I’m a three-time, 12-year brain cancer survivor and I relate to Walt…

I tried to post this yesterday as a question to Vince G. and not sure if it made it, so here comes Round Two. And in re-writing this I’m not sure if it’s a question or a statement?
Beyond the brilliant writing and acting, I connect with this show on a different level as a cancer survivor. Diagnosed my senior year in college (’99) for the first time, I was diagnosed again in ’03 and ’08. There have been three surgeries, 27 months of chemo and 33 rounds of radiation. 12 years later, and being the father of two children under the age of six, I find myself “justifying” the behavior and decisions Walt has made to better the life of his family.

Many people – including Vince G. – have different ideas of when Walt officially “Broke Bad” and sped past the point of no return. To me it was in the episode Crazy Handful of Nothing in Season One (I think that was the title) right after Walt almost blew up the entire floor with fake meth. It was the scene where Walt was in his car all alone and grabbed the steering wheel in his car. Walt let out a primal scream that was equal parts pent up anger and the realization that he didn’t care anymore.

It’s kind of like Walt put his toe in the pool to check the temperature during the Tuco scene, and after it seemed like he was ready to do a back flip off a high dive and didn’t even care about checking to see if there was water in the pool.

And to me, that’s the thing with cancer and why I can relate to parts of this show and Walt’s character. I chose life a long time ago, and I would do whatever it takes to stay alive. I’ve long passed the point of no return in my cancer journey, and once you do that you can’t ever go back. While I can’t see myself ever slinging meth, yo, I would have no problem doing many of the awful things has done to protect myself or my family. What’s the worst thing that can happen? Death?

And that’s why I connect with this show so deeply. For non-cancer survivors it’s extremely difficult to express what it feels like to have a terminal disease. For more than a decade, to hundreds of people, I’ve done my best to articulately explain what “it” feels like to be dying of cancer, but now I simply say, “Have you ever seen Breaking Bad?” And I guess that’s about the highest compliment I could ever pay a show… It’s real to the core.

A circuitous route to my question, I wonder if Vince or his team of writers had any level of interaction with cancer survivors while writing this show. Am I the only cancer survivor that feels this way?