Something I wrote back in 2007 that I randomly found on my hardrive

So I found the below ranting on my hard drive... amazing how the same feelings keep popping up again and again over the years.



Sometimes things just suck more than anyone can possibly begin to imagine. I ask you if you know what it is like to have every inch of your body and soul ache as if at any moment it will just give out from the wear and tear. When emotions and experience hurt physically. Not so much depression as a realization that too many things are wrong to be righted. That there is so much you can’t change you no longer have control over your life. And the more you try to control the larger the hole you fall into. When so many things have gone astray that your goals seemed blurred. Where you long for the opportunity to be torn between an ambitious career and life with a happy family because now both options have been torn from you in the most callous of manners. How you wish for a second in time there would be someone that could honestly tell you that it would be ok. Someone to sincerely hold you, someone who actually cares beyond just a friend. It’s the point you get to when you wonder if life would be better if you had just lived it the way you wanted to… pursued your dreams… pushing it to its fullest extent and then dying young, or if fighting for life, subjecting yourself to millions of tests, days of worry, never being able to truly be free to do what you want again, yet living a “full” life into old age…. But really, what kind of quality of life is that??? I don’t know what the point of what I’m trying to do means anymore, especially if I can’t pursue that life. I’ve lost my best friend b/c I dared to go to a level more than friendship… now he won’t talk to me. He was the only thing that really kept giving me hope for something more. And now I’m more alone than I have ever been. I have no dreams that can be achieved. I have no hopes. I have no motivation. I’m just waiting around… waiting for the next blood test to come back, the next scan to be performed, the next phone call confirming the next appointment, the next interview that will never come and a real world that can only shun someone such as myself. And I don’t know how to make any of it better besides more waiting and watching as the world passes me by.

Who makes your decisions?

For as much growing up as you are forced to do with cancer, have you ever found that you lose your independence? Your privacy? Your ability to make your own decisions?

This has become overwhelmingly apparent to me as I'm currently trying to choose my current life course. I'm graduating in a little over a month. I'm taking the Bar exam in Virginia, which means moving home to study and until I can find a job, hopefully in D.C. (home is Virginia Beach). This, like all decisions in my life, is the smartest most practical decision. I can't help but feel that making, "practical" decisions has consumed most of my life... but that is beside the point.

So this is going to sound completely irrational, that's probably why I'm avoiding saying it, ok, here it goes. I don't want to leave my stuff. Its mine. I didn't ask my parents to rent a truck. I never said I wouldn't do it. It was decided for me that we couldn't afford to rent a truck and that I should give away my bed and couch. I don't believe that we have enough space in all of our vehicles to get everything home. And I'm guestimating that I would end up losing about $600 worth of stuff (devalued). But its mine. Stuff that I have bought over the past few years to pull my life together. Bookcase, dresser etc. Now A desk and a set of drawers that really just need to be tossed. I have a lot of other larger things, small enough to fit in a vehicle, but would still be too much for all the cars. No one has asked me about if i was willing to rent the truck, or what I was really willing to give up. I don't think they understand that my stuff, in my place, is all i have that is mine. My own decisions. My life. I don't think they realize how bad it is that I even decided to move home, to revert back to being a kid. I've lived alone for 4 years. 8 years since high school. And when I get my next place, I don't want to have to start over completely.

Cancer came my senior year of college, sort of prolonging how long i needed to be taken care of. It was decided that I couldn't do Americorp, and instead needed to go to law school so I wouldn't loose my insurance. It was decided that since I already had the acceptance to Pitt, where I already lived, and where my doctors were, that I would stay here. It was decided, the day after I had radiation, which apartment I would live in... which was also how my school was chosen... A deposit down and contract does that. It was "smart", it was "practical".

Mom is trying to organize my insurance for me once I graduate and turn 26. Which means she needs to know everything about me. She organizes my bills and everything too. This just means that I don't have any privacy in my health any more. I realize there's hippa, and everything else to protect me. But in a practical world, i don't have any money. My parents do. As long as I'm stuck in job search/graduation/bar studying/cancer testing limbo, I can't seem make my own decisions.

