Detour

Three years ago this month I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Everything about February triggers me. The way the air feels and smells. The slant of light. The lectures I’m giving in my psychology classes at the college. Chapter 6 was the last one I could give before I left to go on FMLA. I just finished chapter 6.

I feel fine except for a host of menopausal symptoms which, if I go down the google-hell-scape, form a complex Venn diagram of menopause, anxiety, PTSD, cancer, and of course, death. Not useful. Yet I google just the same. And then because of bots and cookies and all sorts of parasitic things, everywhere else I go on the web follows me with ads for what I was looking for. Watching a cat video? First view an ad for a new treatment for pancreatic cancer! Yay!

Google searching for illness information is a perfect metaphor for how anxiety works. You plant a thought and rather than letting it pass through you, it turns around and grabs you in a headlock and follows you into every other website you click on.

I carried my latest lab order in my wallet for six months before I went back to the lab. The last time I got blood work done, there was a rise in my tumor marker and a rise in an inflammation marker. I had just broken my talus bone, which could logically account for both. I took action and went for a colonoscopy, which found two polyps, one benign and one precancerous, but they were both removed and I was cleared for two years. I went for an abdominal scan, which was normal. I had a transvaginal ultrasound, which was normal.

I didn’t want to know what the blood work would say a second time. Imaging was better than blood work. Blood work, however, can change months before anything shows up on the imaging. Cancer has a very large bag of tricks. It is a master of illusion.

It is also a master at pointing out our own illusions.

Detour: After the last blood work in July, I had an irregular pap, which got me referred to Phoenix to an oncologist who thought I should take out my entire reproductive system as a precautionary measure, to which I doubled down and said, prove to me why. And so we’re in the proving stage—which means I’m getting pap smears every two months. And maybe this rising tumor marker is an indication of something going in that system. Which, dear cancer, would be the winning move.

Checkmate.

On Monday I go back to Phoenix for another pap.

On Wednesday I have a CT scan because this week’s blood work showed an increase in the tricksy tumor marker.

The scan date is the exact same date I had the colonoscopy three years ago that found the tumor.

Correlation does not equal causation.

Very funny, cancer. I see you.

Dear carcinoembrionic antigen, what do you need? How can I help?

I can’t always distinguish between my intuition and my arrogance.

I look back at past choices. Should I have treated cancer more aggressively? I remember how my body told me to run from chemotherapy. Was that fear? Was that intuition? Was it arrogance? I don’t know.

And I know that I don’t know, which is the most horrible place to be of all.

The anxiety around living with an illness like cancer is not the same as other forms of anxiety. With cancer-anxiety, the diagnosis has already happened. You’re willingly returning to environments where the trauma occurred. You avoid these triggering situations at your life’s peril. But you just want a minute not to worry. A minute to be free. You are never free. You have to redefine freedom.

On Monday when I went for the blood work, I sat in my car for thirty minutes in the parking lot, frozen. My heart rate escalated. My throat closed. I don’t have to know the results. I can just go home. I have always hated numbers.

Cancer makes you walk into the antiseptic room of death intentionally and offer it your blood. You smile and tell the teenage phlebotomist thank you. You see death in the elevator and you stare at it before you offer it your hand. As long as you can see death, it won’t sneak up on you.

Detour: In today’s lesson on irony, chapter 6 is about what stress does to the body.

Sometimes information is power and sometimes information is just a mind fuck.

Detour: Cancer scans are abusive lovers. They make us drink poison. They light up places we can’t see. They hold their information close. They save our lives. They take our lives. They make us return to them over and over and over again, begging to live. They love to see us beg. Do you want another year, my sweet? Drink the poison. Walk with me awhile. It’ll hurt worse if you leave. If you leave me, I will find you.

I would cut out any individual in my life who treated me like scans do.

Detour: Last month I sold a book. It’s a book I could not have written without cancer, and it found a dream home. It also was my last major life dream. I’ve accomplished everything else I set out to do. And so I had the thought that, well, I can die now, followed closely by I will die now, followed closely by I’m dead.

