Councilman Steve Aspel is winning his fight with cancer.
Aspel was diagnosed with rectal cancer last February and has undergone major surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He had his last chemotherapy session a few weeks ago and has received the most positive diagnosis possible at this juncture.
“As of right now, the doctor said I am cancer free,” Aspel said. “It’s really good.”
The District 1 councilman was scheduled this week for a minor procedure to “rearrange some plumbing” due to some ongoing discomfort.
“Right now I don’t go too far from a restroom,” Aspel said. “It’s still a little tenuous. Put it this way: I was scheduled to leave for Denver for the League of Cities Wednesday but I cancelled the trip. And it’s not about the pat-down. I just can’t get stuck in a TSA line. They’d probably send security after me if I bolted for the restroom out of the line.”
Aspel has dealt with his life-threatening battle very openly and with characteristically bawdy humor. Shortly after his diagnosis, he publically admitted he’d been forced to get a check-up by his family doctor in order to procure a refill of his “little blue bills.”
“It’s kind of funny,” Aspel said at the time. “Here’s the truth: the doctor had to blackmail me into getting scoped. I went down for a refill for my recreational blue pills….For the want of sex, I get my life saved. Even if I don’t, I get to go out like a stud!”
He attended to his city duties unflaggingly, returning to the council dais in August less than two weeks after he was released from the hospital. He endured the use of the dreaded colostomy bag, which replaces the function of a colon and is a part of this type of cancer that often leaves patients both highly discomforted and downright embarrassed.
Not Aspel. He was in extreme discomfort, but the bag became fodder for a series of running gags on the council dais and elsewhere. His high profile fight with cancer – and his warning that others should not shy from receiving a colonoscopy because of how crucial catching this type of cancer very early is to chances of survival – created an uptick in doctor visits in the South Bay.
“I’ve had a lot of guys come up to me and say, ‘You jerk. Guess what I am doing next week?’” Aspel said.
Behind the scenes things often weren’t that funny. One day he was out in his back yard with his brother when the bag burst.
“He’s a meat cutter and he’s very squeamish,” Aspel said. “I stood up and my board shorts and flips flops were covered in feces. He said, ‘What do I do?’ I said, ‘Go get Pam.’”
His wife charged around the corner of the house with a garden hose. Like she did for months, she cleaned up and helped reassure him. It was a messy, disconcerting experience – and one that happened repeatedly. One of the morals of the whole story of how to fight cancer, Aspel said, is to have a family who is prepared to endure the worst with you.
“Have a patient wife, a very patient wife,” he said. “And listen to your doctor.”
Aspel said his only regret is that he may not have been forthright enough with his daughters. He said he realized that in using humor to try to mask the seriousness of the situation, he may have been too cavalier. He understood he hadn’t fooled anyone when he read his daughter Brett’s senior essay, which was titled “Blue Pills.”
“My father is the strongest man I know, that is where I get it,” she wrote. “Throughout the waiting in the hospital, visiting him, and watching him take his chemotherapy it all just sunk in deep, and I realized how much it hurt me and was affecting me. I hate seeing my dad in pain because it is almost like I can feel his pain. Throughout all the medication he would have mood swings and not be as nice as he normally is. This just made me a more patient and understanding person. Cancer just became our life. Even though my dad wanted things to stay normal and the same, they did not.”
Aspel said if he could do it over he’d take the kids aside and sit them down and be more straightforward about what the family was facing.
“It turns out they were really into it and followed it more than I knew,” he said. “I probably should have included them more on things at first. If you get diagnosed with cancer or anything bad, include the kids on everything. They are a lot more aware than we give them credit for.”
But for now, he is embracing a new lease on a life that he hopes will remain cancer free.
“I am rebooted,” he said. “And re-butted.” ER
