Journal

So, apparently, this is a place to write about illness and, with luck and a bit-o-science, recovery.  I don't know how to write about either of those things, because what illnesses I have suffered have been small, and recovery has come easily and with certainty.  My own illnesses and recoveries have never seemed worthy of the attention writing compels. There have never been any questions about them.  But as of Thursday, November 9, 2017, there are lots of questions about both. Questions lead to contemplation, and for me, contemplation sometimes realizes itself in writing. 

I've had respiratory problems my entire life; bronchitis, sinus problems, allergies. My mom says that when I was a kid, people would joke that if the wind blew the wrong way, I'd get sick. Sure, I probably had a puny immune system.  But that was also in the days when lots and lots of people smoked, and they smoked everywhere -- in cars, on the bus, in restaurants, in grocery stores, at work, even in hospitals.  I even had a college professor who chain-smoked through his lectures on Romantic poetry. That was also in the days before the EPA and air quality controls were in full effect.  So, I think for lots of us who were young then, the fact that our respiratory systems survived at all is a bit of a wonder. How did we not all die?

In my 20s, I was diagnosed with asthma and have relied on rescue inhalers and corticosteroid inhalers ever since.  This summer, I was having a particularly wheezy time of it, so the nurse practitioner at my local clinic had me try out some new sample medication.  It seemed to help.  And my symptoms abated. And I stopped with the new inhaler after awhile. But.

This fall, I noticed the wheezing had come back and wasn't really going away, and it was especially bad at night. I also noticed that I was getting short of breath when I climbed the six flights of stairs to my 3rd floor office at work. I went back to the clinic, saw the doctor, and asked her to write an actual prescription for the medication I'd gotten over the summer.  She said if I didn't feel better in a month to come back and get a referral to a pulmonologist. I also got a flu shot.

The next day, I went to see my regular bodywork/massage/physical therapist.  As she was doing her visual evaluation of me, she spotted a puffy lump just above my clavicle on my left side.  That was new.  It hadn't been there a month prior when I'd seen her last. What was it, we wondered?  Perhaps a reaction to the flu shot? Perhaps something worse? I waited a week to see if the lump would go away, but it didn't.  The rest...well...that's why I've opened an account here at Caring Bridge.  It seems I'm gonna have some 'splainin' to do.

That lump?  It turned out to be cancer. Of course.  After a sonogram and a CT scan showing adenopathy there in my neck and along my trachea, we suspected lymphoma, which wasn't so scary because I knew it was likely treatable and even curable. But, after a needle biopsy of the lump, we learned that I have lung cancer. Adenocarcinoma.  In my lymphatic system. And that shit's never good.  Adenocarcinoma pretty much presents only in a later stage, so that means I've been walking around with cancer in my body for a good long time. It's already moved in and is trying to make itself a permanent resident. Yesterday, I explained to the cancer that I need my body more than it does, that I was going to have to ask it nicely to leave, and that if it didn't, I was going to forcibly evict it.

Tomorrow, or, er, later today (since anxiety keeps me up at night, and it's already Wednesday) I'll have a bronchoscopy to get a better look at what's going on.  After that, I'm assuming there will be oncology meetings, probably more diagnostic work to stage the cancer (PET scan? Bone marrow sample? Genomic testing? Other?), and we'll come up with a treatment plan if treatment is to be had.

Here's a lovely irony. Recently, I've been wishing for some kind of big change in my life.  I've been doing the same work for over 30 years; it's good work, but I have begun to feel like I need to look at other things, to do something a little more adventurous.  I was considering retiring early, learning some new skills, starting a business, freelancing more, blah, blah, blah.  Instead, the universe has handed me something that I cannot control.  Guess that'll teach me to start making plans, eh?

So for the next few weeks I imagine there will be more waiting, more appointments, more testing, more waiting, some additionally scary bad news, and some hard decisions.  I'm astounded at how slow the process is.  I mean, inside I hear this panicked voice screaming "I've got cancer! Pay attention to me! Treat me right now! The sands are slipping through that hourglass! Let's go! Chop chop!"  And the world just plods on at its excruciatingly bureaucratic pace of insurance pre-approvals and referrals and appointments and more appointments and answers coming in slow drips.  Protocols are protocols. And, well, the bureaucracy is just made up of people doing their jobs, and one more set of medical records to tend to is just another burdensome task. I get it. I saw Brazil. I haven't got the Form 27B/6.

And for me too, there's still the getting up and going to work every day and forgetting sometimes, in the busy day to day, and then remembering again when I climb the stairs.

In reading about this cancer, I've come across information regarding lung screening, how more or less routine lung screenings are being promoted for early detection of cancer, in the same way mammograms are promoted for early detection of breast cancer. Pap smears, PSA tests, all that cancer-sleuthing stuff seems such an ordinary part of the landscape these days, at least for those of us with good access to healthcare.  And I find myself wondering, of course...since I have a history of respiratory illness...shouldn't I have asked for a lung screening a long time ago?  Shouldn't I have somehow suspected that my asthma symptoms might have been masking something else? Not might have been. Were. Are. Definitely.

But, I can't worry about the woulda/coulda/shoulda.  I've got to think about what's now and what's next.

Circling around in my brain the past couple of days is a scene from The Martian with Matt Damon.  The dude's stranded on Mars and has to figure out how to survive with what he's got. His answer? "I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this." So, that's what I'm fixin' to do.

And even though I believe in science and empirical evidence, and methodology and all that...I also know that some part of science is serendipity, and even plain old luck. And in the bigger picture, because I am sometimes spiritual in my inclinations, what I might want to call luck is actually a kind of grace.  So that's what I'm asking for. Some grace. Some mercy. And of course, one mustn't ask for such things if one is not prepared to give the same.  Hold me to it y'all.