Detour: Menopause has me in her grip. I can’t sleep through the night. I alternate hot and cold flashes. When I wake up, my mind churns. My hypothalamus has decided to take a break, and I have no thermoregulation. I cannot avoid my flesh. I cannot avoid my mind. I am hot and cold at the same time. Sweating and shivering. I am afraid and I am fine.

Menopause is about shedding the binary.

I am living and I am dying.

Detour: I’m in hospice. Keith brings my beloved Barnessa-McBarncat to my room and I hold her and breathe in her cat-smell. Her fur tickles my nose like the oxygen tubes did before I pulled them out. It’s a beautiful day out—typical northern Arizona sky, no clouds, just flat pale blue. Keith’s eyes are blue like the sky and he can’t watch while I say good-bye to my cat. She’s so warm and purr-y, and as long as I am holding her I am here.

U-Turn: How am I going to leave my mother?

Detour: There is nothing in the world so beautiful as my body. She has loved me well.

U-Turn: I am still here.

Detour: Should I go on long-term or short-term disability?

U-Turn: There is no clear indication yet that anything has metastasized.

Detour: Hello, my dearest friend. Shall I call you by name? Ms. Attachment. Madam Holding On. Sir Clingy McClingy. Who did you bring with you today? I see another close companion—Queen Fear, all decked out in glittering purple.

I needed cancer to birth my book. The thing that mutated my cells to create my story has done its work. I don’t need the cancer anymore. Because my life-long pattern has been to hold on, have I kept a shadow of it dusting the edges of my organs? Have I held it close because it once was here?

I do this with everything.
I have worked so hard not to do this with everything.

Is there a part of me that believes I need to hold on to the cancer to keep the power I found by writing that book? Is there a part of me that believes I should not live to see it on the shelves and in the hands of friends? Is there a part of me that believes I cannot step fully into the power that I am creating?

Self-sabotage is also tricksy.

Right now, my Barnessa-McBarncat is at the edge of the bed where I am writing this. She is curled into a perfect circle. A perfect cell.

Detour: What am I still feeding cancer?

I close my eyes, place my hands on my belly. I love her roundness. I love her heat.

Hello, ghost-dad. It is always you, isn’t it? I want you to see me claim every inch of space in my life. I want you to read my book. I want you to be flesh.

I am of your flesh. Your polio-eaten flesh. Your heart-attacked flesh. Your internalized shame.

I am feeding cancer you and I can’t let you go.

You are dead and you are living.
You are my cells and you are not my cells.

There is that part of me that wants to be with you.
That is you.

Dear carcinoembrionic antigen, what do you need?

I need you to wash the stickiness off your feet. I need you to stand in the sun. I need you to be both living and dying. I need you to tell your organs that you have already met me and we shook hands and you said farewell, only you never say farewell completely. You hold to ghosts. You hold to shadow. You do not wash your hands. So I am ghosting your blood, shadowing your scans, blurring your thoughts. Look at me, look at me, look at what you’re holding now. Do you need me? That is the question to ask. Do you need me?

Tricksy, cancer.

I have held on to you, it’s true. Memorized recurrence statistics, even though I hate numbers. You are a typo in my genetic code. You are the crack that lets the light in, the magnifying glass that reveals my patterns. You are my killer and my friend.

Truth: I believe you will come back because I bring everything dead back. I am a ghost gatherer.

U-Turn: I do not have to bring everything dead back.

I reach for you in the elevator. I walk up your spine in the night. I crawl in your liver and lungs, but I do not have to stay.

How can I help?

Let go of my hand. It is possible to have met each other and to leave each other.

Cancer is about dissolving the binary.

Barnessa is snoring. Her paws are kicking in her dreams. She is here and she is chasing rabbits. I am hot and I am cold. My body is making new cells and letting old ones go.

The sky is flat pale blue, and I am hungry.