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.