Placid Noise

But, that chemo glow, though.

There is a phenomenon known as “chemo glow” in which my skin turns baby soft, clear and illuminated.  It’s a thing.  However, while the obvious plus side is the appearance of professional lighting following me everywhere I go for a few days, my taste buds have simultaneously, temporarily betrayed me to the point where nothing except bacon tastes as it should.  This is the duality of chemotherapy.  Yes, it is destroying cancerous cells that would otherwise destroy me, but its path of destruction meanders in many ways besides the well known hair loss and nausea.  So how thankful should I be for that?

I have many thoughts about chemotherapy.  It looks different to me now than it did before.

Thank God I lived 3 years ago, when chemotherapy effectively brought me back from death with the generous gifts of other’s blood, platelets, and IV medications to supplement and protect me.  With the majority of one’s life-sustaining force turned acutely to mass mutiny and suppression of survival, any option is a beacon and a savior.  Associated risks pale to the benefits.  Or at least they did then.  It was high dose chemo over a relatively short period of time unlike the years of maintenance therapy undergone by some.  But now, I can’t help but feel like I am becoming part of that cohort.

Chemo was part of saving my life, but it was not “part of my life”, so to speak.  Instead, there was a distinct parameter for its provision.  There was a goal which could put it all behind me.  I thought that was possible.  It wasn’t until the emotional backlash of 2 years in remission post-transplant that I began to see how it would never really be behind me.  Cancer is and will be behind, around and in front of me.  This does not mean that I live in fear of it constantly.  I see no point and derive no benefit from that.  I have shame around what I perceive to be a darkness to my friends and family.  I am angry at the current state of treatment, the time I spent dwelling within survivor’s guilt, the lack of attention I paid to the negative aspects of cancer and transplant while I spent excessive energy and lip-service on the positive aspects alone.  I believe I did myself and others a disservice in that way.  Why shouldn’t I be honest?

I tolerate chemotherapy well, given my age and personality, but that does not mean it is not poison.  I am administered poison – poison that goes after my substance, my DNA.  This regimen is more selective, sure, and no, I am not throwing up everyday or wasting away into cachexia or losing my hair.  This time, I do not “look” like I have cancer.  Do not think I don’t appreciate all of these thing as massive improvements compared to the previous time.  At the same time, appreciate to what I am comparing the current treatment and state of being which is the process of actively dying with an uncertain chance of survival and functional outcome.

All this is to say that when you ask how I am doing, I might say good or fine.  Please, take it to mean that things are as “good” as they can be while receiving monthly chemotherapy treatments, which is admittedly not always great.  It is all relative, and I am doing what I can to manage all of it to stay as healthy, rested and fulfilled as possible – your trust in that means a lot. As much as I would love to pretend or try to change the reality of the baseline I am working from here, that isn’t how this works.  As long as I am receiving active treatment, it will be a loaded “good”.  It will be a complicated answer.  I might be sitting at a coffee shop, running errands or trying to distract myself from all of it just to cope.  There may be very few instances in which I am able or willing to enumerate the reality of my day, week or horizon.  This is the nature of the beast.  This is “beast mode” as the incomparable Lindsay G aptly put it.

Objectively, compared to most others with my diagnosis and history, the sad truth is that I am incredibly lucky.  At the same time, the other sad truth is that I am just lucky that I wasn’t diagnosed with this relapse even a year ago and certainly not ten years ago.  All the patients who came before me had to endure much worse to provide the knowledge that spares me a measure of their suffering today.  What they learn through the poison given to me now, will surely spare those who are diagnosed 5 years from now.  I am angry for all of us. “Chemo glow” and all of my innumerable blessings, can truly only mediate the fact that this is the most effective medical treatment option available; poison pumped straight in.  The positives, of which I could go on and on, do not change the persistent and sometimes pestilent reality: I am 29 and have cancer…again.