
Part 1... National Lampoon, Prague and the Hospital
2007 - It was the best of times, it was the crappiest of times.
My life was amazing and I was doing everything I had ever dreamed. I had a cool studio apartment in Venice Beach, 200 feet from the sand, my live sketch show Channel Surfing was selling out at the West Side Eclectic in Santa Monica and teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) was a fun job meeting people from all around the world.
Someone from National Lampoon saw Channel Surfing, liked the News sketches and hired me to create a pilot for them. What a blast! I worked with their team and a month later it was ready. The show titled "Late, late, very late News Show" wasn't picked up, but it was an amazing experience. These guys made the Vacation movies with Chevy Chase!
When the project ended, I had the summer free and decided to go back to Prague for a few months. I had lived there in 2001 - 2002. I immediately starting booking acting jobs in commercials and voice over, plus I was living in this fairy tale of a city. Life was great!
Unfortunately, I started not feeling well. It's difficult to describe, because it wasn't one specific issue, just an overall feeling of yuck. So, I packed it up early, jumped on a plane went back to LA.
My apartment was still being subletted, so my brother let me stay on his cool little boat in Marina Del Rey. Spending my evenings watching the sun set over the water made me feel that all was okay, despite my continued feeling of yuckiness.
At first I thought it was allergies, so I took all the natural remedies for it, but it persisted. I started having trouble breathing. My first idea was that I''m adjusting to being back in the US. As the breathing became more difficult, my next thought was that my childhood asthma had returned, however none of my efforts help to improve it.
I was back teaching ESL at a new school in Westwood and each day became increasingly difficult. I started to feel bloated. I had to sit more often and catch my breath. I called my insurance many times to get an appointment to see a doctor, but it became so complicated that it was never made.
I kept working. One day after school I was walking up a hill and had to stop every 15 feet to breathe. Something was really wrong. My stomach was sticking our like a 6 month pregnant woman. I got in my car, drove to the Santa Monica, laid on the grass overlooking the ocean and stared off into the distance gasping for air wondering what to do. Lightheaded, I called my chiropractor, mentor, friend, Dr. J (Ashkan Jalilli) and after sharing my situation, he told me to go the Emergency Room immediately. I did.
As I stumbled into the emergency room, the staff took one look at me and rushed me past waiting room and into the back. They put in quarantine because I was out of the country and then gave me hours worth of tests. The worried expressions on all their faces made me very nervous. I was so exhausted.
I woke up the next morning surrounded by a team of doctors. My stomach had a tumor the size of one and a half bowling balls. Which number ball, I don't know. I use a 16 to barely average 101.
They took several x-rays because the growth was so big, the doctors and technicians thought the machine was damaged. It was surrounding all of my organs and it cracked the tube in my body that carries the fat through my system and leaked into my lungs. Based on my excessive love-handles, that's a lotta fat. One lung had collapsed and I was 30 percent away from being full in the other which means I almost drowned.
The doctor spoke in a stern, clear voice and said "you have cancer." That was day 2 of 73 in the hospital.
Dear Cancer, you surprised me. Paul Lauden