Fear

You have two choices when you get cancer:  you can get very fearful or lose fear entirely.  I have to admit I wasn't too please when told that I had "Hodgeskin's Lymphoma", stage three and a half, which means everywhere.  My entire lymph system and then into my spleen and spine.  It was growing, well, like cancer!
I had this alien being eating me from within!  I always thought that a cement truck might get me or that I might fall off a roof, something sudden, bloody, a tearing of the flesh and broken bones, a crushed skull and over.
Well, that may yet be, but first I had to deal with cancer.
     I did discover that no one dies of cancer.  I remember "cancer insurance" being sold in the 1960's, not insurance if you get cancer but insurance if you should die from it. What a cool scam that was!  You die from organ failure or pneumonia, that "old man's friend".  Or, as I discovered, you can die from "the cure".
     The "cure" is mean and that is all there is to that!  It is a voodoo concoction made from World War One Mustard Gas!  Yes, it really is.  It is designed to kill and it does so indiscriminately.  Surgery with a hand grenade.  It kills the cancer cells and a lot of good ones in the process.  I had 12 sessions of ABVD, horrible drugs that are mostly mentioned by initials only.  Every two weeks for six months!  It is all kind of crazy, you mark the dates on a calendar and get to look forward to the experience!  No, I can't go to lunch with you, I've got my chemo to do!
    I never got sick so you could put a name to it anyway.  I was never nauseous, never threw up, but I sure couldn't eat!  I began the process as a welder-construction worker, strong and able at 225 pounds and weighed 172 pounds when I got my final chemo shots!  It is not a diet I would recommend to anyone.
I never really thought much about the day after death but there were times when I didn't think I was going to make it.  You get pretty weak; I couldn't lift 20 pounds!  You get time to stand back and pretend it is all happening to someone else, like it is all a movie, or an unfinished book and you are not really sure how it will end.
    You sleep a lot.  You are always tired and I have never really found a good way to describe that, so someone not affected could really understand what you go through.  It is a tiredness where death would be welcomed.  My mind was always active even when my body couldn't cope.  I could still think!  I did lose a sense of "future", couldn't even think ahead to the next gardening season.
    What I chose to do or maybe did without choice is to relive my life.  I have done it all twice!  My earliest memories, all my school days, my first guitar, the poetry I used to write, old girl friends, my travels, adventures and disappointments and where I succeeded, all have been lived twice.  It is fascinating how in the deep recesses of your mind, you remember everything!  And I thought a lot about food.  I liked the idea of it even though I couldn't eat it.
    Death and taxes, right?  None of us are going to get out of this alive.  So you learn to cherish life, appreciate the now of it all, each breath, each flower and smell, each touch and every kind word.
I am left with pretty bad neuropathy in my hands but the cancer is gone!  I am not sure what "in recession" means?  That has the sound of still having it but it is getting smaller?  My doctor says he can't find any cancer in me and spent a few thousand dollars trying to do so.  It is gone.
     Some days my hands are so bad that I would just like to sit and hold them.  I don't allow this for two reasons.  The first is that in reliving my life I had no memory of pain.  Pain is not something we easily carry with us.  Too heavy, maybe, or just not important.  I remember getting the Pet and Cat scans and lots of x-rays and the doctor asking me when I broke my shoulder?  It was evidenced in the tests but not in my memory, certainly nothing I ever went to a doctor about. 
    The second reason I ignore my neuropathy is that there are things I want to do.  The will to do them is stronger than the fear of pain.  I do have a fear of atrophy.  I exercise my hands everyday, all the time, constantly.  My cancer doctor says nerves are slow to grow and it might take eight years for my hands to get better.  My regular doctor says that in eight years I will be used to it.  It is like stirring a five gallon bucket full of cut glass.  It is not pleasant but I can do it.
My Other Blog is HERE

Another Thought A Year Later...

