Cancer 102

Having cancer in the way I have cancer is a little like being sentenced to death and sitting in a cell on death row. Every two weeks I await the result of my blood tests to see if I am healthy enough to undergo my next round of chemo. If I am not healthy enough, then that may be the call to the death cell, at which point I hang around while the tumours grow until it all becomes too much and Bob’s your uncle. At one level, this is incredibly stressful. Have I got another reprieve? Fortnight after fortnight, relentlessly, permanently, for the rest of my life.

The thing is, if it really did cause me high levels of stress I would probably have hanged myself by now (any other method of suicide is equally acceptable), but humans are incredibly resilient. Just like other unavoidable stressors, we put up with because we have to put up with it. It is the only way to manage.

There are other, more difficult stressors. For me that is my stoma and my hernia, which can at times make things difficult, and I can find them very upsetting. It is these that make me emotional, and sometimes make me think death might be better than life – but not for long.

Last Friday, my blood tests indicated reasonable normality across most measurements. My liver is working, my kidneys are working, my white blood cell count, if a little elevated, is reasonably normal, even my cancer markers are not too high. The chemotherapy is working, but at some point it will fail. It always does, but it is not possible to know when it will fail. Next week? Another year?

All I can do is live. Then I will die. Just like every human dies. The key differences include knowing that you are under a death sentence, and variation in the amount of time a person lives.

I don’t expect to get to 80, or 70, or 65, but you never know.