The Wrong Lesson

I may have taken the "wrong lesson" from my cancer journey.

Let me explain:

Hollywood expects a story arc for people who go through cancer. Unfortunately, the story arc is usually about the person who is the family member of/in love with/long-term friend of the person suffering the cancer. The patient is either a teenage or 20-something woman, or a 30-something man.

They'll go through treatment, lose their hair, and with the help of a close friend, they'll either live or die and the patient and/or other person will learn the true meaning™ of life and how to appreciate it without them after they've tragically passed.

Okay, sure. Why not.

But just as Hollywood isn't real life and porn isn't real sex, neither are our views of cancer as filtered through our media influenced lenses.

One thing, for me, which they don't share, is that cancer is f'n TEDIOUS AF. And super banal. Sure, the diagnosis was a novel and altogether unpleasant experience and so were some of the treatments. But the day-to-day stuff? There's a lot of waiting, and it's boooooring. 

There's a lot of sitting around while you're weak. Being told that you just need to concentrate on your health, trying to actively or passively "heal." Uh huh. How do you do that? I got a lot of advice, some of it was about diet, some of it was about attitude. All of it was well-meaning. But ultimately? I trusted the advice of my care team with Oregon Oncology. 

Don't be concerned with eating any specific food, just eat if you can because you're losing a crazy amount of weight. Try to get a good amount of sleep because that's helpful. Come in for your infusions, drugs and scans. 

I was not optimistic, nor was I thoroughly of the opinion that I was going to succumb immediately. But if I were putting even money on "beating" the liver cancer, I would say that I might get extra time, but curing it is completely out of the question. I even had a cancer doctor who said as much. 

My realism/waiting for bad news was verified by being forced off of immunotherapy after just two sessions out of nine. Ho-lee-shit. Got an immunotherapy triggered form of hepatitis. For a while I didn't want to write "hepatitis" because it's associated, sometimes, with sketchy or stupid behavior. It felt like a failure. And I despaired. Yet while I was taking 100 mg of prednisone daily, then weaning off of it over seven weeks (almost two months) the "unsuccessful" immunotherapy was actually being incredibly successful; shrinking the tumor in ways that my cancer doctors didn't believe possible at the beginning. I certainly didn't think it would work. It may still be working. 

Then I did Y-90 radiation treatment about two and a half weeks ago. And the thing is... my oncologist thinks that it may actually be extremely effective. Like "holy living fuck" successful. 

And how do I process that news? 

I take the wrong lesson from it. The lesson "should" be: You never know what's going to work, especially if you have a good attitude. 

Instead the lesson that I took was: We are completely out of control of a lot of things in our lives and we are at the mercy of circumstances beyond our control. We can steer the ship in the right direction, but the world, nature, God, etc., does not seem to care about how we feel. I could have had a positive attitude, taken the immunotherapy and then discovered that it didn't have a discernible effect. My belief/attitude did not affect the reality of the situation. I wasn't "positive," yet I had something positive happen. 

It showed me that science is real and it works, whether you believe in it or not.

Let me be clear, though I said that I didn't have a positive belief in how things would work, I didn't necessarily believe that I was going to die. I suspected, that based on the numbers game, and the problem of my particular brand of cancer, I would probably eat the big tamale in the sky. But my inability to wrap my head around the prospect, my self-deception based on the unknowable nature of death, tied with my base sense of self-preservation, fed my underlying delusion. "I probably won't be okay, but I might be okay." Welcome to Cognitive Dissonance Land. 

Now, do I believe that I could be cured? As I have said to some people, skepticism has served me VERY WELL over the past seven months. I was skeptical I'd be alive in even a month or two. I was skeptical that my treatment would work. I am skeptical that the Y-90 will do everything it's supposed to, despite the 180° shift in my oncologist's (formerly private) opinion of my chances. 

I guess I am a very tangible embodiment of hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Except I DIDN'T thoroughly believe in a hope for the best. And yet, things are currently working out in the best way imaginable for my particular cancer. It may be a praise-Jesus miracle that you were hoping for. (I am not making fun.) For those who appreciate science, I am the happy recipient of dedicated scientists' many, MANY years of hard research.

For me, I'm the person who took the "wrong lesson" from my experience. I have not really changed that much. I don't have a "bucket list" of things that I want/wanted to do. I am not highly motivated to make huge changes in my life: join a new religion, switch careers. All of it. 

There are small things. Like the fact that I have even less patience with bullshit. I have more appreciation of real friendships and a desire to lead a life that is very similar to the one I led before. I already got my happily ever after, it's just a matter of preserving it as long as I can. 

So yeah, I may have taken the wrong lesson. But it was right for me.