Well, yes I have cancer. Funny (not at all) how I managed to avoid putting those words together in a sentence for nearly four months…even though I knew. It started innocently enough in my case…like a peck on the cheek from full tilt monster. There was this little thing on my back…looked like a bite or a blood blister…didn’t hurt…didn’t itch…didn’t go away. I checked it every week or so to see whether it would do something… get bigger maybe. After three weeks I got worried, not much, just a little. It was the beginning of summer and the sun was shining…I was riding my bike. The birds were singing, trees were greening, the ladies had hung up their heavy winter coats. ..so who wants to go to the clinic and ask about this little bite thing?. I did. Two basal cell carcinomas had popped up on my body in the past five years so even though this didn’t look like they did…I was past sixty-five heading for seven zero, I have fair skin and blonde hair and I’ve spent a lifetime in virtual and willful ignorance about getting as much sun as Canada’s climate allows. The first basal cell was a frozen alarm clock that woke me up…stood me at attention and slapped willful ignorance out of my head. So here’s a tip…see any unusual spots on your body that don’t have legs or wings…that hang around for longer than they should (everybody gets a bite or two now and then) , it might be a good idea to see the nearest health care professional. I did. Now here’s the second tip. When they tell you not to worry “it’s probably nothing” and send you away, do not file it under “forget about it”. Go back…go back twice…be a pest…insist. Three perfectly good health care professionals were sure that it was nothing to worry about…tiny little thing. It was a melanoma and there’s a fifty/fifty chance that it will kill me within the next five years. It didn’t look like a stray bullet and if it was six inches to the left…I might not have seen it at all. You could argue that the clinic staff should have recognized what it was sooner…It pissed me off for a couple of weeks…but what? We can’t go back and start over…They did eventually do the biopsy and they jumped into serious mode with a treatment protocol that has been quick, courteous, professional and sensible. A surgeon was found within a month and I had two procedures within another month. That was two months ago and I’m having another operation tomorrow. In those three months I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to know about melanoma…in part from the oncologist who explained at length the relative merits of Interferon. I don’t want to diss the chemo route but his pitch on it for my situation was kind of like having a used car salesman telling me that a used pick up truck that was a year newer than my ten year old S.U.V. would get me a ten percent better chance of good gas mileage. And by the way…that’s a maybe that comes with a year of having the flu. Not a year in which I would get the flu…A year in which I would wake up every morning with the flu…for a ten percent chance of better gas mileage. H-H-H-M-M-M. I think I may have to revisit that possibility at a later date.
My pals have been just plain fucking super. They are supportive, solicitous, concerned and there for me. They keep track of my surgical dates, send me notes of encouragement and love. They make me cry and I’m proud to know all of them. BUT I’m not gone yet. I don’t want to sound terse or joke about this…their consideration and concern means more than I can repay… and at the same time it scares me a little. I wake up in those late nights of uncertainty and wonder if their care and concern means that I’m fading like a shadow. Well, not yet at least. I suppose the fact is that it could happen any time and in a lot of hideous ways. I’ve had a heart condition for more than a dozen years that I was convinced would be the taxi that took me to the other side. It may still. or I could slip off an icy curb…or a twenty pound Canada Goose could expire in mid flight…plummet in a perfect trajectory…smack me in that sweet spot between my helmet and my shirt collar while riding my bike…no…that is a little less likely. The point is that I’m not ignoring the fact that I have this cellular terrorist in residence…but I’m going to do my best to live my life as normally and with as much determination as I can manage for as long as I can. I expect that I will get sick…I expect that I’ll catch colds and have stomach problems just like everybody else…but I don’t want my friends to imagine that I’ve got one foot on the platform and the other on the train. Not yet….it’ll come…don’t know when. When it does I expect there will be time to do and say what we need to do and say . Until then I just want to say I love all of my pals….I love that they care and take the time to turn their thoughts my way. It is a precious gift that I appreciate so much…but for a while yet …let’s talk about the normal things, the weather, vacations, things you’ve read, shows you’ve seen, the absurdity of politics, the misery of poverty, the evil of greed and graft and the outrage of people dying in forlorn places for reasons written on personal agendas in glass towers. Lets talk about art….and love. Blues
Chagal4's Blog 
Leave a comment