Please note, this is NO appeal for sympathy or compliments; it's posted simply to let everyone know I'm still alive and kicking, although barely.
I need, very badly, to vent. In April 2017, during surgery to replace the mitral valve in my heart, it was discovered I had Stage 4 cancer of the esophagus, and Stage 4 cancer of the liver. I was given six months to live; I wasn't going to see Christmas that year.
The first seven months, I was in chemotherapy. As I wanted this thing beat, I instructed the oncologists to give me beyond the usual dosages, twice as much, if possible. I wanted the cancer dead, and no question about it. I even suggested I go in three times a week, rather than one.
Well, I don't know if the oncologists overdosed me--I kind of doubt it--but I'd dreadfully miscalculated how much my body could take. In seven months, I had eleven treatments, and I was hospitalized eight times, for things such as no more white blood cells, runaway diarrhea, a heart that beat too fast in one half and too slow in the other half, unconsciousness, and one time, a heart beat that had slowed down to 29 per minute.
I lived alone, on my own, for which I am grateful to God, because there was sweating, massive bleeding, vomiting, pissing, shitting, all which left big--and utterly disgusting--messes. Nobody had to see these things. I had a cleaning lady whom I paid $140 every two weeks for housecleaning and laundry, and as time went on, the care and maintenance of the cats. She never knew there was anything amiss. I'd always been a stickler for this "I'll clean up my own messes, thank you." Even my underwear and bed linens were impeccably white, myself having hand-cleaned them before giving it to her for laundering.
By the fifth month, my older sister, a registered nurse who had my power of attorney, begged the oncologists to ease up, as I was obviously getting weaker. At the same time, I instructed the oncologists to increase the dosages, to pour it on. I don't know if they ended up listening to my sister, or me.
By December, about the time I was projected to die, I was a wreck, considerably weakened "out of it" most of the time, and on my last leg. Still I told the oncologists, "I want to beat this; pour it on, give me more, give me all you’ve got." Two days before Christmas, finally sensing I was at the end of my tether, I surrendered myself over to hospice.
My first year in hospice, it was as if I hadn't quit chemotherapy at all; the bleeding, the uncontrollable bowels, the irregular heart beats, the disappearing white blood cells, and of course the always-present pain, which morphine could only diminish, not make it go away entirely.
Normally, one is to be in hospice six months or less, but for whatever reasons, my physician got me renewed ten times, or for six years. I don't know why. It was slow going, but gradually I began feeling better. In April of this year, Medicare finally said, "Okay, enough is enough. Kick him out."
After a couple of months, Medicare told me they wanted a whole-body CATScan, so as to see why I was still alive. So I had the CATScan, and the results came back, "No evidence of cancer."
This was a shocking discovery, totally unexpected.
I was asked if I'd gone to Lourdes.
So.....I think that was pretty impressive. One doesn't beat cancer; one can only outlast it. I was weakened and much havoc wrought my insides, but still, I was alive. I'd outlasted something nearly all other people in the same circumstances didn't. A pyrrhic victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Even though it was God, who'd given me a body strong enough to withstand and outlast cancer, I still thought I was entitled to some "Well done, lad" and somesuch compliments including one of those baseball caps advertising CANCER SURVIVOR. But no. Physicians and hospitals ostensibly have such things, but they're given out only to people in their care or on their program. No "free-lancers" who got better without their help. It may sound like a silly whining complaint over a trivial thing, but after the sort of life I've had the past near seven years, I want one of those; I think I'm entitled to one of those.
