F*ck Cancer

Last night's sanctuary. 
Entry 1
Sitting outside cardiac rehab. I picked Abby up after 1 last night from light rail. When I got home, Willow was glued to me, but unable to sleep and so I couldn't close my eyes. Around 2 I fell asleep. At 3:00 Willow decided she needed outside time. This early morning rising has been going on for a couple weeks. When we came back inside she thought it was snack & play time. I decided it was sleep time. Unlike at 2, she respected this. All of this to say I am exhausted.

The scale this morning said I have GAINED .8 lbs. Time to go run it off. I'd like to brag and say I work out harder than any of my cohort, but they all appear to be 10-15 years older than me. I feel love Kramer bragging he is the top of the kid's karate class.

Entry 2

Weirdly, the cardiac rehab team neither helped me start my workout, nor did they check on me and adjust it or take my blood pressure during my workout. Apparently,  no one had me on their list. Go figure. I killed the workout anyway, did the best I have yet, despite my bum knee playing hell with my gait and sending pain up my knee.

Entry 3

For reasons unclear, my boss went home to Rio last month for her surgery. She has advanced breast cancer, which she described as aggressive. She has been in hospital now two weeks, after being released post-surgery (given the four hour surgery--I  am assuming the cancer is  metastatic)-with cellulitis. The bacterial infection resisted the initial antibiotic treatment. Treatment two, which used two different antibiotics instead of one as was done in the first round, has not worked, it seems. Now she is reporting she has serious liver damage--typically caused by high doses of antibiotics. This isn't going to end well.

Comments

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