Hospital PTSD

I recently spent a month in the hospital across four separate visits (nothing serious, more like course-correcting my system after too much chemo had screwed it up) and I am still recovering from it several days later because the experience was so bad it gave me Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I fear that the next time I need to go to the hospital my father is going to have to hit me over the head with a bat Flintstones style to get me there. You laugh but just wait, he'll fireman carry my unconscious ass to his Suburban.

What was so bad that I'm claiming PTSD now that I'm safe at home? Here are a few reasons. 

Waking me up at 4:30 in the morning to weigh me, which is almost as bad as the time they woke me up at two in the morning for a pregnancy test. Please note I have uterine cancer and no periods. 

Did you know a hospital is only authorized to give you a cough drop every two hours? Considering that seemed to be the only thing that made my nasty pneumonia cough shut the fuck up.

They take your vitals every three hours even if you're asleep. This includes a blood pressure cuff that strangles the blood out of your arm and jolting your mouth open with a thermometer.

They had one of my bipolar meds wrong so it came in liquid format rather than the standard pill (WTF, what adult prefers liquid that tastes like feet?). I tried to get them to switch the medication three times and they ignored me every time, which meant twice a day I had to drink four little servings of cherry flavored liquid butt and try not to hurl all over myself. And the nurse stands there and watches you take them so you can't even throw them out.

I generally avoided peeing for as long as possible because I was hooked up to both an IV and oxygen (which was only three meters long and just baaaaarely reached the toilet), plus my gown always tried to fall in the toilet bowl. I thought holding it in was a good call until doing so gave me a UTI that required antibiotics and the doctor chewed me out about avoiding infections.

As someone who is highly medicated, it is important that I take my meds every day at 10 am and 10 pm in order to keep my ass out of the psych ward. Plus I have sleeping problems and if I don't get my pill for that it takes me two or two and a half hours to fall asleep. They seemed to think that a five hour window was acceptable for dispensing drugs no matter my protests. Don't they know not to fuck with anyone who's legit on antipsychotics?

I'm not sure what to call them, but I have sore spots all up and down my thighs and butt from lying down so much the last month. The doctor said it helps if you get up and walk around but what the hell are you supposed to do when you can't walk? Which was the reason I was in the hospital the last time. [Don't worry, my legs are working again, albeit at only 65%.]

The best part about the hospital is the neon yellow slip-resistant socks they force all patients to wear to avoid falling on the way to the bathroom. Nothing screams hospital to me more than that--which is exactly why I made it the header on my Kiss My Chemo dot Blogspot dot com blog. My mother, who hates throwing anything away, always squirrels these socks away so there are now five pair taking up space in my dresser where there was once pretty lacy underwear (so so very long ago).

My nurse found it ideal to teach another nurse how to change the dressing on my mediport at 2 am. Why why WHY must so many tasks happen between midnight and six in the morning? They're lucky they didn't get a fork in the eyeball in defense of sleeping through the night.

Food: all the meat came out greyish beige aka griege, the color of things Morticia must prepare for her little haunted family of in-laws. Surprisingly some of it tasted better than it looked, but still.

After the first hospitalization I figured out how to sweet talk my mother into picking up take-out for me from Panera on her way to visit every afternoon except now that has backfired because I associate Panera with the hospital and it turns my stomach even though the food is the exact same it was a month ago. It's the hospital PTSD at work. It's ruined so many things.

Doctors, teams of the important doctors come into the room from 5-8am and wake you up then tell you a ton of vital information about your diagnosis and status then leave before you're awake enough to have any questions other than do you know what fucking time it is you asshats. Then you wonder if you dreamed them up because they said you have a blood clot in your heart and isn't that REALLY BAD but no one seemed at all concerned about it so then yeah it definitely must have been a dream. Right? This was also how I got told I have a blood clot in my lung as well as a tumor growing on the base of my neck, all of which I had to ask the doctors about again later to make sure I hadn't imagined it. [Nope, all real.]

Three of my doctors looked exactly alike with their covid masks on--tall thirtysomething women with willowy builds, dark hair pulled back, and thick nerd glasses. They were a hematologist, oncologist, and gynecological oncologist, all of whom told me different things and were varying degrees from resident to fellow so I never knew which one of whom to direct my particular questions to. Eventually I was able to identify them by stethoscope: one had a tiny bling clip, one was blue, and one was plain. No wonder I could barely tell them apart.

