Honestly, I can't figure myself out sometimes.
Lately, bad news has really been raining down upon me. The chest wound left over from the April surgery refuses to just heal up, and is now undermining toward large blood vessels. If they rupture, I bleed out, and goodbye Mark.
The old tumor Krakatoa has been replaced by multiple tumor-lettes, a couple of which spout drainage and I'll have to go back to daily dressing changes from Home Health which I loathe. There's no space for me to just be me, to not have to think every freaking moment about Mark the Cancer Patient. Seriously, that's what I most want, a place to call myself normal, and it's just not available anymore. No vacancy.
Coming up, I need a biopsy of those tumor-lettes, and I want a non-surgical biopsy. I don't want to go near the hospital because they seem to want to keep me everytime they see me. I am surely profitable because they are not an institution fond of anyone whose name is not Dollar. I must reek high margins and denominations when the sliding doors open. So, of course, I want to stay far away. But I can't...well, not entirely true: I could insist on a fine needle biopsy under local anesthetic, but if I do that, I can't pursue the option of a thorough wound cleaning and the application of some artificial skin which would mitigate, at least for some time, the threat of bleeding out.
I am willing to go to the wall to not bleed out.
It's possible, I heard today, that the tumor-lettes are smaller than they were previously. The grievous walnut in my right armpit seems smaller and softer to me, so chemo may be kicking back in--and that would be good. Yet there's a consideration afoot to attempt to get a new immunotherapy drug approved for my use that offers promise and risk--promise in that it is apparently efficacious at just this sort of tumor-lette slaying, risky in that it can damage lungs. Considering I knocked out my right lung to pneumonia, how much risk can I really engage here?
My rule of thumb is 60% positive, and Dr. Dayton isn't sure we can meet that threshold. I do poorly at 50/50--I seem to always land on the bottom half of those twins, a three-way I never imagined, and couldn't imagine enjoying.
Then there's chemo itself with which I am less and less tolerant. My recent sessions have left me with more traditional problems that I've been able to avoid--nausea, albeit light and nascent, that "wiped out" feeling, that general sense of illness and unease--good lord, even something I was good at is no longer tenable! This is why, despite the howls of protests from my friends and loved ones, I sometimes feel like this is some punishment from the universe, that just won't stop--a constant cosmic pounding because I was such a shit person.
I should be sitting in Depression's chair.
But I'm not.
Fuck depression, people. Here's how I see it: while true that some people cannot avoid it for their internal chemistry, and true that there are horrific events for which it's a normal reaction, depression is a choice outside of those difficult circumstances. I have wanted to chose it, ande lately I've engaged it in small doses of morbidity that pop out of me at odd moments. It's a condition that plagued several of my family members, thought to be a distaff inheritance. It's a problem I had as a late teen/early twenties kid.
In fact, overcoming it in my early twenties was a real triumph for me, though I didn't know that at the time. I didn't have a chemical inbalance, I had a life inbalance. I was traumatized by growing up in a town the size of a postage stamp where people like me were viewed as perverts by our enemies or unfortunate by our friends. There was no slack, there were no vacations, simply a relentless pounding of one's inadequacy against the great Heteronormative World we should aspire to inhabit. It wouild have depressed anyone, Yet, engaging depression was a choice.
There are a lot of luxuries that I live without, and engaging depression is one of them. I cannot, I just can't, or I'm done. I have to run, and swing a shovel behind me to beat it off, and its tiring but necessary. I do want to live. Why I can't tell you--I can point to various things I'd like to see happen in my family, I'd give yoiu reasons about finally writing a novel, more poetry, blog posts, seeing my friends grow older and prospr--all of that perfectly valid, but I don't think it explains that I want to live as much as I do want to, and perhaps that's just an unexplainable thing.
It's a fierce light to live by, one with varying sources of fuel. I want to know how to quantify happiness, I'd like to see Charles find a guy to be with when I'm gone who's devoted to him, I want my young nieces to have kids so I can be a great-great-great uncle before I die (I really want that third great), but i want it on terms--happiness, contentment, a stable relationship, a child. I want to hang out with Rally, I want to have a period where I'm well enough to go to lectures on campus and learn stuff that will never be useful in my daily life because that's the best sort of knowledge.
So, no, of course I can't sit in Depression's chair, with it's deep cushions, the wonderful throw pillows. I choose the hard wooden seat you have to sit on if you're optimistic, one so unforgiving as to truly make you butt hurt while you await the results of faith, which are often unrewarded. I have this stupid idea that if I can just hang on a few more years, they'll find ways to stabilize me, even fix some parts. I have the notion of fighting with my oldest niece, keeping my brother alive, sitting on a lawn chair in Warwaw or Columbia City as a group of filthy kids plays god knows what around me. I see the day around me then, temperate, a lovely breeze, shade, the green of a croquet lawn, an ivitation to play, a hamburger grilling with my name on it. Yes, that day.
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