Day 130 "Cancer Sucks"

Much as I try to keep a positive attitude and find humor in my situation, there are times when cancer and its treatment just plain suck.  I’ll spare the details, because I don’t want to waste a lot of time detailing the negatives and generally throwing myself a pity party.

Suffice to say I use the phrase “suffice to say” too often.  But in this case, it is sufficient to say that cancer is a life altering diagnosis and throws any plans you had for your life into the shredder.  It is also appropriate to say I just looked up “sufficient” in the thesaurus.  It is satisfying to say that each chemo treatment feels like getting kicked in the face.

So far I’ve had four kicks to the face in the last three months.  Tomorrow I’ll be kicked again.  I know it’s coming, and it’s terribly hard not to flinch.  This is where it does neither you nor me any good to dwell on the coming negatives.  Let’s just say it’s going to suck, again, and that each cycle is worse than the preceding one.  Okay, we’ve said it, now let’s move on.

I don’t want the cancer to see me flinching.  I’d rather walk into my oncologist’s office, strike a power pose, and boldly say “I’m ready to kill some cancer, who’s with me?”  Yes there will be collateral damage and friendly fire, but I’d like to take my chemo and through my suffering say to the cancer “How’d you like the taste of that?”, sort of like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ5z3u9Pdyw&t=210

In other news, when I recently needed a moral victory I went out and “ran” 4.7 miles, which is my longest run since diagnosis.  With the chemo and the resulting anemia, lung damage (hopefully temporary), and general stress to all bodily systems it’s been impossible to make progress in terms of sustained speed.  However, I am having some success by going longer and taking plenty of walk breaks.  More accurately, I’m going for longer walks with some run breaks on the downhill sections.

Of course, such feats of athleticism (and I do use that term loosely) usually land me in couch prison for a day or two, but not always.  It depends on where I am in the chemo cycle, the weather, what other fun substances have been injected into me recently, and probably what Theresa May had for dinner.  It’s just really difficult to tell what my limits are on any given day.

But the only way I can learn my limits is by testing them.  If I can work my way back up to being able to cover 5 or 6 miles at a time on foot it will reopen a lot of interesting possibilities.  It would mean I can reach Hamilton Falls from our weekend place in Vermont.  There’s also a lot of mountains in New England that can be hiked.  It also means I have a better starting point for making real progress after chemo ends.

And finally, let’s not forget bragging rights.  I’m out running during chemo, while many people are on the couch eating Cheetos in front of the TV.

So yes cancer sucks the big wazoo, but I’d rather focus on what I can do on my good days than wallow in the bad ones.  At least in theory, many days I’m still working on putting that attitude into practice.