I am so tired of thinking, breathing, living every moment of my life with cancer at the forefront.
Every day when I wake up there is this slight moment when I think it was all a dream.
Thank God it's not real. Then the moment passes and it all becomes real again. I feel a cold breeze on my bare head and neck and go "oh yeah, shit....I don't have any hair".
A lot has happened since I last posted; in a nutshell:
2 chemo cycles down, 1 more to go before another scan to see if this agony is even doing any good.
Somewhere in there, I went to the Mayo Clinic for a second opinion. Ironic that I live fairly close to the best health care in America.
I was impressed with the magnitude of the place and the knowledge there; but it was also a little depressing--seeing so many people there just trying to stay alive. Also felt a little bit like assembly line health care, but I guess it has to when you're dealing with that many people. Anyway, saw about 6 docs over the course of the day--medical oncologists, gynecologic oncologists, and liver surgeons. They all concurred with my current treatment plan, so nothing really new came out of it.
It did confirm the diagnosis, which is that I will
likely never be cancer free again and even if I am, it will most likely be
temporary.
Liver surgery not an option until they kill the
cancer source, and pelvis exenteration surgery is not an option unless you want to live
with stomas for the rest of your life. There is also a very high risk of life
threatening complications with that surgery, so not the greatest option, eh?
It's hard to nail any docs down on how long I have to
live, but what I am surmising is that it's between one (average) and five (top
end) years. Hard to believe when I don't even really feel sick--at least not until I voluntarily sit in the chemo chair for 3 days. Only then do I feel like crap for about a week.
My daughter keeps saying they'll find a cure.
I'm glad I raised an optimist. I do try to stay positive, but also can't ignore it. I was always proud of being a "realist". But you gotta have hope. Without hope life is shit. Right now my foremost emotion is anger. Why is this happening to me? Why wasn't it caught sooner? Why can we not just fix this so I can get back to my pre-cancer life. In retrospect, it was a pretty damn good one.