     I began blogging a year ago when I discovered I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  I called this blog right from the beginning, "Cancerfree" because that was my intention.  It was exactly one year ago that I began the series of ABVD chemo-cocktails, that stuff created by voodoo scientists from the leftovers of World War One mustard gas, that stuff that saved my life.  I had 12 of them, a series every two weeks and this "cure" almost killed me.  I lost 50 pounds, all my hair, of course, and every two weeks when I went for the blood work and more chemo I was a little worse.  It is not like you take medicine and slowly get better each time.  It is quite the opposite, they are trying to kill you.  A lot of you, all the cancer and a lot of good stuff along the way.  There is a lot of collateral damage.  Like doing delicate surgery with a hand grenade!
    You get to talk to the doctor, a little bit anyway.  He is more interested in the numbers, checking with his computer, analysing the blood work, seeing how much more you can take.  The doctor talks in percentages.
My cancer was pretty much everywhere, into my spine and spleen, growing, well, like cancer does, like a cancer!  My odds were 50/50.  Along the way, maybe half way through when I began to look pretty bad and felt worse than I looked, he offered to cut back on some of these chemos.  Maybe even stop the one that was beginning to do damage to my hands.  My feet were numb by then and my hands, well I couldn't pick up a dime and had trouble buttoning my shirt, the first signs of trouble to come.  I could save my hands by stopping one of the drugs.  But I couldn't help thinking, if it is killing my hands then it must be killing the cancer!  Sacrifices.  Collateral Damage.
     I was going to be "cancerfree" so I kept taking them.  It would be nice if they were to find a more reasonable cure, something made from a single malted Scotch or one of those rum fruit concoctions to be consumed on the beaches of Hawaii.
    Along the way you meet a hundred interesting people and they are all fighters, all in this same battle and all with interesting accounts on how they fought this devil.  Some put up a terrific fight and lost and I will miss them and miss their descriptive honesty.  Sometimes in death you discover what life is all about.
    There are people much worse than me and I am a little embarrassed when I complain at all.  This "cure" from cancer is practicing.  They don't have it right.  It is voodoo stuff with feathers and monkey tails, rat poison and mustard gas.  In the future this will be looked upon the same as blood letting and leeches, whispering chants and screaming the evil away.
    I am a statistic now, making that curve go to 51% maybe.  My cancer is gone, I am "cancerfree", the name on this blog, my intention from the beginning.
My Other Blog is Here.

Marijuana!!!

I wonder what the issue is with marijuana?  It has certainly been given a bad rap over the years but I think it probably saved my life.  Why is it that we will happily take Rat Poison (warfarin) and are thankful for chemotherapy made from left over World War I Mustard Gas and will take all kinds of other "medicines" that make us very sick and almost kill us, yet we are reluctant to try marijuana?
     It is pretty easy to get, you don't have to go through a lot of hoops and barricades to get it legally. You can find it on the streets and most of your friends will know where to get it.  I admit I was hesitant, did not want to be "stoned" nor dizzy nor "spaced out".  I went 12 days without eating. It took a lot of effort on my part and I could drink ONE Ensure a day and that was it.  I had been on Marinol for over a month, the synthetic and legal stuff with THC, the secret ingredient of marijuana.  It wasn't working and costs over $20 per pill.  A friend gave me some marijuana which I smoked and took me out to breakfast the next morning.
It worked like a charm.  Yes, it was a little weird but not as weird as Rat Poison. Not addictive like cigarettes or pain killers.
      You don't have to smoke it. You can make tea out of it or add to butter and jam or toast or even put it in cookies!  Takes about a heaping teaspoon.  The pain will go away.  You will eat.  You won't throw up.
You will probably laugh at nothing funny.  That is the one side effect, silliness and laughter!
I am in a Political mood, My Other Blog is Here.

Colonoscopy

That is next! It has been five years and they want more money! I have been here, done that, and it is the cleansing process, that "clean as a whistle" thing that is the worst about this whole procedure. When they say don't leave the house or get far from the bathroom, they mean it!!! The actual filming of my insides my plumber could do. He has the same tools, that fancy camera he snakes down my drain to find what is plugged up. We don't have National Health in the U.S.A., we are on our own, paying cash or if we are lucky a private health insurance.
I am very lucky! My cancer experience cost well over $130,000 DOLLARS! and my insurance paid all of it except the first $1,000. That is the real reason for this colonoscopy. That
fifteen minutes of being on camera costs $2,500!!! but since it is still this year and I have already paid the $1,000 deductable, the insurance company will foot the bill.
I might feel different if my doctor was a hot babe fresh out of medical school but he is an old
craggie doctor who has seen a thousand assholes! LOL!!!! It is a warehouse environment with a lot of waiting patients and he can do 24 in a day. Do the math, someone is getting rich!