Category Archives: Cancer

It’s Been Quite a Year

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A little over a year ago I started chemotherapy. I haven’t talked about it much around here, but not because nothing happened. I just wasn’t ready yet.

Before the chemo even began, I resigned myself to losing my hair and decided to shave my head rather than leave it lying around all over the place as I shed. I left the beard for the moment. It wasn’t a bad look!

The only problem was that some of the worst people in these Unites States have coopted this look. Here I am the morning of the first chemo treatment, in the bathroom at the cancer center, rocking a special shirt with tearaway sleeves:

Not long after I took that selfie I sat in a comfortable chair, while the Official Sweetie of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas wrapped my extremities in ice packs. This is me, while we waited for the pharmacist to dole out the drugs:

When the medicine arrived, the tech had to put on special single-use hazardous materials gear before touching it. That stuff is dangerous! God forbid it should get on anything before being injected directly into my blood.

I had already been admonished not to share a bathroom with anyone for a few days, for the same reason. I’m sure the city water treatment plants are well-prepared for stuff like this coming down the pipes. (That was sarcasm.)

The precursor drugs all tucked neatly into my bloodstream, the main event began. The tech hung the bag with the cancer-killer goo, pushed some buttons on the transfusion machine, and made sure we knew where the call button was. We were left alone, to watch the drip.

Only it wasn’t very long I started to feel a little tightness in my chest. “I feel tight in the chest,” I said, “Can you…?” was as far as I got before Official Sweetie was pushing the call button. I felt my head taken by a wave of heat. We were right by the nurse station, and they glanced up and suddenly there was a lot of activity around me.

I was red. Alas fair reader, there is no photographic record of my redness; it was not the time for snapping pics. I have since been compared to the classic Kitchenaid red. If you don’t spend time around quality appliances, that is a very deep red.

I was very quickly surrounded by people. The drip was stopped, and the administration of antihistamines began. I’m a little vague on the details of this period. I did not see the tool box set up behind me with a variety of tools for resuscitating critically ill people, but Official Sweetie did.

While a nurse engaged in conversation with me, which was both pleasant and obviously to measure my mental state, more vitals were taken, my heart was listened to and my lungs were evaluated, and eventually the medical professionals around me decided it was ok to start the drip again, but really slowly. My chair would not be ready for the next patient for a while.

The drip had not been going very long when I reacted again, though not as strongly. MY vote was to try again another day with a different medicine, but my vote was worth exactly zero. One way or another, they were going to get that goo inside me.

Each attempt to put the drug in a person is called a “challenge.” Out of curiosity I asked how many times they would try to give me the meds before they gave up. The answer was technically four, but it sounded like the last challenge would go on a week if it had to.

More intravenous Benadryl, a slower drip yet, and on the third try I didn’t react. Eventually they increased the flow to merely slow, and three hours later than planned we were done.

The chemo medicine takes a while to make you truly miserable, so I drove us home. The megadose of Benadryl did not make me even slightly drowsy. I seem to have a special relationship with that drug. In fact, I’m convinced that I’m a little bit allergic to it, but I won’t bother you with my analysis here.

Home. We got there, and I felt all right, but Official Sweetie and I both knew rough times were coming. But those rough times are different for everyone, which makes preparation more difficult.

Maybe sometime soon I will talk about that. It’s been a year, after all.

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Confirmed: Waiting is the Hardest Part

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I feel better now than I have in a long time. My back is bothering me less, and my shoulder is almost functional. The fact I feel better is the only tangible evidence I have that I’m gravely ill.

Monday, medical science is going to address that issue, by making me feel like shit. The plan is to drip a chemical into my bloodstream that almost kills me, to make me well. Six times (at least to start with). In the next half-year I will suffer greatly to defeat a disease I don’t feel at all.

The Official Sweetie of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas has been preparing. Ice packs for hands and feet; apparently during the infusions extremities can ache like hell. Calcium for bones. A bin to puke in while in bed. Preparation for whatever happens in my gut (it could go either way). I got a shirt with sleeves that open up to allow access to my veins. Beanies to cover my bald head.

Today we officially ran out of ways to prepare. We laid out the changes to my medications for the next few days in my big weekly pill organizer, and from here on, at least for a while, we will be reacting, rather then preparing. It’s all crazy and I would be so lost in all of this without The Official Sweetie by my side. In conversations with the health industry, I introduce her as my manager. This maze is bewildering and confusing, and without her I would likely spin in circles and fail.

But preparation is a big part of how Official Sweetie copes with shit and now the preparation is done. Monday big things happen, but that’s not until Monday. We are both rudderless as the river sweeps us along. We have nothing left to do but imagine the future and pass each other incredulous looks about the present and cry a lot. Tomorrow I will smog my little convertible and Try Not To think About Stuff. I think I will shave my head, because it may be years before I have a long beard again and I want to see myself with that look. I’m also curious about the scars I have up there, from past foolishness.

But tomorrow the ticking clock will be especially loud.

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Sparkle and Fade

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It is late now. The house is quiet except for Sleater-Kinney abusing me through my headphones. Before that was Airbag, and before that, Hog. It will probably be the Raveonettes next.

Tonight, I can feel the glow of the monitor as I type. It almost hurts — it wants to, maybe, but it can’t.

Here and there, throughout my genome, there are genes that tell each of my cells, DON’T BE CANCER. You have them, too. In each cell, DON’T BE CANCER is a constant struggle between the interests of the individual and the interests of the whole. It is best not to forget that the alliance between the cells that compose our bodies requires billions of independent contractors to take the long view.

