At this time two years ago, I was sitting in Chair 18 at the Cancer Centre, starting the first of my four infusions for that day - saline, then Cisplatin, then Benadryl (yes, that Benadryl, because it turns out you can be allergic to chemotherapy) then Etoposide. The whole process took just over four hours, unlike the radiation treatment I'd had an hour earlier, which takes about 10 minutes, most of which is positioning and repositioning my body until my three tiny little tattoos lined up properly with the Giant Death Ray Machine.
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| This is your hand on chemo. Well, *my* hand, technically. |
At this time one year ago, I'd had a lot more cancer treatment than originally planned. Twice the amount of lung removed, twice the amount of chemo. A daily pill I'd been taking for 5 months which, while not chemo-levels of suck, worsened my fatigue, killed my appetite and kept the makers of Immodium rolling in dough. But all I had to do now was buckle down - manage my symptoms, get on an exercise program, up my protein intake. Get through the suck, get on with my life.
So it's hard not to be demoralized when a year later, I appear to be no further through the suck, no closer to getting on with my life.
It's a weird place to be in. I'm grateful to be alive, and I'm angry to be alive in this condition. I feel betrayed by the medical system that saved my life, given false hope which I then passed on to people around me. If you're wondering why I'm not back at work, or soccer, or stand-up, well, guess what? I am too. In all my many conversations with all my many doctors, my options were always "either we'll cure you or...the other thing" (doctors, like most people, suck at talking about dying). "You might live for several years with a vastly reduced quality of life" never came up. And now that I'm here, it's like I'm off the map for health care providers. Here there be monsters aka people who don't fit into the boxes on the requisition forms.
It's a failure - systemically, to meet the needs of patients; individually, by doctors and others in the profession who lack curiosity and imagination - but it's hard not to internalize that failure. Did I not do enough, prepare enough, try hard enough?
Maybe if I really, really, really wanted to, I could get off this couch, make a kale and tofu scramble, practice mindfulness and yoga my way back to who I was before.
Maybe if I really, really, really tried, I could stop being such a Whiny McWhinerson when there's war and famine and people who are not me dying of cancer, and do something meaningful with whatever time and energy I have.
Maybe if I really, really, really, worked at it, I could come up with a profound, witty and thematically pleasing conclusion to another rambling blog post.
But I can definitely wrap things up here to finish my now lukewarm oatmeal and the last 40 minutes of Antoine Fuqua's 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven with Denzel and Worst Chris. So that's what I'm going to do.
