[DISCLAIMER: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present (that I know of), I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts. My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.]
I was taking nice, long strides as I walked to work that morning. I was attempting to clear my head with each step when all of a sudden an emotional tsunami hit & leveled me. I froze in my tracks and found myself openly sobbing while walking down a public street at 8:00 in the morning. In the span of less than a year I'd been diagnosed, lost a woman I loved and my father, along with a good part of my identity and sense of self worth. I could hear low guttural sounds emanating from my own throat that knew I wasn't intentionally making. I could feel the tears falling from my chin and wondered why the God I'd prayed to my entire life had abandoned me. I spent a good minute recomposing myself and then walked on to work where I buried myself in the days tasks.
I was reminded of a couple with whom I'd gone to church. He was a handsome guy with blue eyes and wavy, dark hair. She was a beautiful, copper colored Filipina with an infectious smile and they always had their two adorable daughters in tow. I can't remember their names, but do remember that one Sunday a month my church would do "coffee & doughnuts" to encourage parishioners to mingle with one another. I would occasionally talk to the handsome couple and their two precocious tots when they told me that his wife had been diagnosed with cancer. I think it may had been uterine cancer but I can't really remember. She was going to begin chemo and she would beat it. I said a prayer for them and wished them well. Over the next few weeks the chemotherapy was taking it's toll on her. She'd lost her hair and resorted to wearing wigs. She'd lost lots of weight. Her dark eyes seemed to slowly sink in their sockets and she appeared more and more frail with each passing week, but Sunday after Sunday she, her husband and children were in the pew in front of me. One Sunday our priest made the sad announcement that she lost her battle. Our section felt empty without he smile and his. Each time I looked at him I saw a man who would have to spend the rest of his life raising two little girls alone whom he'd have to remind how kind and beautiful their mom was. Being a cancer patient sucks, but being the rock for someone with it takes more courage than many people can ever muster. One Sunday he and his daughters simply stopped coming. I never knew why, but theorized that it was because he found himself questioning why a woman in the prime of her life was suddenly taken.
Funny thing. Oncologists tell you about the varied side effects that will come with your cancer battle and its treatment but they don't (at least mine didn't) mention one of the very worst i.e. depression. It's as if you're moving into a house that someone else has lived in but you're not told about the mold in the walls, cracks in the foundation, raccoons in the attic or termites slowly eating away at it. They let it be a delightful surprise. Since my "journey" began, one of my therapies has been simply getting up, getting dressed and going to work. Trying to find a little zen in the repetition has been at times cathartic, but the waves of depression hit like artillery during a siege. They always occur without warning, and one never knows either their duration or severity until they've passed. They range from small episodes of self doubt to existential crisies where one has to remind one's self that suicide would solve nothing.
One such existential wave hit once while I was in a classroom full of students. The crisis part of my brain which I've never understood took over. It remembered the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and how drill instructors would intentionally say things to make us laugh, smile or simply gaze in their directions then punish us mercilessly either individually or in masse for "breaking the position of attention." I remembered a guy named Drill Instructor Sergeant Mask. Mask was a tall, thin mahogany colored man with a serious expression tattooed on his face. He had the driest, sardonic wit I've ever experienced in my entire life. Literally everything the man said was hysterical. Sometimes we would burst into laughter the moment the man entered a room because we knew he'd say something funny and whenever we did we simply dropped and started doing pushups before he even gave the order. As I could feel the floodgate of my tear ducts about to open I imagined being an 19 year old idiot at the position of attention with D.I. Sgt. Mask just feet away eyeing my continence for a smirk with which he could annihilate me and I prevailed. Losing it in a room full of teenagers would have obliterated my hard earned reputation of emotionless curmudgeon.
The V.A. offers limited psychologist visits and on one of those a psychologist suggested a "support group" and I balked at the notion. When asked the reasons for my disdain of the aforementioned I was quick to give my assessment of what I thought a prostate cancer support group would entail.
1. As most men aren't effected by prostate cancer until later in life, I imagined I would be the youngest one there. I didn't want a group of old men gazing at me and thinking "Oh that poor kid."
2. More than likely I would be the only SINGLE man there. The literature they give you (what little they give you) says: "the best thing you can have when fighting prostate cancer is a supportive partner." As the woman in my life died early into my battle I didn't want to sit there being reminded of her absence.
3. I'd be bombarded by evangelism. I have no issues with praying or prayer, but have always believed that a belief in God is a person decision. I've never imposed my beliefs on others and never wanted others to do the same to me. Sometimes a person in pain just wants you to listen to them or to give them a real world solution to their problem rather than a verse of scripture. You give a hungry man food, not a psalm about hunger to sustain him.
The young academic convinced me to attend one of the group sessions and as predicted:
a. I was the YOUNGEST man there. The second youngest participant want 65 years old. The majority of the men present were old enough to have been my father and most were Vietnam veterans. Their eyes seemed to regard me as "the kid".
b. Everyone there to a man said how he wouldn't have been able to make it emotionally without his wife, adult children or grand children and how cancer had gotten them closer to their wives and children. As I had neither I could only sit there and bestow "I told you so" glances at the psychologist.
c. The phrases "I'm a decon in my church", "If if wasn't for the lord", "Iesvs gave me the strength" and varied verses of biblical scripture began going back and forth to the point where I could only gaze at the psychologist and smile. She stopped a prayer circle from forming after a member asked us to bow our heads and join hands.
To be fair, while I was "the kid" in that session and the only unmarried man I did feel a little kinship with the men present. We were all fighting the same son of a bitch who had thrown our lives into chaos. One guy in the group admitted that he was more prone to rage than depression. I met a woman once who claimed to be a breast cancer survivor who asserted that she never went through the "why me" phase or had bouts of depression. I told this to a female friend of mine who is a breast cancer survivor who said the woman either: a. was on some serious drugs. b. was a delusional, empty headed Mary Poppins knock off or c. was a lying bitch whose response to someone saying they had cancer was to reply "Oh...I had cancer...I beat it...I'm a survivor" when they know they're not in the club. There is however no "universal" cancer handbook. Some of us bottle up our emotions not wanting to burden those around us. Some express them because we're to scared to do anything else & some of us channel them into other things.
Three years in and the waves still hit and I never know when they will. They still fill me with self doubt and sometimes make me question the reason for my own existence, but they're no longer as intense as they once were. Maybe the men and women around me are helping me to develop some coping skills. Maybe my subconscious is telling me that while cancer has killed a good part of me and that part of my life is over, that it's entirety has yet to end. Do I still occasionally feel as if a hard wall of emotional water has knocked the wind out of me and that I'm alone on some deserted beachhead having been left to die my my inner demons or what I presumed to be my best self? Yes. Will that feeing ever subside? At this point I can't say but I'll hope it will.
In the mean time I can try to remember that those waves have their own schedule but that I can swim even if I can't do so with the proficiency of an olympic athlete. I can remember what a "Bad Bytch" named Leah told me about how "there's no way to do cancer wrong" and that "this club sucks, but in it's ranks are some of the finest people you will ever know" and I can try to reach out to men and women new to our ranks and let them know that those waves will hit, that they can swim and that they're not alone and I can also do the same for my brothers and sisters whom I know are still fighting who occasionally need to be reminded of the same as I'm sure they'll keep doing the same for me.
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