Tuesday, February 28, 2012

I'm just blabbing. I've gotten so bad, I'm just gonna blab.

I don't think they'll ever be a good movie about cancer. Certainly not an action movie. Matt Damon will never play me. Well, Matt Damon would never play me because I don't look like Matt Damon. He's cute. I'm more like Ernest Borgnine. Women have never fell in love with my looks. I usually need a couple of dates and long talks and walks along some body of water. The ladies like talking next to water. Then, eventually when I've done quite a bit of work and have exhausted almost all my jokes, they say some weird physical attribute is cute. Like my back. Really. Some girl, after knowing her for a long time and talking to her everyday about all kinds of stuff, said I had a sexy back. I didn't have a sexy back. It was a white, pale, fatty, baggy, lard. But you women, you will talk yourself into anything. Even a fatty lard back.

The reason you can't ever make a world shit-kickin'-Titanic-Celine Dion-Sings-the-Soundtrack movie about cancer is because cancer is so damn slow. He is a creepy bastard that is so creepy he moves slower than you can even track. You wake up one day, you feel like crap. Then you feel like crappier. Then crappier. Suddenly, you just feel like that pocket of lard on my back. Just some lethargic, buzzed blob. While you're laying there, cancer is killing you. First your blood, then your lungs. You never suddenly feel a puncture and hop into a car, rushing to a emergency center. It just slowly moves, a centimeter a day. Until, pip. It's in. Meanwhile, as the blob, you develop a cough. You think it's a cold because if it were cancer, there would be this big pop followed by menacing music. And then Matt Damon would crash through your window and carry you to a hospital. Nope. Cancer is a slow bastard.

Someone once described the devil as not someone who is red with a pitchfork and fire in his nose. Instead, the devil would be someone you don't know but who slowly but surely lowers standards, kills things quietly. Wait. Someone didn't say that. I think it was in Broadcast News.
But that is cancer.

I'm supposed to be in complete remission now but I can't get over being sick. I am the blob right now. An Ernest Borgnine blob and I'm trying to get out of it. I can't even write well. The biggest bad news is because I've taken so many pops of oxy-anything, I've reached the Michael Jackson and Elvis level of drug use. Will I die on the toilet? I don't know. I like to poop. I like poop as much as the next guy. I think women every once in a while take a really great poop as well. But they have to quietly enjoy it. It would be great if a woman one day wrote on her Facebook wall, "I just took a great poop."

Maddie has pink eye. I think I might have pink eye. But being a blob, I have to unravel all my problems to see if a number of them is related to pink eye. Just not feeling good. I can't remember when I had a whole hour where I felt no pain, nausea or discomfort. It has to have been a couple of months ago. My biggest and best wish right now is to spend a whole day feeling normal. Even Ernest Borgnine normal.

I need to reach the summer. If I can stay in complete remission at that point, I can enjoy a day or two or three. In the summer, my treatment ends. Before that, I won't have any relief because my side effects are getting worse and the drugs are getting less effective. But just the summer. A couple days at the beach where everyone can see my fat blob belly, four or five scars on my neck, a port in my chest and then, tada! My back. Someone should film this because in the middle of all this ugliness, I will feel so happy. Okay, so sure, there will never be an action flick about cancer. But maybe a horror movie starring my midsection.

Monday, February 27, 2012

It was good while it lasted

I haven't posted in a while. No excuse. But I would like to update everyone even though I should be going to bed:

I've been to the doc twice since the last post. Heck maybe three times. Good news. I had no cancerous activity in me at the time. But the drug and my history keeps everyone with extremely guarded optimism. This was a while back. Things have changed.

My neuropathy is bad now. It hurts to type. I can't button my shirt really well. I can't write my name really well but I never did in the first place. Typing is bad, besides being painful. Fingers won't do much. I have a hard time going up and down stairs. My body aches constantly like having the flu. I can't sleep now at all. I'm getting used to my sleeping pills and the pain pills so they work less. I'm in either sharp pain of neuropathy or aches at all times of the day and night now. I'm trying to take some vitamins to help with the fingers.

I can't tell my doctor any of this because he'll take me off the drug and I need the drug to survive. His reason is sound: the drug can debilitate me, meaning I could lose function of my hands, arms and legs. But I have to gamble that it won't. I need the drug and be alive more than I need to walk. And really, the biggest problem here is I have to be judicious with the drugs I ask for since they can catch on and give me tests that I might not pass.

There is a great Peter Gabriel song on his second or third album (he never named them; he's an artist). it was about this burglar who liked sneaking in people's houses. The drums on that was excellent. I think he used Phil Collins so you know it's that hard, pounding. In this specific song it managed to be creepy and pounding. It gave you the feeling that Peter was slowly stepping and stepping into the house.

Now, I hear Phil Collins' drums in my body. The cancer that has already snuck into my body and was in hiding for awhile, is getting bored and looking for some elbow room, stretch his nuclei. The right side of my neck is hurting every so often. The muscles around my neck start throbbing for a couple of minutes. Then it goes away. Only to come back and throb for a while. From experience, I know that only two things will happen: either the node will start to appear or the throbbing will stop, never to be heard from again. If the node pops out, it's cancer and it's game on again. If it goes away in the next couple of days, it was a cancerous node but the drugs beat it back so silly that it won't get up to fight again.

This is a time I knew would always come but you're just never prepared. Before I had the reserve of SGN. But I used that up. Now I got no reserve. It's the slow march to the sea. For months, I was just hoping to just get the summer. In May, the treatment ends and Dr. O was going to give me a break for a few months as long as I didn't get sick. It would have been unbelievable. My first single day without drugs for four and a half years. That's more than a thousand mornings waking up to another reality. I just wanted the summer. But those drums. I'll give you an update with this as soon as it breaks one way or the other.