Decades ago I had my uterus out. It was riddled with huge fibroids and I bled constantly. My uterus had been a nightmare for me. I have no regrets that it is no longer providing me with pain. Before surgery I asked my doctor if I could have it once it was removed. She game me an emphatic, No. I then asked her if she would at least take a picture of it and to this she agreed. I never thought about why I wanted it so persistently until the other day, when speaking with Sue, she asked me what it meant to me to have a picture. I was quick to answer: Because it was a part of me and I wanted my parts with me. I wanted to see what had buggered me for so many years. It was mine and not the property of a hospital.
I demand to be whole. I want to be whole. I want to leave this world whole. I want my bits with me when I go. I've heard from enough professionals that any treatment I might engage in will not leave me with any quality time worth the effort. I have no intentions of having my guts carved out, spending any time with the wasted time of recovery. I want to leave intact. Whole. I won't be around for any snapshots that might be taken anyway.
Dear Diane went for the "do what you have to do" route in order to survive. They carved her up, chucked this and that to the left and right, sewed her back up and she died anyway. I feel so angry she died that way. If you knew her, you'd be angry too. Not me, so don't even ask.
I have bile duct cancer better known officially as Cholangiocarcinoma. It's one of those cancers whereby professionals offer you treatments like a a priest might give one their last confession. They offer treatments that are suitable for people who think a visit to Lourdes might help. Treatments for the desperate. Treatments for those that think they are immune to death. Treatments offered because people, especially medical professions don't like to end sentences with: Good Luck!
I'm OK with all of this.
A dear friend, a few weeks ago, confronted me and asked me if I was depressed. I was't feeling depressed and I asked her why she imagined me depressed. Her response was: You never talk about your cancer. This dear friend has cancer herself. A wholly different type and when she learned of her diagnosis she immediately went into warrior mode. She has long outlived her original cancer diagnosis, -- a thing I admire her for beyond words, -- but she fights much differently than myself. Somewhere in the middle of our conversation I met her warrior status and internalized it and she met her own grief a feeling she had not allowed herself to have previously.
For me my cancer is the newcomer in my life, it's the upstart. It's this thing that has to get with my program. My program is all about feeling whole mentally within the context of a growing cancer. I am working to be emotionally ready for my own death which, now, will been sooner than later. I'm too old to change. I've spent 64 years piecing myself back together from a disassembled youth. That is what I am about. Does anyone think I am suddenly going to be different? I am dealing with cancer in the exact same way I've dealt with shitty boyfriends, paying the rent, fixing something to eat when I have no food, or any array of experiences that one needs to deal with that are inevitable, annoying, or one wishes to postpone. Cancer has, for me, been given too big a space to dominate. I have other shit to do than to pay attention to an entity I not only don't want, but is not very interesting to me.
I'm focused on it progression in the sense that at night I sometimes have to find a comfortable position to get to because the tumor is growing, and what was comfortable last week is not always comfortable this week. I know when to ask for a different or stronger pain med. I eat even when I don't feel like eating. I know this tumor is pushing its way around my insides creating less room for other organs trying to do their job. My hair is falling out by the handful. People ask me if it is the chemo. I am not on chemo. Cancer can just make your hair fall out. When Nil gets here we are going to cut it shorter. The long hair falling on my shoulders is rather annoying because an individual hair is light in weight and a stray hair on my shoulder momentarily makes me think a bug is crawling on me. So we will make it more manageable. The truth is I don't care about my hair falling out. I mean it doesn't introduce any sadness within me. I have been a woman who has historically brushed her hair solely out of a sense of common decency. I tried dreadlocks once thinking I'd never have to deal with my hair again, but my hair is thin and the required twisting for a month to get the dreads to lock only resulted in me with handfuls of fallen hair. I don't care about my hair. I'm the type of woman that welcomes the baldness because I'm curious as to what it might feel or look like. It might be better than hair for all I know. I'm open to wherever all this takes me.
If you are so inclined to get into my headspace a bit more, I would suggest the film, Wit. It was a film I watched decades ago while living in Vermont. It moved me to my core then. Now that I am with cancer I watched it again and boy o boy does that film express my sentiments about my ordeal. I too am in metaphysical mode. It is a film dealing with cancer within the context of the poetry of John Donne. Aside from the character (Emma Thompson) having a different type of cancer, I felt as though that film was a camera into my soul. It's how I feel about my own predicament. I am running alongside the mysteries of life. Taking this and that aside and learning what to do with each thing given me. I'm tranquil and still in this journey. I am a woman who has internalized literature. What I mean by this is that literature has taught me much about life without having to actually live like many characters on the leaves of a book. Literature teaches us about humanity. It teaches us who we are and what we get up to. Literature is lifted from life. Enough reading and we learn that all sorts of things that mankind can get up to. We are not the people we imagine or hope ourselves to be. We are complex and sometimes shitty people. We are people that care deeply and sometimes murder. We are people who learn lessons sometimes through the diminishment of others. We go through life blind never understanding why this is so. Any scenario one can think of is a truth. Make no mistake; we have been like this since the beginning of time.
I'd be lying if I told you I don't grieve. I find myself weeping at times. I found the word 'Grief' with Sue. I said to Sue I wasn't sure what I was weeping about. My weeping doesn't seem to have a goal, or a reason, I just weep. My grief I suppose is grief about my own eventual demise, but it is also grief for my friends. I know what it is like to be left behind to live when a loved one departs. I can't do anything for anyone once I am gone. In this respect I am fully and completely out of control. Being in control; having control over myself has been important to me. I have tried to lead a responsible life. Responsible to myself and to others. I have been a witness to the lives of others; that's a responsibility that I have taken seriously. We are all witnesses to others. Others have been a witness to my own life. Too serious? Too abstract? That's the way I am. Life is really not pointless nor is it just a series of functions. Nothing we gain here can we take with us. We can only take, up until the moment of our death, our inner faith. That thing that can't been seen but which is present in us all and guides us in the direction we see fit. I do not write of faith in the sense of religion though I know this type of faith is precious to many.
I have no control over this tumor either. But I do have control over whether or not I allow someone to meddle with my guts. My guts are mine. Keep your paws off. I can't go towards death the way others see fit for themselves or for me. It's a personal journey that I can do my best to share but it is a journey that each of us will eventually go on, but we shall all take that journey on instinct and alone.
I don't want this tumor to be something that I stare at. I think of Nietzsche when he writes: If one stares into the abyss too long that abyss will eventually stare back. I have no intentions of being engulfed by a tumor metaphysically. Of course I am on my way to being engulfed by a tumor eventually, but I don't want the preoccupation. I'm a busy woman...
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