, like myself, did teeterboard stunts. We spent an entire morning learning how to fall off a six-foot ladder.
Then, after lunch, an entire afternoon practicing how to take a slap to the face. Improv, comedy writing, dance, stilts, make-up, explosives. You know, your average run-of-the-mill college courses. It's funny, though. The biggest surprise was the heavy emphasis Steve Smith was teaching us on how to be our best selves. Every morning he would give little speeches and prepare us for dealing with self-doubt or criticism. Either put a cork in their mouth or cotton in your ears. He'd help us understand the why of performing.
We'd do what we'd do until we'd drop. And hopefully, in the end, we would have passed on some of our wisdom on to others. Clown college ended up teaching me more about who I was as a person than about being a clown. Although many would argue, is there really a difference? The training in Florida lasted ten weeks. When it ended, they only offered jobs to 18 people of the 50 who were originally accepted to travel with the circus.
I was fortunate. After graduation, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus offered me a one-year contract to live on a train and go on the road. I signed. It was an incredible experience. But after 12 months of being on the road and performing 15 shows a week, I was ready to try a new style of performing. So I left the circus and started taking classes at Chicago's Second City Improv Training Center. As a backup to acting, I enrolled again at Oakton Community College to start on my associate's degree.
I took acting as one of my classes. In that class, I met a girl named Lisa. She was bubbly, curious, a hugger, full of energy, and someone who greeted people with an enthusiastic smile. Now, at this point, you're probably thinking this is where Lisa and I were inseparable, how we immediately fell for each other. You'd never see one without the other. But we didn't click. We didn't really even like each other. We had separate friends and separate interests.
The only connection we shared was we both liked the same radio morning personality, Kevin Matthews. And Kevin did this bit where he would always draw out the name of his weather reporter, also named Lisa. So when I would come into class, I would say, Lisa! To which she would respond, Croak! And so it went. Lisa! Croak! Neither of us could ever imagine that that would later become her name. It's a bit we continued throughout our marriage.
In our second year of theater class, our teacher, Kathy Davis, saw what Lisa and I hadn't seen yet and cast us as a couple in the play Love Letters. The play brought us closer together. And I was starting to think I liked her. But then the class ended, and we went our separate ways. Lisa stayed in Oakton while Ringling Brothers was working on a new project in Japan and offered me to go there for nine months.
I accepted. Two years would pass until our next encounter. I was at a bar with some friends, and it was late, so I decided to go home. Lisa, however, was just getting there. We crossed paths in the entryway. She recognized me first. She stopped me with a, Croak! And I jumped in with, Oh, my gosh! Lisa! That conversation lasted less than a minute. Three more years passed. It was now 1994, and I was touring about seven months out of the year.
This time, it was with a three-person comedy troupe called the Reduced Shakespeare Company. It was a pass-a-hack-act that formed out of Berkeley, California, and became a legitimate theater company. They take topics like Shakespeare, American history, the Bible, all the great books, and then reduce them down to a two-hour theatrical show. Basically, the RSC cuts out all the long dialogue and boring characters to get right to the sex and the killing, which is honestly what people really want to see anyway.
It's a theater company that is still, to this day, writing shows and touring all over the world. While I was home on break from a long run in Washington, D.C., when one of my former Oakton Community College theater teachers, Carol Kleinberg, gave me a call. She was directing a play at Oakton called The Visit. It was opening in less than a week, and one of the actors suddenly quit. She called and asked if I could step in.
Carol helped me get into Second City. I didn't hesitate, and I said yes. When I showed up for rehearsal, I was offstage looking at the script and heard from behind, croak! And like an old comedy team who never forgets the routine, without even turning around, I came back with, Lisa! I told her I was nervous because I didn't know the dynamics of the cast, and it opened in less than a week. Stick with me, she said.
And this time, five years after we first met, I did. Weeks later, after the show opened, Chicago was having a pitch-perfect October weather night. Lisa and I were carpooling at this point to and from the performances, and I was driving her home. She said to me, You know, Matt, despite the awful heat in the summer and the freezing winters, during the fall, this city can produce the best weather with the best architectural backdrop. I agreed, and I was inspired.
So I drove past her block and kept driving all the way down Dempster Street until we hit Lake Michigan. We walked along the beach and talked until three in the morning. I was having such a good time, I didn't dare try and kiss her for fear I would completely ruin the evening. But at 3 a.m., with us sitting on a rock, and the skyline of Chicago watching us, Lisa decided she had waited long enough. She leaned over and gave me a kiss.
You're very Exceptionary No dictionary can define What's genuinely indescribable Very That started a relationship that was a new experience for me. For the first time, I was the reserve partner. At a restaurant, Lisa would be the one sticking out her tongue with food, making noises like Bill the Cat from Bloom County. She danced while we walked down the street, and I was the one looking around to see if anyone was watching. When I drove, she held mini concerts to the tunes of Lenny Kravitz and Janis Joplin, complete with hairbrush as a microphone and a rolled-down window as her wind machine.
We really enjoyed each other's company, but I had to go back on the road with the RSC. The University of Arizona accepted her into their journalism program. I had my doubts about a long-distance relationship, and look, it wouldn't be a short-term problem either. But she never once asked me to stop touring for us to have a future. Not once. We knew the time apart would be a considerable challenge. It came down to this. We didn't want to break up.
Literally. It was that simple. We married. Three years later, Lisa became pregnant with our first child, Haley. I was still touring during those days and couldn't be there for the birth. Again, Lisa never once made me feel guilty about being on the road. Instead, she invited her mom and younger sister, Andrea, for the delivery. It was a special moment that they would forever talk about. A few years later, the RSC was set to perform at the Edinburgh Theatre Fringe Festival in Scotland.