There are the weird things I now feel gratitude for that I never would have thought about otherwise, like cereal, vending machines, sleeping on a flat surface, and being able to get ice water for myself. Eating upright is a big one, because by day six I had a visible trail of food from the tray on the nifty lap table up my gown to my mouth, like an overgrown two year old who refuses to eat her food delivered by the choo-choo train spoon. 

A positive to come out of all of this is that I now know the exact schedule for the Food Network, HGTV, Comedy Channel and BBC America (Bones and Star Trek: The Next Generation!). 

I think the biggest change I've made since my run of hospital stays is that I no longer despise Guy Fieri on the Food Network. He was there for me during a very dark time, and I will always appreciate that, even if my hospital food never looked nearly as good as what was cooked on Guy's Grocery Games.

20 Years

The shitty thing about wearing a bandana is that it's a big fat sign to strangers that "HEY YOU I HAVE CANCER AND DOESN'T THAT SUCK."

Most people are cool and treat me like a normal human. Some give me a nod of recognition and understanding, which I appreciate very much because it usually means they've been in the trenches themselves or with a loved one. 

Some people come over and tell me their entire cancer story. Most of the time this is fine with me because they Get It. They know. They know better than me what is ahead, and I like hearing about it, as tough as it may be to hear. 

Then there are people like the stranger who came up to me today. He told me his wife's entire history of having breast cancer three times and a double mastectomy over twenty years and how her hair never grew back in right and it might not grow back at all this time and it's too much for a seventy year old woman to go through. 

At first I pasted an understanding smile on my face and nodded along because I was hangry, but as I realized that the man saw his wife strictly as a victim instead of a survivor with a lot to be thankful for, I decided to say as much.

"You have no idea how much I would love to make it to seventy years old. I would give anything to live another twenty years, even going through cancer three times."

The man's mouth dropped.

"My prognosis was in months, not years, so your wife is very lucky to have made it twenty years with breast cancer. I wish her the very best."

One person's curse is another person's blessing. I'd trade her so fast her wig fell off. 

The Greatest Man in My Life

The other day the song "I'll Be" by Edwin McCain came on and as always, I mishear it as "I'll be the greatest man of your life," because I don't like the actual word they use, "greatest fan of your life." I think it sounds goofy. 

Well this song came on while I was in the man cave, me working on a stained glass project and Dear Ol' Dad setting up his new workshop. He was cursing up a storm (but I know he was secretly loving every minute of it because he's such a Mr. Fix-It) and I was smiling at his cursing, because it makes me laugh and it's just how he is. Sometimes his cursing gets especially colorful, much to my delight. My love of language comes from him for that reason, actually. 

Hearing the song with Dad standing only ten feet away from me made me think of a father-daughter version, something that could be played for the father-daughter dance at the wedding I'll never get to have. Naturally, it rewrote the lyrics to accommodate this below. 

My relationship with Dear Ol' Dad has deepened since I'm living with my folks again since my cancer diagnosis (six months ago today). We watch Star Trek: Next Generation together and play dominoes and fight over the last scoops of cookies n' cream ice cream and he pokes me for fun and I threaten to purple nurple him. He has an endless supply of Dad jokes and extension cords and help putting on my compression socks and I love him for all of it because he's the best dad in the world. He was even before I had cancer; now even more so. 

When I first moved into the lakehouse with my folks in mid-September, Dad told me that he saw it as his job to be positive and keep me smiling. That must be incredibly hard on him, being a parent and having a sick child with a terminal illness. I actually feel worse for my parents than I do for myself, because they have to watch cancer slowly eat away at me, helpless to stop it. 

Besides that, children aren't meant to die before their parents, and yet that's probably what will happen because I have what, five to seven years if God grants me another miracle? And my father, who is healthy as a horse who eats his Wheaties every day, should live another fifteen to twenty years, easy. 

The two times I've really lost it and sobbed over my cancer, Dear Ol' Dad was there. He put his arm around me and let me cry big heaving wails against his chest, the sort of crying he hasn't seen since I was a small child, if ever. He told me he'd take my cancer on himself if he could, and I said I know he would, in a heartbeat.

