You know what's worse than cancer? Cancer with a horrible cold.
The chemo I'm on dries up my nose and causes nosebleeds, and now I've got a cold that continuously makes my nose run a near-water consistency. Also, since my white blood cell count is low, it's likely that it will take my body a longer period of time to beat this cold into submission. So, let's recap...dry, runny, bloody nose that I have to blow every 2 minutes with slight nausea tossed in. I feel like a drugged out rock star, except with less spandex (still some spandex...but less).
Monday I begin my marathon chemo week again...five straight days of sitting in a chair with a needle in my port, sipping coffee and watching Pop Up Video on VH1 in an attempt to prolong doing actualy work. My staff at work has done an amazing job of picking up the very little slack I've given in going through these treatments, but I hate putting additional work on them....which is funny because I pull out the C-card for nearly everything else. They wanted us to check the blood sugar levels on each other in my EMT class and I pulled out the C-card - "Hey, I'm on blood thinners because I'm taking chemo for testicular cancer, so I think I should sit this one out." The instructor almost stumbled over himself agreeing with me...it's like I have a pass to get out of whatever I want. "Ooooh, I'd like to rake the leaves today, honey, but my cancer's kind of acting up."
I joke around about this a lot, but it really has kind of changed my day-to-day quite a bit. I'm taking my temperature constantly, self-evaluating to see if I'm getting sick, and every time I walk in front of a mirror I freak myself out...expecting a blonde-haired guy to be staring back and seeing this sickly bald dude. And I do that every single time...I usually just walk around forgetting I'm bald until someone points it out to me.
I've thought several times about what I'm going to be like when this is all over. Am I going to shrug it off and just go on with my normal routine...working long hours for five days every week, eating a big breakfast on weekends and just wasting away my time on the weekends? I feel like I should be freaking out and going "carpe diem" on everything, but I'm just kind of taking cancer in stride as kind of an inconvenience...something getting in the way of me spending my weekends watching reruns of 30 Rock and putting off a home improvement project. I think that's why I've gotten kind of a kick going through this chemo...it's something different. If everything in my life went according to plan, I'd be bored as hell. At least getting cancer mixed it up a bit.
Six weeks left to go. This whole thing has been much easier knowing the odds I'm facing...98 percent is something I would put some serious money on if I was gambling. I can't imagine how people facing lower odds do this. This is easier for me knowing that it will all be over in another 1-1/2 months...I can't imagine going thorugh chemo and THEN having a doctor say it didn't work and order you to go through more chemo or something. And if you add in lower odds, I would be far from nonchalant about all of this. Don't take my laxidaisical attitude as me saying that cancer isn't scary...it can be, and for a lot of people it is. Even someone else in my position I wouldn't fault with being nervous about all of this...there is always that 2 percent and there are some people far less optimistic than I. All you can really do is just go through your day to day and try to put the fact that there's poison rolling around in your veins out of your mind. It's kind of like having a monkey on your shoulder that urinates every five minutes...it's easy to try and forget about it, but a wet, smelly T-shirt is hard to ignore. There you go...that's an interesting metaphor. Cancer is like monkey urine.
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