Non sequitur

People are rangy creatures. On one hand, we can land robots on Mars, juggle bowling pins, invent electron microscopes, dive in front of bullets, and write "Wish You Were Here". On the other hand, we can engineer space shuttles that explode seconds after taking off, train child soldiers, and use voodoo dolls to enact revenge.

Living in America, it's easy to assume that medical proclamations coming from professionals in the field would be roughly identical, so when doctors at Johns Hopkins say "stage IV", I don't expect a veteran surgeon at Straub to lightheartedly question their diagnosis, noting that the tissue on the liver doesn't look to be cancerous. Maybe this is just due to different professionals having different opinions on how much optimism to instill in patients, but it creates a dangerous, floating notion of false hope. I've found that trying to sustain a questionable hope is stressful enough that I've reversed the proverb and have allowed hope to die first. When a biopsy quickly overturned the suggestion that the tumor may not have metastasized, I didn't have to temper any beliefs. What I'm afraid of is that others might cling to hope until the end, when abandoning it will be a much uglier process. 

For now, the healthiest mindset seems to be living life one day at a time, aware of the situation but not getting caught up in predictions of where we'll be several months from now. Unfortunately, I can't help but getting caught up in where we thought we'd be now. Step 1) Get cancer. Step 2) Get chemo. Right? Wrong. The behind-the-scenes theatrics of a body in disrepair, as it turns out, can create a frustrating chain of maladies that keeps chemo therapy one step ahead of us. Yet another assumption I had was that when a sane human was instructed by doctors that certain foods would make his malignant tumor bigger and certain foods could make it smaller, that person's diet would damn well not cross into the tumor-augmenting list. Watching bread crumbs being dumped onto chicken while my dad vows that he's allowed to eat like this irks me in the moment, but later evokes fury and profound depression as I remind myself of the prognosis. But what's causing these surges of negativity is probably not that chemo is elusive or that dad is lying to himself about his adherence to his diet, but that it may not matter either way. Not being able to properly accept why I feel miserable leads to me being so irate at the Steelers' poor performance against the Chiefs that I have to leave the room. A 40+ coworker dropping a "that's what she said" into a conversation will cripple me with vitriolic disgust. I have lost my capacity to fake a laugh at one my bosses' lame jokes.

And I just wrote a thoroughly egocentric entry on a blog that's supposed to be about someone else with cancer. s'good times.

I am not proofreading this.

Thank you.

Andrew