Because that's how the best dads are. They don't want to see their kids hurt. They want to see their kids happy and healthy and living a full life. What do you do when your daughter's is ruined and there's very little you can do about it? 

You do the little things, like telling Dad jokes and making French toast when I'm sad and as many hugs as I want. You do the dad things, and that's why he's the greatest man in my life--and always will be.

"I'll Be the Greatest Man of Your Life"

*Please note: I really, really, am not encouraging incest here. Just ordinary, healthy, paternal love between father and daughter, because there aren't too many songs about that, and there should be. 

The first time I held your tiny self in my arms

Stopped me and stole my breath.

Eyes like gems lit up in the sky

Never revealing their depth.
And tell me that we belong together,
Dress it up with the trappings of love.
I'll be captivated,
I'll be there for you to love,
You can count on me, even when I'm up above.

And I'll be your crying shoulder,
I'll be love's suicide
And I'll be there for you when you're older,
I'll be the greatest man of your life.

And one day I hate to think about it

You'll leave me when you wed
And you're my survival, I'll always commit.
My love is alive never dead.
And tell me that we belong together.
Dress it up with the trappings of love.
I'll be captivated,
I'll be there for you to love,
You can count on me, even when I'm up above.

And I'll be your crying shoulder,
I'll be love's suicide
And I'll be there for you when you're older,
I'll be the greatest man of your life.

And I've turned up, I've tucked in, I've fought my way back from the dead.
I've been cried on, remembered the things that you said

And I'll be your crying shoulder,
I'll be love's suicide
And I'll be there for you when you're older,
I'll be the greatest man of your...
I'll be your crying shoulder,
I'll be love's suicide
And I'll be there for you when you're older,
I'll be the greatest man of your life.

The greatest man of your life.
...greatest man of your life.

Hair

Losing your hair because of chemo sucks because that goddamn bandana on your head announces to the whole world that you're a cancer patient and every stranger on the street looks sorry for you. I don't want strangers to look sorry for me; I want them to do what they're supposed to do and ignore me entirely. Please.

As soon as my first chemo treatment was scheduled, I ordered a brightly colored pack of bandanas from Amazon. Over the next couple weeks, I anxiously awaited my hair falling out because I just wanted it to be over and done with so I could move on to the next part of being a cancer patient, not that I knew what that meant. Acceptance, probably. Maybe wild-eyed rage, because fuck cancer. 

There was always the hope that my hair wouldn't fall out at all and I'd never have to have a stranger look at me with That Look of Sympathy in the streets--but I doubted luck would be on my side on that one.

I knew approximately when I'd be losing my hair because I had asked my cousin who went through breast cancer when she lost hers. Sure enough, after my third chemo treatment, huge clumps of hair came off in my hands in the shower. I hacked off the few strands that remained and then got a more even buzz cut once I reached my mother in Dallas. Patches of hair remain on my head but have stopped growing.  

What was more disconcerting than the bald head, however, was seeing that my pubic hair was coming out too. No one warns you about that part. It seems sacrilegious almost. Like, how dare my pubes abandon me when my uterus has already jumped ship into the cancer waters. Another betrayal most severe. 

Even though I knew it was likely I'd lose my hair because of the particular chemotherapy I was prescribed, and I knew approximately when it would happen, it was still a shock to see a handful of dark locks in the shower that day. Like, Okay, this is really happening. To ME. 

I'm a cancer patient. There's no denying it now. 

That's all anyone sees when they look at me or my Facebook avatar and see the telltale bandana on my bald scalp. I want to burn all my fucking bandanas in the firepit, but then I'd have to go around bald or in baseball hats and those options don't sound any better. Besides, I don't think I have the ovaries to go G.I. Jane; that's just simply more badass than I'm capable of. I'm not in my thirties with my interesting body piercings and midriff-revealing tops my mother hates anymore.  

Then there's the alien-face aspects of losing your hair to chemo: the eyelashes and eyebrows go too. I saw five or six fall out at a time, neatly grouped together on the white kitchen counter as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to fling themselves off my face. Rude. And weird as fuck all. I can barely look at myself in the mirror without studying where my previously expressive eyebrows are supposed to be. 

Oddly enough, the leg hair stayed. I'm guessing if I actually shaved, it would prove that the hair stopped growing though. 

