Rob Long

You have to be intentionally dense to believe this. This is not a standard issue coat. He went out of his way to get it made, but I t’s ok because it’s not the same color? What, you think he’s actually going to go out there with the leather jacket and the SS patch on it as well?

After rewatching Home Alone, I couldn’t stop wondering: how plausible is the oversleep that leaves Kevin behind? So I wrote a tiny paper and ran the numbers. Merry Christmas! 🎄

Friends- This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die. Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do. I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all. Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints. There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come. Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son. A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears. Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet. Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective: “When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.” I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape. But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9). With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices, Ben — and the Sasses

My Birthday Gave Me Cancer I didn’t know if I would mention this publicly, but I keep getting questions about my health. Let’s just say it’s been an interesting few months. In mid-September, my lower back hurt, so my primary doc signed me up for physical therapy. I kept up with that for four appointments until my back couldn’t take it anymore. Insurance finally approved an MRI in mid-October and found two bulging disks in my lower back. After a few unfruitful Urgent Care and ER visits, on Nov. 5, insurance finally approved a spine specialist to give me epidural shots to those disks, which should have taken care of the issue. Instead, my back kept feeling worse. Throughout October, I could barely leave the house except for doctors’ appointments. By the start of November, I could barely leave the bed. They scheduled a second set of epidurals, but I finally got an appointment with a top neurologist. That was Friday, Nov. 21, my birthday, and the neurologists soon figured out it wasn’t just bulging discs. She immediately checked me in to the hospital next door and they ran every kind of test you can think of. (That neurologist was the only one who found it odd I’d lost 30 lbs. in 2-3 months.) After several hours, the ER doc informed me I had cancer running up and down my spine which had now moved into my ribs. The cancer probably came from somewhere else (like the colon, lungs, etc.), so it was basically all over my body. Understandably, I thought I’d be dead in a month or two. Tests continued and by Saturday, Nov. 22, a large team of doctors had a pow-wow and began to think I had multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer that targets individual bones. They had only found two tumors – one that had completely destroyed a thoracic vertebra in my back, and one in a neck (cervical) vertebra. Turns out The Big C didn’t have me down yet. First thing Monday, Nov. 24, the neurologist performed a five-hour surgery to remove the thoracic tumor, then inserted rods and a cage to connect the vertebrae above and below it. While he was in there, he took a bone biopsy. That tricky bit of business went perfectly. Surgeon’s a rock star. On Tuesday, Nov. 25, he performed the second surgery to fix my neck, which also went great. And on Wednesday, a bone marrow biopsy was taken from my hip. Since then, it’s been a whole lot of pain, trippy meds, and fitting me for custom neck and braces. With those braces, I’ve been able to stand and shuffle around a bit, sit upright a few times (which I hadn’t done since October), and even write this little missive. As it stands now, I should be moved tomorrow to an acute rehab facility, where I’ll have about 7-10 days to build strength and regain the ability to do common tasks. Then I’ll get chemo via injections/pills, a method that is unlikely to cause hair loss and other common symptoms. According to my oncologist and many other experts, multiple myeloma currently has some of the best outcomes for cancer treatments right now. (They still think that’s the type I have and the bone marrow results should confirm/reject that idea soon.) All I can ask for is your prayers and whole lot of them. They’ve made a big difference. Thank you.

My Birthday Gave Me Cancer I didn’t know if I would mention this publicly, but I keep getting questions about my health. Let’s just say it’s been an interesting few months. In mid-September, my lower back hurt, so my primary doc signed me up for physical therapy. I kept up with that for four appointments until my back couldn’t take it anymore. Insurance finally approved an MRI in mid-October and found two bulging disks in my lower back. After a few unfruitful Urgent Care and ER visits, on Nov. 5, insurance finally approved a spine specialist to give me epidural shots to those disks, which should have taken care of the issue. Instead, my back kept feeling worse. Throughout October, I could barely leave the house except for doctors’ appointments. By the start of November, I could barely leave the bed. They scheduled a second set of epidurals, but I finally got an appointment with a top neurologist. That was Friday, Nov. 21, my birthday, and the neurologists soon figured out it wasn’t just bulging discs. She immediately checked me in to the hospital next door and they ran every kind of test you can think of. (That neurologist was the only one who found it odd I’d lost 30 lbs. in 2-3 months.) After several hours, the ER doc informed me I had cancer running up and down my spine which had now moved into my ribs. The cancer probably came from somewhere else (like the colon, lungs, etc.), so it was basically all over my body. Understandably, I thought I’d be dead in a month or two. Tests continued and by Saturday, Nov. 22, a large team of doctors had a pow-wow and began to think I had multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer that targets individual bones. They had only found two tumors – one that had completely destroyed a thoracic vertebra in my back, and one in a neck (cervical) vertebra. Turns out The Big C didn’t have me down yet. First thing Monday, Nov. 24, the neurologist performed a five-hour surgery to remove the thoracic tumor, then inserted rods and a cage to connect the vertebrae above and below it. While he was in there, he took a bone biopsy. That tricky bit of business went perfectly. Surgeon’s a rock star. On Tuesday, Nov. 25, he performed the second surgery to fix my neck, which also went great. And on Wednesday, a bone marrow biopsy was taken from my hip. Since then, it’s been a whole lot of pain, trippy meds, and fitting me for custom neck and braces. With those braces, I’ve been able to stand and shuffle around a bit, sit upright a few times (which I hadn’t done since October), and even write this little missive. As it stands now, I should be moved tomorrow to an acute rehab facility, where I’ll have about 7-10 days to build strength and regain the ability to do common tasks. Then I’ll get chemo via injections/pills, a method that is unlikely to cause hair loss and other common symptoms. According to my oncologist and many other experts, multiple myeloma currently has some of the best outcomes for cancer treatments right now. (They still think that’s the type I have and the bone marrow results should confirm/reject that idea soon.) All I can ask for is your prayers and whole lot of them. They’ve made a big difference. Thank you.