“Lance’s hair was already starting to fall out,” Och says, “and what was left they shaved off and got him ready for surgery with this big crown on his head. The day before the surgery, he heard about a twelve-year-old around the corner that was gonna have to do the same thing. He wanted to visit this kid, so we went into his room and Lance sat down on his bed next to him, both with their crowns on. I think that got Lance thinking for the first time about giving something back in the cancer space. Because this kid was in worse shape than Lance was, and that was the first time he saw someone in that situation who was a kid. It moved him.”

That night, Lance seemed more relaxed than the close friends gathered around his bed. “Dr. Nicholls had just walked in and said the brain operation was like cutting a pumpkin,” College says. “He said, ‘We just cut in a little hole and it pops right out, and then we put the pumpkin head back on.’ That freaked me out. So Lance slapped me on my knee and said, ‘It’s gonna be okay, College.’”

On October 24, Lance had the brain surgery.

“When he went in, he was worried, but I got scared,” Carmichael says, lowering his voice to a whisper. “At this point, I thought I was going to his funeral. I never said that or anything, but I was thinking, ‘Am I gonna go to this guy’s funeral?’”
“The surgery was pretty tough on him,” Och says. “Dr. Shapiro removed the tumors, but Lance now had big scars on his head. It took a bit of recovery. And the treatment was always getting deeper, harder; he was sleeping more and getting all the symptoms: nausea, the mouth sores. . . . Right after the brain surgery, we went for a walk outside. We tried to move him around, but he didn’t even want to do that then. Pretty surprising for a guy like that.

“That was the only time he ever said to me that he thought he might die from this experience. We were sitting outside and he said, ‘Right now, I’m not sure I’m gonna beat this. And I don’t wanna die.’ But I never thought he was gonna die. I don’t know why. He certainly looked like it.”

Lance recalls a later meeting with his cancer doctors, including Shapiro, Nicholls, and Einhorn. “They’d seen more cases than anybody, literally seen tens of thousands of international cases,” Lance says. “I asked, ‘How bad was it? Worse than 50 percent of cases you’d seen?’ Worse. ‘Worse than a quarter?’ Worse. ‘Bottom 10 percent?’ Worse. And I got it all the way down to the worst 2 or 3 percent they’d ever seen. Fuck.”

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