But forget all of that, because "Oh no, I have chemo and I lost all my hair" can be found on a thousand other cancer blogs. Maybe not the bit about the pubic hair though.

Now let's talk about WIG SHOPPING. 

About a week after my hair fell out, my father and aunt were in town to help me move. After we'd gotten everything into the POD, we decided it was the much-awaited time to go wig shopping. 

I already knew I wanted a brightly colored wig, probably turquoise, and a realistic brunette one that was similar to my natural hair. Once we got to the wig shop and saw how cheap they were, I decided to get four total: a neon pink bob with black and white accents, a cobalt blue angled bob, a sophisticated black one similar to Monica Geller from Friends, and one with long beautiful wide-looped curls (which looked shockingly good on my rock star brother).

Before leaving the shop, of course I had to try on the most absurd and outlandish wig in the place: a mid-back length Dolly Parton mountain of platinum blonde curls. It made me look like a fabulous seventies debutante porn star.

As we were driving home (and I was sending tons of pictures to friends), my father said that that was the most he'd seen me smile since he'd gotten to Portland a week earlier. And he was right, it was all worth it just for that, because even more than a wig to cover my bald head, I needed a smile to spread across my face. 

Sadly, I have to report that I haven't actually worn any of the wigs other than with friends for funny photos. Once we brought my bags of cheap wigs home and taken tons of goofy photos (including one of the entire family in wigs that went out with the Christmas cards this year), I looked at myself in the mirror and saw exactly the same thing as before that I was hoping to replace: the same sad, bald girl, pissed off that she'd lost all her hair to cancer. 

Retreat

When I was diagnosed with cancer five months ago, I quit my entire life. Quit working on my book, quit Portland, quit art. I packed everything up into a single POD and moved to Dallas to be with my family for treatment and my final year on this fine earth, if I believed my oncologist's prognosis (which I don't, because fuck cancer).

Fortunately my parents had just finished building their dream lakehouse outside of Dallas where they gave me the master suite so there was room for my art desk, computer desk, and books, complete with a view of the lake. The lakehouse has a multi-colored gas fireplace, enormous kitchen with plenty of room to make a mess when baking cookies, plump leather armchairs for curling up with my Kindle, and a master shower lined in Carrera marble big enough for orgies. 

Then there's the outdoors: a brand-new dock with a table and power outlet for writing, a fire pit, a covered deck where we eat as many of our meals as possible, a gazebo, and best of all, A HAMMOCK. Sure, my brother and I bought the hammock as a present for the entire family, but I'm already the only one who has used it for more than five minutes, so it's basically mine. 

It's like living at a retreat. Friends who've visited or seen photos have said as much. I didn't think of it that way at first, but now I don't see how I couldn't, because you couldn't design a better home for a cancer patient fighting for her life and trying to heal. 

There's a flipside, however. It's so easy to see the lakehouse as a place to retreat that it's tempting to retreat all the way inside myself, with reading, writing, making art, watching tv, or sleeping. 

If it weren't for living with my parents, I'd probably never get out of bed. There have been many days when doing so felt like my big win for the day and nothing more should be expected of me aside from eating. 

Instead I get up and fake being a normal human. 

That's what it feels like--faking normalcy, when absolutely nothing about this situation is normal. No, this entire situation is fucked. Do you know what the odds are of having stage 4 lung cancer as a non-smoking 40 year old are? Less than 0.010%. Do you know what the odds are of having sarcoma in one organ, let alone five, are at 41? One in a million, according to my oncologist. I am the outlier.

So yeah, most days all I want to do is retreat safely inside myself. Hide under layers of fluffy covers and the safety of darkness. Which is exactly what I would be doing if I had continued living by myself in Portland. There's no better form of physical retreat in my opinion. Other than sex, but it's hard to get some when you're cancer-ridden (and perceived as highly fragile, as if a single thrust would render you unfit for chemo), bald, overweight, and living with your parents in a town full of Trumpers. 

Instead of staying in Portland, my parents politely demanded I move in with them (which I knew was the right move, even if I had once declared I would NEVER live in the devil's ballsack known as Texas humidity ever again). So I got rid of most of my belongings and drove the 2000 miles so I can pleasantly die in my parents' lakehouse. 

