Robitussin for Brain Cancer, Part I

My name is Matthew Zachary, and I am an angry cancer survivor. Why? Well, it's certainly not because I am lucky to be alive 19 years after being given six months to live for what they thought was terminal brain cancer. I am angry because nothing has really changed for young adults with cancer since the dark ages of 1996, when my family and I faced the greatest challenge of our lives.

But let's take a step back. After all, it's my very first column and we've hardly met.

I was born and raised in New York City by two educators. My mother was a pianist with a love of classic Hollywood films, musicals, jazz standards and all things pop culture. My father was a jack-of-all-trades who ran the occupational education department at the largest high school in New York City for 35 years. He was a computer guy, too, and we had Apples, Macs and Commodores in the house by the time I was 10. Yes, I was that kid in sixth grade who printed out his position paper on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on a dot matrix printer in blue ink.

Yes: Everyone else handwrote.

I came home from middle school one day only to find a piano in the house that wasn't there the day before. What's more, my mother was playing all the show tunes I knew.

I asked her, "Hey ... where do you put your fingers?" Mind you, I had never seen a piano up close before let alone ever played one. I did, however, have a working knowledge of music because I played baritone horn in my middle school band.

She showed me a basic right-hand scale and, without hesitation, I mimicked her perfectly. Her eyebrows raised. She showed me a scale with dual hands and, once again, I mimicked her perfectly. Her eyebrows practically fell off her face.

She opened up one of those "Red Books" that any musician would know and told me to play what I saw on paper. The song was a rudimentary rondo, single half notes for treble and bass. I played it slowly but perfectly. The hand-eye coordination between sight reading and finger placement just seemed to come naturally.

"You're getting lessons," was the last thing I heard that day because every waking moment before I went to bed was spent practicing. I was 11. It was 1986.

Nine years of classical, jazz and pop lessons later, I was a big fish in a small pond, both in high school and undergraduate circles.

It was the summer of 1995. I was entering my senior year of college en route to the University of Southern California the following fall to study film music with the late Jerry Goldsmith. At least that was the plan. And, as we all know, man plans and God laughs.

I had spent the majority of my adolescence training for one thing -- to be John Williams, composer of such notable soundtracks as Star Wars, ET, Jaws and Schindler's List to name a few. Not many 21-year-olds have their entire life planned out. But I did. I found a passion and just knew I was going to be like John Williams.

By that time, I had musically directed a dozen shows, was the official accompanist for the theatre department, served as lead accompanist for the campus reparatory company and had given several concert performances, including a junior recital that got one of the only standing ovations in the college's history.

I had also written upwards of 200 original compositions for full orchestra, jazz band, choir, string quartet, percussion, musical theater, film and television ranging in genre from pop, jazz, new age, world music and chant to classical, electronic and a cappella.

That summer, I was interning for brokerage firm Dean Witter in the World Trade Center. It was there that a strange sensation of pins and needles began, isolated to the extremities of my left hand. My fingers were on-again, off-again numb for no reason.

I brushed it off. I was 21. I was invincible and had to finish college so I could become John Williams in three years.

So I got back to school and immediately noticed something was wrong when I began to play piano again at my usual pace of 60-plus hours per week. Something strange was definitely happening with my left hand. I had inexplicably lost the ability to arpeggiate. It was as if some of the fine motor coordination and overall dexterity of my left had just vanished.

Again, I brushed it off.

September. It got worse. As a lefty, writing and typing became difficult.

October. It got worse. I swapped hands on the piano so my right hand, now the dominant one, could handle the bass notes while the compromised left hand crossed over to cover the simpler melodies.

November. I finally went to the campus doctors; nearly every day for three weeks. I was misdiagnosed with everything from meningitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and Epstein-Barr to having had a mini stroke, multiple sclerosis and the flu.

Yes. The flu. And they gave me Robitussin. For what turned out to be brain cancer. (Spoiler alert: It didn't help.)

Over Thanksgiving break, I came home and went to my primary internist with my dad who, pretty much, knew something was very wrong. He recommended seeing a neurologist as soon as possible.

I told him I wanted to wait until after the semester ended in two weeks. I had things to do. Shows to produce. Songs to compose. After all, I was invincible.

I also couldn't use my left hand anymore. I couldn't use it to write, grip, type or play piano at all. In retrospect, my denial was off the charts, but it was what it was.

During those precious two weeks between Thanksgiving break and the semester's end in mid-December, all hell broke loose.

Less than a day after returning to school, I was almost immediately knocked to the ground by the combined onset of slurred speech, blurred vision, fainting, dizziness and agonizingly crippling headaches. I could barely function.

And finish the semester, I did. But the rest was a blur.

Came home.

Saw neurologist.

Referred for emergency MRI.

MRI showed giant mass in my brain.

Met with neurosurgeon.

Eight-hour surgery two weeks later.

It's cancer.

You might not be around in six months.

If you are, you may never play piano again.

Will he make it? Does our hero emerge victorious over Stupid Cancer? Stay tuned true believers because you'll just have to wait for the next exciting installment of "Robitussin for Brain Cancer." (More spoilers: He makes it.)

Matthew Zachary is founder of Stupid Cancer, the nation's dominant youth and young adult cancer advocacy nonprofit. As CEO, he built the team that launched a social movement by disrupting and innovating the nonprofit model and uniting several industries to embrace the cause of young adult cancer survivorship. Diagnosed with brain cancer at 21, Matthew is a concert pianist and ad-agency veteran who holds a Bachelor of Arts in music, computer science and sociology from Binghamton University -- SUNY and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and twins.