Learning it the Easy Way

Let's talk turkey here.  Cancer is a fucking nightmare.  I'm starting chemo today and for the next four months I'm going to be dealing with a seeming endless list of depredations.  I will be trying to save my fingernails from falling off, my hair from falling out, my mouth from being so painful that I can't eat.  I will be trying to avoid losing feeling in my fingers and toes.  I will be trying to keep my digestive tract intact, my food both up and down in the right amounts.  I will be fighting weight gain and weight loss.  I will be fighting acne from the steroids.  I will be fighting anemia.

This is round two of the fight. 

There are six parts of this round.

And I have it fucking easy.

I want everyone to understand this.  This is an easy one.  My cure rate numbers are solidly optimistic.  I am not dealing with areas of high ickiness, such as my brain or my bowels or my blood.  I am a good and easy scenario.

And still... fucking nightmare.

My risk factors that got me here?  I got older.  My menopause came late.  I exercise less frequently than I should, but probably more frequently than most.  I tend to weigh about 15 pounds more than I should.  I work and take on more than I should, but I handle it pretty well.

I don't drink more than occasional beer.  I don't smoke. I don't eat badly.  I have a good attitude about life.  I try to keep balanced.  I don't work in a toxic work environment.  As my doctor says, I don't suck down carcinogens.  When everyone around me gets sick, I usually don't.  I see an acupuncturist who keeps me balanced and in harmony.

That's it. 

And still this is happening.

So here's what I want to say to everyone I love: Do your absolute best to not get here.  This sucks.  And I look at people who "just" have a few cigarettes a week, or "will get to the gym later," or who are otherwise putting off health because we all deep down inside believe with a 20 year old's conviction that we are immortal, and I want to slap them in the face.  Quit it.  Reality indicates we are not going to live forever, which means we don't have infinite amounts of time to rectify the things that we really should be rectifying.

There are risk factors we can fix, and there are risk factors we can't.  We can't avoid getting older (at least not in a way that still is concerned with cancer.)  We can't avoid breathing our air and ingesting much of our environmental pollution.  But we can fix our intake, and our exercise, and our thought processes.  We can fix how we go about managing our stress.  We can do things like eating to nourish, rather than just avoiding total crap.  We can keep screening ourselves to make sure, if the bad stuff happens, it is caught and dealt with as early as possible.

If I had done everything wrong, I could sit here and say, hey, don't be me and you'll be fine.  But I really want everyone to understand that there are some things you can't change. Risk factors abound, so all we can really to is fix the things we can fix.

At some point, even with all the best intentions, you may very well end up being me and... if you are... you'll work through it and deal and it will be that thing that changes your life completely.  It won't be the end of the world.  And it may be worse to not learn the lesson, than to learn it the hard way. 

But... try to learn it the easy way, OK?  For me, for you, for the people in your life.  We will all thank you for it.