As a manic depressive, I am well versed in hiding from my problems with sleep. Sleeping is my favorite hobby, just like Hannah Horvath. As in, I sleep on a professional level--I did before I ever got cancer, when depression was my biggest problem. There's an entire semester of college I basically slept through. I know students are far more likely to party their way to C's, but that would have required my getting out of bed. 

A week ago I had a few really bad days because I went out of town without my week's container of meds. An emergency stash in my purse provided a single dosage of backups, but I still downward spiraled for a few days even once I was back to my regularly scheduled regimen of mood stabilizer, antipsychotic, antidepressant, antianxiety, and sleeping pills.

To improve my mood, m y mother suggested I go down to the dock and write. I had been talking about this for weeks but hadn't yet, in part because my oxygen levels made it difficult to make such a long walk over bumpy inclined terrain without dragging my cumbersome "portable" oxygen machine. My body, however, was doing great after my latest hospital stay where I got two bags of blood, so I made the trek out to the dock with surprising ease. Physically I almost feel normal again, as long as I don't look in the mirror at my bandanaed head.

Writing is my emotional retreat; it has been since I started journaling in college about my depression. Over the last week of beautiful cool weather, writing out on our dock, I have done some of my best blog writing about my decade-long fight and triumph over alcoholism, since my previous blog fifteen years ago ("Best of Houston" Houston Press award winning, but long defunct, I'm sorry to say).

Normally writing things like that leaves me gutted for days, but not so this time. I suppose they were stories I needed to tell so badly, as if ridding my soul of its own version of a tumor, or maybe it's because I told them in such a healing environment. Probably both.

Writing is a contradiction in retreating. On one hand, it lets you retreat into your deepest thoughts and feelings, yet on the other hand, it brings those to the forefront and forces you to face them, at least for a little while. Which for the longest time I could only do with a glass or four of wine in my hand. 

Writing lets me say things I would never say in front of another person. Those of you who have read the two posts on my alcoholism may find this hard to believe, but yes, there are still things unsaid, at least for now. Writing honestly takes nerve, and the capacity not to delete it all the next day in the light of sobriety or my better senses. 

When it came down to it, writing saved me from myself--eventually. Once I learned to accept it as both a retreat and a step forward.

Now I know it's impossible for writing to save me from a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, but it's already done wonders in healing my soul. At this rate, when I come to the end of my life, I think I'll be able to do so with a clear heart and spirit. At least I hope so.

Patronus

Throughout my childhood, my happiest memory is of the sound of the hood of our wrought iron grill opening and hitting my windowsill. That meant Dad was grilling Lindsay sausage for Sunday breakfast, my favorite time of the week. We'd sleep late, forgo chores, talk, make each other laugh, and not rush the day like we did on Saturdays. The sausage was specially made in my father's hometown of Lindsay, Texas, in a single grocery store, and it's the best sausage I've had to this day. It's special, just like Sundays. 

If you asked me what my Patronus memory of happiness is, I would say the sound of that iron grill hitting my windowsill. 

The idea of the Patronus is taken from Harry Potter: It's your happiest memory, which you cast in the face of a Dementor to save your sense of happiness and even your soul from being sucked out of your body. It's a very difficult spell to pull off, because your happy memory has to be strong and felt with true conviction.

More recently, my happiest times are when I take my nap every afternoon and I listen to the sounds of life through my bedroom door: Mom and Dad chatting and laughing, my brother playing guitar, the slam of the microwave, the clink of the dog's tags against her water bowl, even my Dad cursing when he's on the phone with a "gotdamn fucking bitch of a machine." 

Since I now live at a lakehouse, you'd think my favorite memories would be of reading on the deck or watching sunsets every evening come over the horizon, but no, it's the everyday sounds of my family. 

These are the sounds of home, and they keep me safely guarded, at least enough for me to burrow down in my bed and go to sleep with my mind at peace.

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What is your Patronus memory?

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Everyone in my family knows I go bonkers for Christmas. I always have. I love how everyone is generally cheerier for the month of December. Then there's the big ass tree and perfectly coordinated decorations, the baking of Crumbl copycat cookies, the giving and receiving of Amazon boxes that no one bothers to wrap because fuck it, the holiday movies (it's not Christmas until I hear the theme song to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation playing while I put up the tree) and getting to spend time with loved ones you rarely see and then you remember OH MY GOD THAT BASTARD IS SO ANNOYING. It just plain makes me happy, and for a girl on multiple mood stabilizers, there's definitely something to be said for that. 

