Learning to Walk, Seven Times

Dear blog,

This shall be the last cancer blog, pending recurrence. I, naturally, grow weary of the topic.

I am tired. Exhausted, etiolated, sapped, cut-through, zonked. I'm frustrated, near tears, near tantrum with everything. It's all coming back too slowly. I fought to learn to walk after being bed-ridden every two weeks for the last two months. I vomited, ultimately, once, after eating too fast, because I was starving from not being able to eat for two days. I struggled to eat slowly after fasting every two weeks for the last two months. I'm just not interested any-more.

I am also triumphant! Horns blasting, timpani rumbling, electric guitar squeeling and ten thousand baritones screaming their best high G. A genetic mutation lead to rampant spread of caustic foreign death through an alarming portion of my body. The only treatment: to poison it and you, and hope you live longer than it...and I did. And I got a Mother Fucking 4.0 (completing my Master's requirements) while I did it. That's right: capital letters in foul language. Sometimes it's appropriate (probably not now). Anywhat.

"What's it like having a port?" -paraphrase. It's the question I'd rather answer, anyway. It's like the Borg. It's totally alien. It's unlike any natural process, hugging, talking, shaking hands, scrunching toes, pulling hair, eating squid, nothing. They knock you out and you wake up in discomfort with a small jagged scar and a visible sub-cutaneous implant (three cheers for spelling cutaneous first try!). Later, they stab you in the chest with a three quarter inch needle, which hurts like the dickens for a second, honest Abe. Then you watch saline solution pumped in the direction of your chest through a little tube and it disappears. Intellectually, you know where it went, but you can't really feel it. The vibration is too slight to activate the insensitive chest nerves. Later than that, you watch colored liquid go through the tube and disappear through the needle you cannot feel, and you know it's poison, and you sit still anyway.

If you're human that is. I refer to Dune, Frank Herbert. I am a human. I can be sure now.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I have to rebuild my body. I have gained twenty pounds of fat, while losing vast strength, endurance and some flexibility. I have become addicted to sleep aids. The chemo caused insomnia. I will face sleepless nights this week as I kick the drugs. I hope to counteract the withdrawal by exhausting myself daily with intellectual and physical tasks.

I have to deal with paper-work. The insurance was kind enough to stop paying bills at some point, which problem I put off til now to deal with.

I must, and I will, slowly, and carefully, and with all the tedium and frustration inherent, grind away at the junk that's wrong in my life as a result of this dice roll. And let it be an example to anyone who thinks anything might be unfair, or that any task be too boring or frustrating to tolerate. As always, this is what I hope to be my message here. Do your jobs folks, it could be worse. You could be paid less and have to work harder and be dying while it happens.

Your Obedient,
Ian Hogan M.S. B.S. A.A.