Between Fear and Panic

I understand how people can, in difficult situations, turn to extreme thoughts or solutions to break out of their quandries. I am, it seems, no different than anyone in this regard.

On Wednesday, I started having trouble breathing, my throat closing, the mucous river I live with pooling and going nowhere...not down, not out. My face puffed, my skin reddened further, and I thought first of Cisplatin, the chemo drug, the crap that was forcing me to eat anti-nausea medicine the way I'd like to eat candy: copiously, often.

But the oncologist noted that was I was experiencing were side effects associated with radiation--not chemo, and while Cisplatin might be bad enough, it's effects were more stomach than airway.

I thought of this--all of the things that they said would happen to me eventually during radiation were happening already by treatment 2--and not gradually, but slammiong me, frightening me, making it difficult for me to breathe, a couple of times convincing me I would pass out until I got ahold of myself, counted slowly, focused, refused to give up.

I spent most of the last two days in silence, working on breathing, canceling radiation treatments, hiding. To say that I'm scared of what happened is mild--to say that it depresses me is a joke. It does more than that: it makes me wonder if I can stand the cure.

The first night, I had no sleep, there was no position, there was just walking, bad television in the early hours, old videos, reading, anything that would help me not think of choking. Every five minutes, I'd suction a tiny bit of gunk out, try not to hurl--because the kicker was that even if I couldn't breathe, there was no way my stomach would stop doing cartwheels.

Last night, it was better finally, and I slept--though likely not enough to make up for Wednesday and Thursday, lost days that just circled a dirty drain.

I suppose I did know that this would be difficult--or did I? Maybe not. I think I've had this vision of myself like the Kool Aid pitcher just breaking through walls. That force of personality would overcome force of nature, and prevail because I have to do so.

But I see that I have to gut check each moment and regret any that I fail to fight for--and I have to see as a weakness any optimism that doesn't equally take into account the reality of what I'm doing here.

I received a sympathy card from Scott's sister concerning Barb's death--it was a lovely gesture. And it's hard to receive such a heartfelt note and figure out a way to say back to her that Barb escaped this--this constant battle, this need to put the body under waterfalls of poison and beams of harshness, burns and choking. That, ulimately, having fought long and hard, my sister deserved to stop suffering more than she needed to keep living.

It struck me in the past couple of days where it has not before that cancer may take me like that too. I'm not worse for the reality but I'm not better, either. I have to process something that has muscled its way into my mind but is content to lurk off to the side--fear. I know it's there, and the next time they mask me and pin me and point the killer machine at me, it'll tap dance through my head, daring me to try to breathe logically.

Sometimes fear is rational, and right now, sanely, I am scared.