This year I managed to talk my mother into a towering nine foot-tall Christmas tree against her insistence that it would be too tall for the cathedral ceiling (but she later admitted she was very wrong, so I felt like a champion for winning that weeks-long fight with my mother). I made several intricate origami ornaments for my family tree (which just so happens to be Gryffindor colors, because duh) and favorite cousins so that a part of me will always be there every Christmas. 

My brother and I made gingerbread cookies last week. At first I didn't want to help because I was reading and didn't wanna, but then I realized that this could very well be our last chance to make gingerbread cookies together. So we made cookies, and it was fun making a big mess and taking turns with the cookie cutters, then eating nothing but cookies and vanilla icing for dinner that night, and breakfast the next morning, naturally.

Over Thanksgiving I spent a week in the hospital (for nothing (that) bad, just really shitty timing because it seemed the entire CT scan department took four straight days off)). It was miserable knowing that I was missing out on seeing twenty of my favorite people at the lakehouse over what could very well have been my last holiday with them, since everyone is doing something else for Christmas. This was supposed to be my last big holiday that we'd know for sure I'd be around for, and still fairly healthy-feeling at that. And I bloody missed it. Which is extra biting because I was in the hospital for needing two pints of blood. 

Sure, they passed around a phone for FaceTime and many came to visit me in the hospital for an hour, but it wasn't the same as being around my loved ones for three straight days, including my two favorite cousins who are like sisters to me. I wanted to talk to their kids and get to know them better now that they're all old enough to have opinions and interests of their own, but now I'll just be "Remember? Your second cousin who died from cancer." FaceTime isn't the same as actual face time. 

I missed out on cooking, baking, fishing, an ER visit, fighting, including what was apparently a very heated fight over a dying microwave, ganging up on the old people and talking about them in the corner of the room, cards, Monopoly, dominoes, and my favorite Christmas movies. Meanwhile I sat in the hospital rereading the Bridget Jones's Diary series and fuming that I wasn't at the lakehouse to witness Aunt Sarah farting out loud and thinking no one heard it, or legit losing Monopoly to a nine year-old once again. Those are the sorts of memories that matter, the stupid ones that only you and your family share. Everyone tells me I didn't miss much, yet I feel like I missed everything. 

As I'm sitting here at the kitchen counter typing this, my brother asked me what I was writing. I told him, "I'm writing about Christmas." His face instantly hardened. He knew what I didn't say: that this is probably my last Christmas, and we all know it. When my father came in and asked what I was writing about, I said, "how many Christmases I have left," because that seemed like a way of saying It without saying it. His face instantly hardened too. Great. I might be ruining Christmas by trying so hard to preserve it.

In August I was told I had a year to live. Since chemo is going well and I'm stubborn as fuck, I'm hoping I get more than one more Christmas, but if I do it will be a gift from God himself. And how many miracles can a girl get? I've already had two: having my horrible lung cancer cough disappear,  and my need for outside oxygen disappear as well, both thanks to chemo--whose odds of working were against me, as I later learned. But chemo only goes so far, especially with a sarcoma like mine. That's what makes sarcomas so wretched: They're known for being hard to treat.

You know what I want for Christmas? Fifty more Christmases.

The Lake

When I'm not in Dallas for treatment, I spend most of the week at my parents' brand new lakehouse in northeastern Texas. The lakehouse is gorgeous (in no small part because I was the architect who helped my father design it :) and sits only thirty feet from the lake on a highly wooded lot. When it was decided I'd be moving down here for chemo, my parents gave me the master bedroom suite because it overlooks the lake, has its own bathroom, and a large walk-in closet I could use for my art studio. It's like living at a retreat, complete with walks on the golf course, puzzles before The Great British Baking Show, Star Trek every night, plenty of pastry baking, journaling, and bad art. 

My favorite part of the house is in one of the over-sized leather chairs facing the lake. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent in one of those chairs simply staring at the water. 

