The crankiness of chemo week

this week is chemo week, meaning on Friday I get chemo. 2.5 weeks of the month, i pretend i am semi-normal, not walking around with a deadly illness inside me, working and kayaking (ok, once), baking, being my regular, odd self.

when chemo week begins, my mood drops a few floors, which is understandable, but this month, my freelance job has ended (i think?) and very suddenly i find myself without a major distraction from the freaky gymnasium of thoughts that tumble through my head all day.

the #1 thing that tumbles through: TIME. tick, tick, tick. none of us knows exactly how much time we have left on the earth, but when you have cancer, you feel it more urgently, you get closer to the reality of it. that's why some of your "friends" and "relatives" drop away, consequently -- because no one wants to get closer to the reality. you're only doing it because you have to.

this thing about time left is all-consuming. you are driving to an appointment for a COVID test and you are thinking, should i start writing "letters to be read after my death" to all my loved ones, or can i just binge-watch "Call My Agent!" all afternoon without guilt?

you are putting dishes in the dishwasher wondering if you really want your husband to remarry after you're gone. in the shower: do i want to be cremated or buried? if the latter, can i be buried with my doc martens?

these thoughts all sound dramatic, but they become commonplace. since march 2019, in varying degrees of intensity, they've been taking up residence in my head. and while i don't want to allow them much time at the internal microphone, how does one counter them?

i can kind of imagine a trip to the Galápagos Islands but i am less certain of it. plus, COVID. harder to make it a real thing that can really truly happen. how does a person picture or otherwise imagine herself living healthily for decades -- in a concrete way? how does that become a strong enough force to replace the thoughts around dying?

that's what i want to do, though. and all those hollow "dwell in possibility!" posters and pillows and cross-stitches and whatnot -- either none of their creators has had any experience whatsoever with a life-threatening illness, or they're content living their lives in accordance with hollow phrases.

unless Possibility is the name of an actual physical location that heals cancer patients on their arrival, please shut up about it. the reality of people with terrible illnesses isn't the least bit helped by sing-song-y, flowery, and ultimately hollow sentiment.

yes i'm cranky and as it's chemo week, i feel especially justified in feeling that way. so pony up some concrete examples of possibility -- or please stop spreading their opposite around. the world has enough useless, mediocre phrases as it is.

Joy-stealing and other tropes i'm not buying into

i haven't written in ages, where ages = 2 weeks. i can't lie; events descsribed in that last post took a lot out of me physically and otherwise.

around this time last year, i was finishing up my last chemo session (of 6 total), i was months past the big surgery, i was careening into remission. i was hopeful, tentatively hopeful, and looking forward to my hair growing back, to regaining 100% energy, to start living forward after having been more than completely knocked down, out of order, for months of life-changing experiences. tentatively hopeful.

i didn't of course know then that my dad would be diagnosed with lymphoma two months later. or that his body wouldn't be strong enough for treatment, and he'd die 4 months after that. or that a month after that the entire world would change, with COVID-19. an another month would bring me to a recurrence of my cancer. who can know that stuff?

no one, right? and yet, people always say, "live today like there is no tomorrow." i get what it means and yet every time i hear it or see on a cross-stitch or wall-hanging, i think it's one of the dumbest and most hollow things i've ever read.

even some cancery people say it, as in: "i will not let this disease steal my joy!" i truly believe that they believe it. but i don't know what it means. my feeling is: lady, this disease has stolen your joy whether you build a little wall of words around you or not.

remember the day you were diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer? remember your first chemo session and all the chemo sessions after that? also, remember that time you had to go into the hospital so a surgeon could make a foot-long vertical incision down your abdomen to get the cancer out, and you didn't know exactly how many organs you'd wake up without? (yeah, that's a bit overkill, i know).

believe it or not, your joy from those days and from that period of time has been stolen. can you imagine what would you have been doing instead on those days? i can. maybe that's why i'm the grumpy, disgruntled, still-angry cancer patient who knows she will have no peace of mind until she accepts what is happening, but still can't seem to accept what is happening.

maybe i'm the unenlightened one. i'm the one can't let this insidiousness sway me into believing that i actually get a say in the outcome. i wish those people could tell me -- in concrete, tangible ways -- how exactly they do not let this disease steal their joy. is it some mind game? an olympian-level compartmentalizing ability?

they live each day like there is no tomorrow while their minds are able to eclipse the fact of the cancer? or is it that they can at least keep up the charade until it's time to go to the hospital again for their next treatment? i sound snarky but i am genuinely asking. i would honestly love to know how to pull it off.