Further notes on Deciding to Live...

An interesting note: everything on my body aches. Little things like the childhood tail bone injuries and the cracked elbow from 30 years ago…aching now and never before. Fingers and toes, ouch! Even my teeth! Weird but true. Knowing that you have cancer is bad for your health! I wasn’t nearly this achy – or fatigued – before I “knew” I had cancer. Denial for almost five years was the right course!

                

The meeting with the radiation oncologist went OK at best. Right off the bat he said he could cure me of cancer. HE could. Bit of a savior mentality.

At first he had some Frankenstein things he wanted to show me. A way to put the radiation inside you through a pinky-finger sized HOLE they drill in your breast (and only takes "about a year" to completely heal). I was grossed out, but it was a quick way to deliver the radiation and “save the skin” he said. 

Then, when he finally looked at my record, he realized that I couldn’t use that method (because I have “skin involvement”) so he said, “Even if I could, I don’t want to do that” (he used the word "I" frequently) and began to explain how much and how long it was going to go: five days a week, for up to seven weeks. And yes, I had to pay him every time as well as co-pays for the treatment. I explained that I'm a woman of modest means and he disregarded that. Again, healthcare believes that everybody will do everything to stay alive, no matter the cost. (I can spend 1/10 as much as my co-pays and have a massage or reflexology every week, which will most certainly extend my life as much as other invasive or poisonous procedures and make my MUCH happier along the way.)

When I asked my questions, which my doctor friend had helped me formulate, the radiation oncologist literally moved away from me, rolling his stool backwards from the “I’m you best friend” space to the “I’m uncomfortable and don’t want to be here” space, arms crossed on his chest. 

His final words of the visit were, “Have the surgery and then we’ll see.” Well, duh. That’s what I wanted all along (but the surgeon insisted that I see the radiation and medical oncologists first). He actually grimaced when I asked about the expected “symptom-free interval”. And he used the word “cure” that my doctor friend had told me is impossible to promise. 

Later that night, I hit the wall. Deep depression, short lived (sleep is a wonder drug.) Woke up with all fears relieved. I thought, perhaps, it would be more difficult to "just say no" to the medical industrial complex. But no. 

Now I've felt the lifting of the latest round of fear. It's as if the hard part is over. All I have to do now (besides meeting with one more doctor, one I've known for many years and have no hesitation with speaking to, asking questions and/or saying no to as necessary) is climb up on the gurney, go to sleep and wake up with the lump removed, my ultimate goal all along. My friends have been wonderful, helpful and supportive. Mike went through the worst of the worst in the midst of the fearful parts and did his best to comfort me...and kept me laughing.

I remember my dad saying, at a late age after many various surgeries, that he had reached the point where anything else they cut out or otherwise removed "will show". Well this will show for sure, but it'll be gone! And I may...later...consider having that creepy fatty tumor on my back taken off (so ugly!) as well as getting my cataracts fixed. But then I'll get back on the "only live until I die" band wagon (unless I get some icky thing on my face...I'm too vain to be ugly, even at this advanced age!) and do my best to avoid modern healthcare.

But better now. The joy of old age is knowing, deep inside, that everything WILL get better. And it does, time and again. Sometimes it takes lots of work or unpleasant challenges (like seeing doctors...or eating right), sometimes a simple guided meditation and nap do the trick...sometimes one has to stand firm in the face of a nation gone healthcare crazy and say "NO"...but every single time...things get better. This is one of those times.