The funny thing is I'm not especially fond of lakes. Or the ocean. Or rivers. I'm not a water person. No, I like forests with big huge pine trees. Hence my living in the Pacific Northwest for the previous seven years. I like seeing the trees wave in the wind. They feel like they're standing sentry for some great ancient force that we can't understand, and so they make me feel safe.

Since our lakehouse is deep inside a peninsula, and the water level is too low for most people to take their boats out, the water is almost always perfectly smooth. A single duck swimming in the water makes ripples that permeate far beyond her little body. 

I watch the families of ducks swim from one side to the other, or the herons stand on the shore. Occasionally a fish jumps out of the water, which is my favorite lake sight. When it gets windy, the water ripples and you can watch a single ripple from deep in the water come in and break on the shore. 

But most of the time when I'm watching the lake, I'm thinking about how I'm dying and what death will be like. I wonder about God and if heaven is real, if I'll get to see my relatives who passed, or if being dead just means you're Gone and you're shit outta luck. You spent your life, what's done is done. 

I think that's why no one ever asks me what I'm thinking about when I'm staring out the window at the water. They already know because they can read it all over my face. 

For me, dying lives in the lake. I think it's because I hope to feel as much peace in my dying and death as I see in the water before me. Not a ripple except from the occasional duck.

Death doesn't scare me that much (but then again I can say that when it's a whole year or two away), but the process of dying scares the living shit out of me. Since I have a tumor that metastasized to four other organs, will I spend the end of my life in a ton of pain? How will I muster up the strength to be brave when everyone around me is starting to crack because they're really seeing what this disease is doing to me? What if I have to make some really hard decisions that no one else dare make for me? 

But the lake. There's peace there, and so I watch the lake. 

From "Fuck You" to "Thank You," God

I've finally gotten past the angry phase of my stage 4 metastatic cancer diagnosis. The "why me, but I'm so young, this is so unfair, I can't believe this is happening to me" phase. You know, the "fuck you, God" phase. 

When I'm seeing huge clumps of hair come out in my hand in the shower. When I'm watching a bag full of toxins flow into my blood stream. When I hear others complain about getting old and I wish with all my heart that I knew I would be living long enough to complain about getting old too. All those times in the beginning when I felt God had turned his back on me, or at least forgotten about me. 

And why should he think of me? I'm no one special. It's not like I have an important position in the fate of the world/apocalypse or even have my own nuclear family relying on me.

But It's been nearly three months (only three months!! It feels like three times that) since my diagnosis and I've now experienced enough miracles to know that I have things to be incredibly grateful for. Every night I say "Thank you, God" for the many things that have made my cancer a little less scary. 

The first thing I'm grateful for is that I went from sounding like a stage 4 lung cancer patient with my terrible, deep, hacking and retching coughs every five seconds to being cough-free after only three chemo treatments. I now sound like a normal cough-free person when before I couldn't get through speaking a sentence without coughing every two words. My brother had to make all my phone calls for me because I couldn't talk properly. This was my little miracle #1. 

Secondly, I no longer need to be on oxygen when I'm at home. Considering I have stage 4 lung cancer (and as a non-smoker, no less, ask me how pissed off about THAT I was), it was a fair estimate that I'd be on oxygen the rest of my life. My own oncologist told me so. Is this God granting me another miracle? Or is it highly effective chemotherapy? I like to think it's my stubborn ass simply refusing to give in to my prognosis. Magical miracle #2! Even my mother calls it a miracle and she doesn't just go around saying things like that. 

Last, and most importantly, what I'm most grateful for is my family. Texts and visits and Crumbl cookie deliveries from my extended family made me feel loved from all around the country. Then of course my parents have always been amazing even when I made it incredibly hard for them with my alcoholism. Now I'm living with them and they go out of their way to support me and make me comfortable here. We bake banana bread together, play dominos, poke fun at bad Dad jokes, and sit outside on the deck watching the sunset together. Often. Just like how we laugh, often. Many of my cancer books point out that laughter truly does help the healing process, so I'm glad we come by that easily. 

For the first five weeks after my diagnosis my brother came to Portland and lived with me so he could cook, run errands, make phone calls, keep me from completely freaking out, and take me to my first chemo appointments. He sold my furniture on Craig's List, emptied out my junk room one box of papers at a time, and loaded what remained of my belongings into the POD bound for Dallas. If that kind of misery is not love, then I'll be damned if I know what is. 

