Keep On The Sunny Side o El Regreso del Pinché

Entry 1

Woke up at 1.  Almost 3 now.  Can't sleep.  Looked at her CA 19-9 results.    


37746.0






Entry 2.     7:05 a.m.

Jenny last night while preparing dessert for tonight's birthday celebration, said to me, "I'm going to beat this, Geoff, I really am."  She said it as if she truly believes it, with almost a lilt in her voice and quite determined. I don't know how to respond as I look at her symptoms getting worse.

She saw Picozzi yesterday, the chemo is today. He asked her how would she know she had cancer right now, aside from the chemo.  In recounting this to me, she said quite happily, "I wouldn't know, except for my lack of appetite sometimes."  I pointed out she couldn't walk half the length of Lowe's last weekend.  She then appended her claim to include fatigue.  She claimed she has no other symptoms, and otherwise wouldn't know.  This omits the weight loss, although as her palliative care doc pointed out, that could be caused by the stress of moving.  It omits the texts I receive from her complaining aboutp terrible pain when she goes to sleep. It ignores the fact that she is on maintenance oxycodone, which will mask any attendent pain. It also doesn't acknowledge that this cancer is so deadly precisely because it causes few symptoms, which makes it hard to detect. By the time most people are diagnosed, they are at stage 4.  I'm trying to be a glass half-full kind of guy, I'm failing, and my heart is breaking for her.

Entry 3      12:49 p.m.

Liars lie or obfuscate, conveniently omit key facts, misstate accidentally, and generally bullshit.    I read the memo today, as I am wont to do. Here is what I learned Jenny's fantasy is for four years from now:

"We bought a new house four years ago that we are both in love with. We are living together harmoniously here and it is so nice.  We are best friends and have each other's best interest at heart.

 I know Geoff care's deeply about me as I do about him. He took such good care of me while I was sick --I don't feel like I owe him anything but my appreciation for him is impossible to measure. I tell him every day. 

Eric El pinché is still a very important part of my life. Our bond can't be broken no matter how hard we try.  Lol. He loves me and wants whatever is best for me.

I wish he and Geoff could be friends as they both have my best interest at heart."  

 Happy Birthday to me, anyway.

Entry 4.    11:23 p.m.

Perfectly lovely evening. 20 ppl over for dinner. Good company, good potluck food, a lovely creme brulee, and a whisky nightcap.  Jenny was miserable and managed to be nice to everyone, well almost everyone. In those interstices of mingling, when I would check on her, I got dosed with full-on miserable and nasty. But, she made sure to kiss me on the forehead as I blew out the candles on my dessert. Everyone was watching. I am loved.

My therapist, in our session today, noted that I am back to being bitter. Not that she blames me.  I do that myself.





Comments

  1. Cheryl RSSeptember 10, 2021 at 8:53 AM

    If she is confident, that's a good thing for her quality of life. She is simultaneously dying and living - we all are, really. In her case, the balance is just different, which is hard.

    You don't have to be glass half full. But be glad that she is. Be glad that she can find some peace right now. Reality will come for her soon enough. Enjoy the now with her, if you can. And if you can't, then fake it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life, A Cascading Series of Disappointment

Image
Jenny has cancer.  Terminal cancer.  We learned that in late July. Jenny had  dropped 25 lbs. in the spring without trying.  She had been having vague stomach complaints since October.  As a balm for her concerns, her doctor agreed to do a CT scan for her, but told her they would find nothing.  Jenny wanted to rule out pancreatic cancer, which had recently killed her dad-in the spring of 2019.  Her mother had been sick with lymphoma since February 2020.  The day of the scan, the doctor told Jenny they would get results back in a few days. When Jenny's phone rang that same afternoon, I was in the living room with Abby, where I was torturing her by playing the Rapping Duke on Youtube. Jenny shouted from the room, "Geoff, get in here, the doctor's on the phone." "You have a four cm. mass on your pancreas,"  he said. Jenny made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach.  "There is a spot on your liver. You have a necrotic lymph nod...
Read more

Still Muddling Through Somehow

Image
At the park, I walked my dog through the rain this morning— not really proper rain— more like air that has decided to shrug water at you out of habit. It suited my mood well enough. As I walked, my thoughts kept returning to the same small universe they often do. They are not new thoughts. They orbit the same losses. They consider the same betrayals, the same questions that never resolve. They have been captured, these thoughts, never to escape, never to be forgotten, never to burn up in the atmosphere. It is simply the gravitational field of my life now. What might seem or feel like self-pity is more like muscle memory, which tells me I need more exercise. The holidays are here, and Christmas has always been central to my life, atheist that I am. It was stitched into Jenny’s life — the love of Christmas — at least as strongly as it was stitched into mine. We carried that love forward with the kids, year after year, without ever needing to talk about why it mattered; it just did. I...
Read more

Don't Do It, Don't Do It, Oh, Lord

Image
It Hurts, It Hurts So Bad.  .  . 3:44 a.m. I walked in the door last night at just before 10 to find Jenny in a ball on the floor--between the giant ottoman and sectional--agonizing pain in her hip. I had ridden to acting with the student driver.  But, let's back up. Jenny had chemo yesterday.  Her friend Jennifer took her.  It was uneventful and she received chemo.  I, as always, prepared the house for her arrival to make sure she wanted for nothing and would be comfortable as she endures the aftermath of all that poison.  Sometime before she came home, she texted, saying the doctor suggested she try Aleve for her hip pain.  Aleve.   She asked me to pick some up for her while Abby was at acting.   During the text exchange I realized she would be alone after Abby and I left for acting.  Leiney was elsewhere and had therapy at 5 and kickboxing later, and her sister Moni had bailed on chemo because she had so much to do (Wit...
Read more