Morose Meandering--Again....
About a month ago I thought I was dying. I thought the ground beneath my weak heels was tilting so that the decline would come quickly. That's how it often happens with Stage 4 cancer. It wouldn't be that bad, better than lingering in a bed for months.
I didn't know what was wrong with me, only that I had extreme shortness of breath and felt like I was drowning. One night I confessed to my husband that I was afraid I wouldn't wake up. Liquid was collecting around my lungs, you see. I could barely make it from bed to bathroom. I got an impromptu scan at the doctor's office and my right lung was almost entirely obscured by liquid. So into the hospital I went.
That afternoon someone wheeled me in a bed into the radiology lab--where they slathered cold gel onto my back and peered at my insides via ultrasound. The doctor, an older man with a serious face, came in. I wondered if he ever laughed, if I could crack him out of that doctor facade, but I leave that task to one more charming than myself. I had no success with him.
The nurse tucked a towel into my underwear and opened the back of my gown while the doctor probed at my ribs, trying to find the right spot to insert the tube. When he found it, he took a local anesthetic and numbed the area before he cut into me and inserted the tube. It was so surreal.
I expected to hear the fluid gush out, trickle musically like a fountain, but there was almost a vacuum of sound...an utter and complete silence. I could feel the tube inside me, bumping around, and blood drip in twin trails all the way down my back and into my underwear. And into this strange discomfort, this absolute silence, he began to hum. He hummed until he finished, about five minutes later. He removed the tube and the nurse applied pressure to the wound, while I turned my head and found, to my stunned disbelief, that a good liter had been drained from around my lungs.
I spent a week in the hospital. This procedure promises a 15% chance of having a lung collapse, so they like to keep you under observation. And they found that my ticker has been damaged from the drugs and stress. I didn't notice it, too busy suffocating maybe, but my heart beats way too fast. So I am on a medication that lowers my heart rate. Between pills I can sometimes feel it. I'll stand up and suddenly my heart is pounding in my throat--as if it would like to escape this body that is a sinking Titanic and find a home elsewhere. Too bad, you lousy ticker--ain't nobody gonna want you now. You are going to the grave with me. Hahahahaha!
Actually, I'm feeling much better. I am able to get around better. I have had difficulty eating and have been losing weight. I spent the better part of two months living on Boost and popsicles, but my appetite is better than it was. I am periodically swamped by nausea and vomiting.
I've been attending local reiki sessions. One I attended was in a gorgeous, luxurious home. And I got sick in it. I went to the bathroom and threw up as quietly as possible. I really didn't want anyone knowing, but my body rebelled. Vomit flew from my mouth and my nose, and that type of puking can't be done in dignified silence.
Afterward, the woman who owned the house was so sweet and solicitous. She took me upstairs and laid me on her couch with a blanket and a can of Sprite. She also pulled an anti-nausea suppository from the hidden fridge (it was made to look like the other cabinetry in the kitchen). I thanked her, but tried to pass on the suppository. I mean, no way in hell was I going to shove something up my bum in someone else's house. Bad enough in mine. And after puking my guts up...No, nothing doing. But she insisted--so I snuck it back into the package in the fridge after she went back downstairs and I lay on the couch looking at pictures and decor, trying to figure her life out in ten minutes.
When reiki was done, I walked back out into the swampy summer heat, hoping not to throw up again at least until I reached home. At work, some days I am hard pressed to keep liquids down. I can't make it to the bathroom in time so I huddle in the corner of my study room turned office, throwing up into a trash can and hoping no one sees me.
There is a dividing line for me now. The healthy and the ill. A great chasm separates us. People don't realize what it really means to have Stage 4 cancer. Before it hit me, I didn't. That it is considered chronic and incurable. Sure, miracles happen, but usually the best one can hope for is a nice period of remission before it starts growing again.
I feel a little pessimistic about myself. I know many who are able to stay on a chemo regimen for a year or more, while I cycle through them in two months or less. I read posts on my on-line support group...husbands posting for their dead wives. The two I've read have been young, in their early 30's.
One lady wrote that battling cancer was one of diminishing returns--the more chemo you do the more broken and tired your body gets. Many who have been doing chemo as long as I have, once a week for 2 to 2.5 years feel and experience they same things I do--no matter what the age. Most of them are older with grown children.
I think chemo/cancer is like growing old on speed. Age takes away and so does chemo/cancer. Dreams, activities, joys, passions: all curtailed. This disease takes too much. I'm afraid to write stories anymore. I never go out with friends. I feel physical pleasure only in the bathtub. Most days it's not a matter of how good I feel, but how not bad.
I remember when I used to hike Pinnacle, I remember sweating and feeling so vigorous, alive. I remember dreaming of visiting Angkor Wat or Namibia. And now I always feel I have one foot in the grave and earthly pleasures, even eating food, have turned to ashes in my mouth. I have one eye on eternity and who gives a damn about life, love, travel, passion when you've got death kissing your check every night and promising you an early retirement from this life?
But I watched this Forensic Files that made me think tonight. I believe that is the only true escape--to move outside of yourself. To think of others, help others as you may--sink yourself into others--because when you do that, the cancer disappears.
There was this crazy woman with children. She adored her two sons, but despised her three daughters--the daughters were horribly abused and ultimately she killed two of them. I'll spare you the details--suffice it to say that when I do manage to sleep I'll probably have nightmares.
I got to thinking about murder and abuse. At least cancer is impersonal, to me. There's no big why--it just happened and I have to deal with it as best I can. But murder is very personal--especially if it's your crazy mom killing you. As they were dying, how did they deal with it? As any victim of murder or even abuse--how do they deal with it? What must it be like compared to say, death via cancer? Is it kinder, crueler, or about the same? It's a notion I can't wrap my mind around, but I can imagine all the victims through the ages standing in a great collective group and crying out for justice--when justice is so seldom served on this Earth.