When we go around the table at Thanksgiving with all our extended family there, I know exactly what I'm going to say I'm thankful for, and I know I'll be a blubbering mess when I do. 

Praying to the Smoke Detector

You may have been wondering what my relationship with God is after all this cancer stuff. 

Before all this, I didn't exactly pray so much as give gratitude every night. Thank you for my wonderful family. Thank you for the roof over my head and the food in my belly. Thank you for a good day today. Thank you for saving me with my writing. Thank you for another day sober. 

But that's kinda the same as praying, right? It's talking to God.

Now when I'm falling asleep in my dark room at night, I stare up at the green light on the smoke detector above my bed and pretend it is God watching me. Listening. 

So I pray. I pretend God is listening to every word and emotion in my mind as I say all the things I need to say. Things I didn't even know I needed to say, but that's another blog post. 

Naturally I went through the typical stages of grief, but I've added a new stage: begging. 

I am begging God for my life. Another ten years, another five years, another year, just get me through another Christmas with my family. Please.

When I'm staring up at that smoke detector, I imagine God listening to me as I try to show gratitude in the face of cancer, which seems extra important now when it's so easy to just sit there and scream at God that he's being nothing more than a cold-hearted dick: Thank you for my wonderful family who are doing so much to support me. Thank you for the beautiful new lakehouse I'm living in with my parents. Thank you for a good day today where I didn't cry. Thank you for my seventeen-year-old dog who knows I need her through this. Thank you for another day sober when it's really hard not to want to drink. 

And then I beg some more. Because that smoke detector knows things that I don't, and maybe that means I have a chance of living to see 2024. 

Bright Light

Growing up, I wasn't religious. Sure I went to church and very reluctantly took catechism classes on Sunday nights, but I saw it all as one big elaborate story, not as fact. I thought this God character was just another story that everyone else believed in so I should just stay quiet about it so I didn't piss anybody off. 

Somewhere in my twenties I began to consider that maaaaybe God was real. I had done enough stupid shit that it was time to start hedging my bets. 

Then I had my first manic episode. I mean balls to the wall manic, like complete strangers were coming up to me and asking me if I was on drugs because I was so "exuberant," to which I would simply say, "no, I'm high on LIFE!"

But there are quiet moments in mania too, like after you've been awake HIGH ON LIFE!!! for thirty-eight hours without sleep. It was during one of these quiet moments that my usual state of depression (aka what the shrinks call a mixed episode) was beginning to overwhelm me. 

I was sitting in the shower stall with the door slightly open so I could reach my glass of box wine, water pooling on the tile be damned. I sat there for about forty-five minutes letting the water hit me and taking in the wine that was slow-motion ruining my life. I stared at nothing.

Then I looked up through the crack of the open shower door and saw a bright light, an oval shape about four feet tall and suspended a couple feet above the floor. It flashed for only a second.

In that time, all the anxiety, all the rocks in my stomach, disappeared. I felt peace for that split second I saw the bright light.  

Yeah. Now I sure as fuck believe in God. If it came to me and managed to get through all my bullshit and my thick head? I'll double down, thank you very much. 

Fuck Cancer

It’s been a month and a half since I first wrote about my having stage 4 cancer in multiple organs. I was all peace, love, and Oreos, ready to face the end with grace. 

I thought you’d like to see what has transpired since then, with health insurance being dicks, moving 2000 miles into my parents’ house, losing all my hair, permanent diarrhea, and getting hand tremors from the chemo that keep me from writing or my artwork. 

Fuck cancer. 

It changes everything and everyone in your entire life. People treat you like you’re about to die, asking about advanced directives (instructions on what measures you want taken for when you’re on the verge of death), who your 401k goes to, and even who will take care of your dog. And no one likes it when you put your hands over your ears and scream I’M NOT DYING YET. LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE. 

Forgive me, I don’t mean to undo all the happy thoughts of my first post about cancer when I said I want to face what could be my final year with joy and gratitude. 

I’m just saying… what, I don’t know. I can’t even think of what to say. 

This is a lot fucking harder than I expected. And no one expects cancer to be easy. 

I just didn’t expect it to be this hard.