Now, right before this, Lisa was the editor for a local paper in Niles called The Bugle. But after September 11th, they suddenly ran into some financial difficulty, and the paper was sold. Lisa lost her job. However, this now allowed her to join me in Scotland with Haley in tow. Lisa fell in love with Edinburgh. Now, since she had to watch Haley while I was performing, we tag-teamed. After the show, when I would come home, Lisa would then head out with journal in hand to read and write.
We'd come back filled with stories of the people she met at the pubs or in the park. It was a dream trip. But on our fifth day there, we received a call from the States. It was Lisa's mother, Dina. She had unfortunate news. She had developed colon cancer. This would require surgery along with chemotherapy and radiation. Not only was Dina facing rehab, but Lisa's oldest sister, Wendy, was special needs and still living at home. Wendy could hold a basic job, but not live independently.
Lisa's youngest sister, Andrea, already moved to Wisconsin with her husband for a business opportunity he had. In short, Dina was facing a situation where she would not be able to take care of Wendy, and now she herself would need some assistance. After Lisa hung up the phone, she informed me that we'd have to give up our apartment and move in with her mom and Wendy. Lisa hoped that a year would be enough time for her mom to recover and for us to find a special needs home for Wendy.
Then we would leave. Look, I loved where we lived. It was a cute apartment in Edison Park, which was a great neighborhood of Chicago. Many people called it the mini-Wrigleyville. But I was still traveling almost six to eight months out of the year, and Lisa never questioned my touring. So I didn't question this. We returned to the States and moved in with Lisa's mom and sister. One year turned into three. Lisa took care of her mother and sister while raising our daughter, but she was anxious to get back to her journalism career and wanted to try her hand at hard news reporting.
So she ended up writing for a few online publications about the Iraqi war, which was then underway. But immersing herself in ugly wartime details, paired with caring for her mother, Lisa began to feel lost. Yet, she vowed to keep pushing through these brutal stories. But as the war continued, so did her melancholy state of mind. When Lisa became pregnant with our second child, she stopped reporting altogether to focus on the pregnancy. Kelly was born on July 28, 2005.
Lisa referred to her as the little girl who brought her back into the light. While Kelly was a boost to our family, Dina's recovery was taking longer than any of us had expected. Her health was so fragile that she once spent three months in the hospital right around the holidays. And doctors were telling us she was most likely never coming home. We prepared for the worst. But the worst never happened. Dina has always been a fighter.
And against all odds, she returned home. Yes, there were still some more surgeries that needed to be done, and the road to recovery seemed daunting. But she was home. In the fall of 2005, while breastfeeding Kelly, Lisa felt a lump in her left breast. She went to her primary care physician and her OB-GYN, but both of them told her it was most likely a clogged milk duct. Lisa was only 36. The recommended age to start getting mammograms is 40.
So it wasn't even prescribed. Months later, Lisa was chatting on a couch at a party. Her friend's dog came right up to her and stuck its nose exactly where the clogged duct was and wouldn't stop sniffing. Lisa's stomach dropped. She's heard of stories like this and what animals can sense. So she made an appointment the very next day. This doctor, the third opinion, said it was cancer. They removed Lisa's left breast and some lymph nodes right away.
The doctors wanted her to undergo chemotherapy. They also wanted to remove her ovaries and her other breast. She contemplated all the options. Lisa had seen how frail Dena had become during chemo and surgeries. She was sure the cancer would come back someday, and she was worried about the long-term effects in battling the cancer. She found an additional oncologist who guided her with some natural remedies, as well as her current oncologist. Lisa would now scan every 6 months, and at the first sign of reoccurrence, she'd be ready for chemo, surgeries, radiation, whatever it took.
Lisa recovered well and later opted for reconstruction of her breast. We also managed to get Wendy placed in a special-needs home. We all laughed because it was in an upscale suburb of Chicago. She'd be living better than any of us. Even Dena was getting stronger. Yeah, she still had a long road ahead, but she was walking more and experiencing fewer setbacks. And then more good news, Lisa's scans kept coming back clean. Almost a year after her surgery, she became pregnant with our third child.
This was a surprise. So Lisa contacted all her physicians, but they weren't concerned about the pregnancy. Now, they suggested she get scanned more often after the baby was born, maybe, let's say, every 3 months, but they gave her the green light. This unexpected life change thrilled Lisa. She couldn't stop smiling. But as her pregnancy continued, Lisa's body was achy. Her fingers hurt, and she found herself out of breath. Again, her doctor said it was not unusual for someone pregnant at the age of 39 to be out of breath.
This once again reminded her the latest scans were clean. Meanwhile, I was about to leave on a 12-week tour with the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Because she was pregnant, her best friend, Sue Austin, agreed to come to Chicago from New York to live with us. Sue is a freelance computer programmer and lived with her sister. The combination of working remotely and not owning a home allowed her to pack and go at will. To add to even more logistics, I started an online DVD business to sell Reduced Shakespeare Company merchandise.
Now, this was before Amazon was Amazon and monopolized the Internet. So sales were good, and I expanded my inventory to all genres. That move paid off big. The business was now too big to be just a hobby. Lisa agreed to run things at my startup venture while I was gone. This was perfect. All the pieces were finally falling into place. Lisa was about to be a new mother again. Her mom was finally on the mend. Her special needs sister was in a reputable facility.
Lisa would run my business, and I was four days away from heading out on a three-month tour. Despite all the previous setbacks, sicknesses, surgeries, financial burdens, and lost wages, our fortunes were finally improving. This was setting up to be the best year of our 10-year marriage. That is, until October 27, 2007, when Lisa had to sit on the fourth stair that leads to our bedroom because she was having trouble breathing. I was so happy. I was so happy.
I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy.
