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.

Day 120, Seize the Month!

Yes, I know it’s supposed to be “seize the day”, but in practical terms I find it easier to live life a month at a time rather than a day at a time.  I have many bad days right now but find it much harder to have a bad month.  It’s easier to get past the bad days if I look at them as part of an otherwise good month.  The common denominator is that looking too far ahead in life can be depressing.

Before proceeding, a large tangent is in order.  I found out that my mom has been reading the dead tree edition of this blog, in the form of printouts from my sister.  Like all moms, my mother worries constantly about me.  Strangely though, she’s not as worried about the cancer as she is about the effects of cancer treatment.  Do I really need to be on prednisone indefinitely?  Will medical marijuana make me a junkie?  I try to explain to her that these are actually small worries relative to the cancer itself, to no avail. Besides, these are all worries about what might happen in some relatively far off, uncertain future.  What I need to do to make our conversations simpler is to give her something simpler and more immediate to worry about.  For example...

Recently I climbed a ladder, stepped onto an ice dam, and shoveled the kitchen roof in Vermont.  Yes, I mixed ladders and ice, but sadly was not able to work a chainsaw into this death defying feat.  Hi Mom!

So I’m guessing by now mom isn’t the least bit worried about the future consequences of my cancer or its treatment, and is solely focused on the more immediate possibility of my accidental death.  This is good, our focus is on the here and now and not some possible future infirmity.  Hey look!  I segued from mom to living in the moment!

And what a moment this was.  Several years ago, I was very uncomfortable on ladders and never imagined I’d be walking around on a roof.  However flying squirrels in the dormer and a leaking kitchen roof due to ice dams provided sufficient incentive to get comfortable.  As a result, today with cancer and in my 50s I’m doing things that were beyond my imagination in my 40s, or my 30s or 20s for that matter.  This is a very happy thought indeed.

To be fair to mom, I’m also exceptionally skilled at worrying about things in the far off future.  Prior to my diagnosis I used to spend way too much time worrying about life at age 90.  I’d worry about whether I’d still be able to drive, if I’d outlive my retirement savings, and how to cope if my wife got alzheimer’s.  It would make me anxious and depressed and now it seems utterly naive that I’d worry about such things.

The lesson is that the secret to happiness is not looking too far ahead.  If I look a few months or even a year ahead, I see myself completing chemotherapy, recovering from its effects, returning to work, and continuing to do many of the things I enjoy.  This is a particularly encouraging time frame as it’s a period of healing, regaining the ability to do things, and possibly even discovering new things I previously could not do.

If I try to look much past a year ahead, things begin to get cloudy.  Even after chemotherapy is complete I’ll still be on hormone therapy indefinitely, with all of its side effects.  I might eventually achieve a full remission, or the cancer may make a comeback, I just don’t and can’t know.  Suffice to say looking even further ahead and thinking about where I want to live in my 70s isn’t a good use of my time right now.

I’m increasingly focused on making the most of 2019, which should be a spectacular year.  After all, I’m on an icy roof, shoveling snow, and successfully fighting back from not one, but two cancer diagnoses.  How epic is that?  I’ll worry about 2020 when it gets here.

Fun side note: Shovelling still bothers my back a bit.  What to do when you’re on a roof and you want to ice your back?  Let’s see, I’m surrounded by snow, perhaps if I lift up my coat, lie down in the snow, and ahhh… relief!  I wonder what the neighbors driving by think when they see me apparently sleeping on the roof.  Just call me Snoopy!