I didn't know what was wrong with me, only that I had extreme shortness of breath and felt like I was drowning. One night I confessed to my husband that I was afraid I wouldn't wake up. Liquid was collecting around my lungs, you see. I could barely make it from bed to bathroom. I got an impromptu scan at the doctor's office and my right lung was almost entirely obscured by liquid. So into the hospital I went.
That afternoon someone wheeled me in a bed into the radiology lab--where they slathered cold gel onto my back and peered at my insides via ultrasound. The doctor, an older man with a serious face, came in. I wondered if he ever laughed, if I could crack him out of that doctor facade, but I leave that task to one more charming than myself. I had no success with him.
The nurse tucked a towel into my underwear and opened the back of my gown while the doctor probed at my ribs, trying to find the right spot to insert the tube. When he found it, he took a local anesthetic and numbed the area before he cut into me and inserted the tube. It was so surreal.
I expected to hear the fluid gush out, trickle musically like a fountain, but there was almost a vacuum of sound...an utter and complete silence. I could feel the tube inside me, bumping around, and blood drip in twin trails all the way down my back and into my underwear. And into this strange discomfort, this absolute silence, he began to hum. He hummed until he finished, about five minutes later. He removed the tube and the nurse applied pressure to the wound, while I turned my head and found, to my stunned disbelief, that a good liter had been drained from around my lungs.
I spent a week in the hospital. This procedure promises a 15% chance of having a lung collapse, so they like to keep you under observation. And they found that my ticker has been damaged from the drugs and stress. I didn't notice it, too busy suffocating maybe, but my heart beats way too fast. So I am on a medication that lowers my heart rate. Between pills I can sometimes feel it. I'll stand up and suddenly my heart is pounding in my throat--as if it would like to escape this body that is a sinking Titanic and find a home elsewhere. Too bad, you lousy ticker--ain't nobody gonna want you now. You are going to the grave with me. Hahahahaha!
Actually, I'm feeling much better. I am able to get around better. I have had difficulty eating and have been losing weight. I spent the better part of two months living on Boost and popsicles, but my appetite is better than it was. I am periodically swamped by nausea and vomiting.
I've been attending local reiki sessions. One I attended was in a gorgeous, luxurious home. And I got sick in it. I went to the bathroom and threw up as quietly as possible. I really didn't want anyone knowing, but my body rebelled. Vomit flew from my mouth and my nose, and that type of puking can't be done in dignified silence.
Afterward, the woman who owned the house was so sweet and solicitous. She took me upstairs and laid me on her couch with a blanket and a can of Sprite. She also pulled an anti-nausea suppository from the hidden fridge (it was made to look like the other cabinetry in the kitchen). I thanked her, but tried to pass on the suppository. I mean, no way in hell was I going to shove something up my bum in someone else's house. Bad enough in mine. And after puking my guts up...No, nothing doing. But she insisted--so I snuck it back into the package in the fridge after she went back downstairs and I lay on the couch looking at pictures and decor, trying to figure her life out in ten minutes.
When reiki was done, I walked back out into the swampy summer heat, hoping not to throw up again at least until I reached home. At work, some days I am hard pressed to keep liquids down. I can't make it to the bathroom in time so I huddle in the corner of my study room turned office, throwing up into a trash can and hoping no one sees me.
There is a dividing line for me now. The healthy and the ill. A great chasm separates us. People don't realize what it really means to have Stage 4 cancer. Before it hit me, I didn't. That it is considered chronic and incurable. Sure, miracles happen, but usually the best one can hope for is a nice period of remission before it starts growing again.
I feel a little pessimistic about myself. I know many who are able to stay on a chemo regimen for a year or more, while I cycle through them in two months or less. I read posts on my on-line support group...husbands posting for their dead wives. The two I've read have been young, in their early 30's.
One lady wrote that battling cancer was one of diminishing returns--the more chemo you do the more broken and tired your body gets. Many who have been doing chemo as long as I have, once a week for 2 to 2.5 years feel and experience they same things I do--no matter what the age. Most of them are older with grown children.
I think chemo/cancer is like growing old on speed. Age takes away and so does chemo/cancer. Dreams, activities, joys, passions: all curtailed. This disease takes too much. I'm afraid to write stories anymore. I never go out with friends. I feel physical pleasure only in the bathtub. Most days it's not a matter of how good I feel, but how not bad.
I remember when I used to hike Pinnacle, I remember sweating and feeling so vigorous, alive. I remember dreaming of visiting Angkor Wat or Namibia. And now I always feel I have one foot in the grave and earthly pleasures, even eating food, have turned to ashes in my mouth. I have one eye on eternity and who gives a damn about life, love, travel, passion when you've got death kissing your check every night and promising you an early retirement from this life?
But I watched this Forensic Files that made me think tonight. I believe that is the only true escape--to move outside of yourself. To think of others, help others as you may--sink yourself into others--because when you do that, the cancer disappears.
There was this crazy woman with children. She adored her two sons, but despised her three daughters--the daughters were horribly abused and ultimately she killed two of them. I'll spare you the details--suffice it to say that when I do manage to sleep I'll probably have nightmares.
I got to thinking about murder and abuse. At least cancer is impersonal, to me. There's no big why--it just happened and I have to deal with it as best I can. But murder is very personal--especially if it's your crazy mom killing you. As they were dying, how did they deal with it? As any victim of murder or even abuse--how do they deal with it? What must it be like compared to say, death via cancer? Is it kinder, crueler, or about the same? It's a notion I can't wrap my mind around, but I can imagine all the victims through the ages standing in a great collective group and crying out for justice--when justice is so seldom served on this Earth.