Another Year

10 more hours and then that's 2012 over and done with, and what a year it's been.  What a year, indeed.

The world miraculously did not end, despite the prophecies of an ancient civilization and some tortured arithmetic that seemed suspiciously influenced by chemistry, if you catch my meaning.  So that was nice, though I do admit there is a certain allure to seeing how this story of us draws to a close.  Call it human nature.  We are storytellers by instinct, and all good stories have an ending, and a happy ending is not always the best.

I continue to recover from my chemotherapy.  I still feel fatigued but I don't have the random pains I used to get, or nearly so much fuzziness.  I feel creative and productive more often.  Still not as much as I'd like, but I'm not done healing just yet.  One weird thing; the other day I didn't sleep, by which I do not mean, "I slept 4 hours," or, "I slept 2 hours," but rather I did not sleep at all.  I'm not really sure why not.  I was comfortable.  I wasn't particularly stressed.  I tried to sleep for about 7 hours.  It just didn't come together for me.  I still went to work and actually felt pretty normal, if not a little unfocused.  The next night I slept fine, and the next.  Maybe it was just an anomaly.

In two weeks I have an appointment with Dr. C., where he will draw my blood and see how my recovery's coming along.  I don't expect any surprises at that appointment, as even if there's been a change he wouldn't have any way to know from a blood test alone.  I need to schedule an MRI.  An MRI, and then another, and another, and another.  I wonder how many my health insurance will cover each year.  I know that most doctors prefer to start spacing the MRIs out over time if there's no progression, but I don't really mind the process anymore.  I lie down, I get a needle in the arm, and I relax for 45 minutes.  I'd rather put up with that every two months than switch to a 6-month schedule and let a recurrence go unchecked needlessly for four months.

That's another thing I can't quite get out of my head, so to speak.  Every time I feel a bit under the weather, or god forbid have a headache, I wonder, is this it?  Has my cancer come back?  There have been times I've gone into an MRI certain that I'd soon receive bad news, only to hear the same thing I've heard after every MRI: looking good, no progression, see you in two months.

I find myself missing those weeks right around my surgery, when I was on steroids.  I felt energetic and rested, for the first time in so very long.  I still wonder if that's what it's like to be normal.  If everyone else has that refreshed, vital feeling with little more than an 8-hour sleep.  But I can't start taking them again.  I know how dangerous steroids can be, and even at the time I stopped taking them as soon as my doctor gave me the go-ahead.  Still, I can't help but wonder what I could have done with my life, had I never had cancer.  What could I have accomplished with all of that energy?  How many days have I wasted at home, due to fatigue or lack of motivation?

I'd like to make some sort of new year's resolution at this point but I have no idea what 2013 will bring.  Maybe that's the point, and maybe it's why so few people actually keep their resolutions.  No one ever knows what the future holds.  So maybe I'll start small.  Maybe I'll resolve to take more opportunities as they present themselves.  More risks.  Anything to start breaking down that bad habit of irrational caution that has held me back, a remnant from the person I used to be, with the sickness I used to have.

And in case those two paragraphs came suspiciously close together, this doesn't mean I'm going to start popping steroids.  I was thinking more along the lines of going to parties and social events.  Heading to a New Year's party tonight, actually. 

So I guess that's it for 2012.  Got to say it beat the hell out of 2011, but that's kind of a low bar.  Here's to love, luck and life in 2013, for all of us.

See you next year, folks.

Maintenance

There are two things that particularly suck about this stage of cancer treatment.  Aside from the whole "having cancer" thing, that is.

First, very little is actually happening.  I see Dr. C. once a month.  Ever other month it's MRI time.  Generally speaking, there's nothing to report.  It's like watering a plant.  Plant still alive?  OK, great, don't forget to water it again later.

Second, I have to wonder if every slight ailment or discomfort is some horrible disease or metastasis, and it's not hypochondria because I do have brain cancer, which is a horrible, potentially metastatic disease.  It usually doesn't spread to other parts of the body but "usually" is not "never," and 29-year-olds "usually" don't have brain cancer in the first place.

Case in point, that little pain I mentioned a while back, the one I feel under ribs.  It hasn't gone away.  At first I thought it might be due to the chemotherapy, as unexplained pains are a common side effect and I've had two sets of X-rays taken of my torso, one by an oncologist and one by a pulmonologist.  Neither saw anything of concern.  ...except I feel something that concerns me.  There's something causing this.  Lately I can feel something pressing on my ribs when I stretch, and I wonder if the right side of my abdomen isn't just a little bit distended along my flank.  It could be my mind playing tricks on me.  Or it could be another tumor.  Or maybe a blood clot.  Or an organ swollen for a more benign reason.

That side has always been a little odd.  I lost some weight in college and when I took a deep breath I could feel something rubbing against the bottom of my ribcage, like it would naturally fall on one side but my inflated lungs would push it to the other.  I still get that sensation sometimes.  Sometimes it would "catch," and I'd get a stabbing pain if I tried to inhale too deeply.  I always thought that was normal, like a "stitch" that some people get.  It would always go away on its own pretty quickly, as if it were a muscle cramp.  Who knows, maybe that's what it was.  Maybe it was unrelated.

But I take solace in one simple fact: my bloodwork is rock solid.  Nearly perfect.  Not just in terms of platelet count and the like, but on my CBC I fall directly in the center of normal on all readings save one, which is still within normal bounds.  Were something impeding the function of any of my gastrointestinal organs, that would show up in my blood.  The question is, would all of it show up in a standard CBC?  After all, they can't tell everything from that little test strip.

Maybe I'll ask for a full course next time I see Dr. C., just to be sure.  Either way, I'm going to get to the bottom of this.  I can feel something there, regardless of what the X-rays show.  I don't know if it's swelling, or a cyst, or a tumor or what, but I need to figure out what it is, and take care of it if it's going to be a problem.

I got lucky when the neck thing turned out to be nothing but a cheap mattress.  I hope my luck holds out.