Tuesday, November 27, 2012

How I am now

Pondering self and scalp in The OC.
My hair is coming back but it's not
dark enough to see in photographs. 
To continue on a theme, Monday I didn't count steps, was mostly driving, but probably there were very few. Also ate some crap food (popcorn, Trader Joe's cheetos, and stuff with fake sugar in it!) Saw the excellent Argo with Jules. I arrived home this morning. 

I'm listening to the City Arts and Lectures interview with Wendell Berry. I think the interview on Forum with Michael Krasny is better.  Although the focus isn't enough on poetry. 

I was thinking about all the bad news I got in the beginning of this ordeal. Every time I went to a new doctor I got more bad news. First there's a tumor, then it's in the bladder, then it's in lymph node(s), then it's in the bones, then it's stage 2, then it's stage 4, then it's stage 4b, and there is almost no information about treatment. When I would hear new info about the extent of the disease, I'd be shocked for a few minutes, or a few hours. It would pass, and things would somehow feel "normal". 

I realized that this time it's taken me several weeks to get used to the news that the last round of chemotherapy didn't work, and that the way forward is totally unknown, and that now maybe the cancer in my lungs will kill me. The odds of finding a clinical trial seem slim. The prospect of my death is more real now. I said in the beginning that I was OK with dying if that's what was going to happen. I'm not sure about that now. I guess I'll know when it happens. 

I suppose in my life, I have kept my distance from friends and family in some way. I remember telling someone years ago that the reason I didn't want to have children was that I didn't want to be tied to this earth. Mostly it wasn't a conscious philosophy. But I feel like having a kind of cancer that's full of question marks has caused me to be more connected with people, and feel more of the pain of potentially being separated from them. 

Had a chapter meeting this morning that was good, though kind of painful due to the repressed pain of being around my mom for several days. 

I watched four movies four days in a row. None tonight though, but I might try the first episode of The Walking Dead... 

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