But if you take the brakes off, any of those little fuckers will run wild and consume you with their voracious hunger, forgetting their role in the greater organism.

It just takes one.

As we age, our cells are copies of copies of copies. Sometimes the copy isn’t perfect. Mutations creep in. If one DON’T BE CANCER gene is compromised, that’s all right, they come in pairs. But if in subsequent generations the co-pilot gene also mutates, then the cell throws off the shackles of civil society and Mad Max enters the building.

I am Thunderdome.

In my prostate, one goddam cell lost both sets of brakes. The odds of a mutation are tiny, but the number of cells is huge. I don’t even know why my goddam prostate exists, let alone why it should be such a hotbed of insurrection. As far as I can tell, it’s a janky-ass clamp. I should probably read up on that.

[Everclear is now punching me in the eardrums.]

But tonight the house is dark, except for the aggressive glow of the screen I’m typing this on, and quiet, except for Sparkle and Fade in my headphones, very loud, and I wonder, what the fuck? That is the question I have no answer for.

We are, ultimately, composed of billions of wild animals. These wild animals have accepted genes to enforce constraints that benefit the larger organism. But they are always pulling at the leash, and if one gets loose then, well, you have cancer.

I have cancer. Still working on figuring that out.

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Many Years

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For those catching up, I have cancer. Recently I went though a science-magic machine and the cancer in my body was mapped in 3D. After a frustrating delay, I had a conversation about the results with the urologist who had done the biopsy and established the need for the scan.

“As we expected,” he said, though to this day I’m not sure who we includes, “the cancer has spread to…” I won’t get the rest of the quote right and it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve got cancer up in my shit. My shoulder that has refused to get better? It’s got cancer in it. Suspect vertebrae? Cancer.

Doctor One, the urologist, spoke briefly about the cancer busting loose from the prostate, and then very quickly turned to reassurance that what I was going through was ordinary. Missing was the connective, “You are in mortal peril,” part.

Doctor two, the oncologist, did not miss that step. After a week of relative optimism, Dr. Two set the level. “You are stage four, the worst stage. We are not going to cure you. The goal is to give you more, better years.”

Well, fuck. Stage four. In cancer jargon, that’s when the shit’s got loose. Medically, you’re not trying anymore to defeat the cancer, you’re playing a delaying action, buying weeks or years. Doctor One, the urologist, knew this, but didn’t square up with me.

Of course now I’ve turned to the internet for answers. Everywhere it says, “[people in this state] often live many years with treatment.”

Many years. HOW MANY? Can you give me a mean and a standard deviation? This is really important. What are the odds I am going to retire? I have plans for that. Lots of plans. I know that there is no crystal ball giving the exact date of my demise, but any sort of range would be helpful.

But to all the Muddleverse, I promise I will keep shouting into space for many years.

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My Life-Threatening Illness is Frighteningly Ordinary

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After delays and frustrations, the results of the PET scan have reached the proper experts, and now I have a clearer idea what I am facing. There is an irony here – after two weeks of delays, accompanied by gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, the conclusion is… carry on.

The cancer has traveled from my prostate, in a pattern familiar to all who follow that sort of thing. From a medical point of view, I have a very boring sort of cancer

Prostate cancer cells gorge on testosterone, so step one is shutting down the supply. In my head, while this would shut down the cancer at the source, it seemed like wherever the cancer had spread a prostate-specific treatment would have no effect. Happily for me, that was not correct. Wherever the cancer spread, it brought that hunger with it.

The doctor who has been running the show up to now is a no-nonsense sort of guy, and his approach is entirely unemotional. Here’s the data, here’s what happens next. My disease is entirely routine and the path I am on is well-worn. Just another day at the office for the cancer crew.

That works pretty well for me, but the Official Sweetie has now been with me in a few meetings on the subject of my mortal peril and would prefer that emotional health be at least acknowledged in a conversation like this. As medicine and engineering continue to merge (which is a good thing), the emotional gap is likely to get more pronounced.

(I have been contacted by my insurance company by an oncology nurse who oozed empathy over the phone, and is pointing me to support resources, and other helpful stuff — so perhaps Official Sweetie isn’t the only one to realize this.)

So. I have been on a roller coaster, and now I get to the point where the ticket guy is waiting, and he’s telling me that the ride was flat all along. My legs are still wobbly, but sure enough the ground feels firmer now.

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I Will Tell You if the Waiting is the Hardest Part when the Waiting is Over

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Tomorrow I was scheduled for a true science-fiction medical procedure to find out just how bad things are inside me. As this reckoning has approached, my situation has become progressively more real to me. The outcome of the PET scan informs everything in my life going forward. I am emotionally incapable of making even the smallest of plans.

My appointment was canceled, less than 24 hours before go-time, for supply-chain reasons. Now I have to go to the back of the PET line. I’m told that the testosterone-killing therapy I’m already under will pretty much stop the threat from spreading, but it’s entirely unknown how bad shit is in there, and what I will be facing to get to the other side.

For now, I wait. The Official Sweetie of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas waits. This is rough on her, as well. Maybe rougher. As the Big Day got closer, my own anxiety rose with it. Now the Big Day is pushed out for weeks, and I need to reel back my emotions.

Not sure I can, though.

Thanks to all you friends who have expressed your support. It helps. I thought I wouldn’t say more about this until I knew more, but the Not Fucking Knowing is what I have now.

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