Hello friends. It’s been a while. I wanted to give an update on where we’ve been here at My Take on TV, and provide you with a look at where we’re going (it’s a long one; strap in).

Some of you may know my story because our MyTakeonTV Instagram is my personal one, as well, so I apologize if you’re reading something you already know!

It was March 10, 2018. I got a call from my cousin that my mother had passed away, suddenly, from a heart attack, at the age of 59. Everything in my life from that moment on became a blur. I had to go through the motions of living a normal life, working the “day job,” caring at all about what was on TV. Suddenly, my mom was gone, and why did I care about what was happening on the boob tube (I mean, I did care. And it helped me escape the day to day, but you get my point)?

It was then April 27, 2018, when we said to my dad, a man who was already struggling with Prostate Cancer that had spread into his hip bones: Dad, we aren’t going to lose you suddenly, too, we can’t handle that. Please go to the doctor and find out what’s wrong?

It was May 11, 2018 then, when we heard the news – there’s a lump the size of Alaska on your father’s left tonsil. No need to biopsy. 99.9% positive it’s malignant.

We got prepared on May 27, 2018, for pre-admissions testing to cut the nasty growth out of his neck, along with the lymph nodes and any other thing in his neck area that could be affected by a giant growth that hadn’t yet spread. While we waited, we got the word that, nope, his COPD was going to prevent the 6 hour surgery from happening, so he couldn’t have the surgery any longer.

We waited. For weeks. Until July, when I was at Comic Con 2018, pretending to be happy and enjoying the time spent talking to my best friends and the celebrities that we spend our days chatting to. But conversations quickly turned from what’s coming next or coming in the Fall for our favorite TV shows, to what happened to my mom and what’s happening to my dad. We found out radiation was the only course of treatment and that we needed to come up with thousands of dollars for the supplemental surprise chemo that went along with it.

Dad started radiation in the third week of July (and our best friends came together to buy T-shirts claiming they were #glennstrong to help raise a fraction of the money). With that, began a weekly infusion of a chemotherapy-like agent that was designed to help keep his prostate bone cancer in check.

By August 14, 2018, the day after his 72^nd birthday, he was in the hospital. For an inability to eat solid foods, and aspiration related issues as a result. The Radiation had nearly done him in. Wasting away as a result of the treatment (which, we were told, was definitely working), he was there for 22 days where he received what I would call abysmal treatment by the hospital staff. I spent 12 hours a day at the hospital, fighting everyone I could until I got the treatment for my father that he needed.

After losing his mind, quite literally, and almost losing his life (more figurative but damn was he looking BAD), he headed out of there, but not home. To a rehab facility for 10 more days. He finally got home, 31 days later, and not a moment too soon.

While all of this is happening, I posted Comic Con videos, and I wrote previews of what was coming in the Fall. I went to Chicago and talked to the casts of FIRE, MED, and PD – about their shows, sure, but about why I was in a constant state of sadness (those people are so kind). I did some interviews and would go off the record with some of the people I’d spoken to about what was happening any given day – why I was doing an interview from the corridor in the hospital where patients await bad news; why there was that incessant beeping you always hear in a hospital, in the background of every call. I was losing interest in maintaining anything other than my dad’s health, and it became a chore for me to care about putting pen to paper, as it were. I stopped updating the premiere dates. I stopped accepting new interview requests. I would retweet trailers and comment on the few shows I was still watching through my Twitter account, and rarely, if ever, would I put more than 2 sentences together about any given show.

But slowly, things have started to turn around.  We got the good news in December that the radiation and the hell my father went through was a success. The nasty growth is gone; and he’s gaining weight left and right from the liquid food being pumped into his bellow by the feeding tube he had to get. He’s giving himself his own meds; he’s sleeping through the night and doesn’t need us there constantly. 

So it wasn’t all for nothing, but now we rebuild.

I haven’t abandoned My Take on TV because I don’t care about TV or the readers or people who enjoy our video interviews. I just kept saying “TV isn’t as important as making sure my dad is okay; Twitter and Facebook and our MToT loyalists will understand if I go MIA for a bit.”  It wasn’t until I got a very (VERY) rude email from a reader that claimed I was an awful person for not updating the site more often (and let’s face it, we don’t update that often here anyway so it was more than a little bit uncalled for) that I realized I should share my horrible year with you all and apologize for not writing sooner. About TV. About what was going on. About anything in general to keep you all posted.

But my year of sorrow seems to be making way for something better, and I can see the forest for the trees now. Dad’s on the mend. He’s eating some solid foods again, and has a generally positive outlook (I’m still working on that positivity that I can never seem to find). We survived a year without Mom. We all together survived some pretty bad TV, and now, now the fun can begin again.

It’s almost sweeps. It’s almost Up Fronts. It’s almost time for a new season of TV to begin and with that, a new approach. The premiere date calendar will be updated over the next week. My dear friends Marissa and Cheryl have already sent me new articles to post – a story about the end of GOTHAM and a quick chat with MATLOCK’s Nancy Stafford are on the way; a look at how Marissa’s handling the changes coming to the #ONECHICAGO universe will be here soon. More trailers, more videos, more, more, more. And Comic Con 2019 is only 85 days away.

We hope you’ll come back; or that you’ll stay. Thank you for understanding. Here’s to a great rest of this year. And if you haven’t, check out SCHITT’S CREEK, KILLING EVE, and BETTER THINGS if you have some time. They’ll change your life, I promise you!