"I think I'm paranoid..." -Garbage

I think this is a side-effect of being told every single year that I have cancer still, usually after being told things are looking good. I’ve made very forced effort not to feel my neck anymore because inevitably, there is something always there to bother me. Actually this is incredibly true as I have a lymph node chain on the left side of my neck, just behind, and running parallel to my scar. There are about 3-5 lymph nodes that I can feel, and sometimes even see, especially when I get sick. But today’s paranoia is stemming from a newer lump, and even more disturbing is that it is on the right side. It lies just under my right ear, in that spot where there’s a gap between where your jaw and neck connect. I noticed it about a month ago, then I got sick, then I got better, and its still there.

Its probably just a swollen gland, maybe a blocked salivary gland, or a response to my allergies. For normal people, these are all reasonable things to conclude, and just let it go. For cancer patients, I think finding a lump has a very distinctive fear, or annoyance tied in. You don’t want to be paranoid. After a while, you become so tired of the tests, that you wonder if it would just be easier to let it go.

But there are other issues; it’s a lump in odd place. Even if I went in, the doctors are only looking for nodes in my thyroid bed, and focus on the left side. Asking them to probe a new area is like asking a little kid to eat a second helping of veggies. Then they argue, “that’s not where thyroid cancer is,” and your like, “what if its not thyroid cancer, there’s a lump there, I swear, you can feel it, its been there a while.”

And going along with that, I wonder how people deal with just random lumps when they don’t have thyroid cancer. Who do you turn to? How do the radiologists know what to look for? Why don’t they use that same level of diligence and searching when they handle all patients, just in case, a new bump is something different? In real world stats, getting one cancer doesn’t mean the likelihood goes down for getting another.

I think that sums it up. I’m paranoid. Have little ability to accept that I’m “fine”. And well… there’s another fucking lump on my neck where there shouldn’t be one.

Obsession

After four years of cancer, this is my first year where I'm going into finals week without prepping at the same time for radiation. In a lot of ways, this is the "healthiest" that I have been in four years. But yet for some strange and unknown reason, I've recently become obsessed with all things cancer related. I'm reading a lot of other people's blogs; actually this is a new thing in general, I just randomly started reading blogs regularly about a month ago. I also read websites, peruse merchandise, etc. There's a part of me that wants to throw a stupid cancer happy hour, so that I can actually meet other cancer kids in the area; ironic because I'm leaving in two months.

I think there is a part of me that is so overwhelmingly tired of dealing with everything on my own, that I need to feel connected. And now, with a diagnosis of, positive markers, small new something, but too small to biops, lets just wait six months and see what happens, I feel like I need to be doing something more proactive. This concept alone could spin into a whole new post: the feeling the need to fight and take control of something. But I think I will save that for another time.

So for now, I'm left obsessing. I'm hoping with more free time on my hands to post more. Though I'm not sure what. This also becomes harder, with realizing how many people read, or when another, more famous blogger comments about how you write about the same topics and have the same view on things.
I also don't give this site out to my friends and family. It's sort of ironic in a sense. A place originally intended for me to vent my feelings so I don't bottle them, that no one was supposed to read, and that then turned into sort of a networking device to connect me with others... just not the people I already know and love.

So I guess my questions for the handful of readers out there are these: Do you find there is something that triggers you to obsess with cancer, not so much the disease, but the culture that develops around it? And, do you find it easier to not share all your feeling with your closest people for whatever reason?

hahahahahahaahaha

Laughter... thats about where I'm at right now.... sickly twisted, demented laughter.

This post was going to be about how last night i finally cried. Not a good hard cry... but i cried all the same... and all due to the fact that i looked down at my left forearm and there was a bruise that stretches three inches long and is about an inch wide... and it just maid me wail.

But then there was today. Now my right arm/wrist started hurting midday yesterday... I thought maybe i pulled something or whatever. then it started to swell. then today, from the injection site on the back of my right hand, and running all the way to my elbow, you can see a nice red line where my vein is. I just spent the past 3 hours sitting in an ER. My arm is HUGE. you can't even see the knuckles or bones in my hand move. and it hurts like a bitch. I'm on a lot of advil. Apparently, some meds cause this reaction. Superficial Phlebitis, "Phlebitis is the name for inflammation of a vein. This results in local redness, swelling, warmth and pain. This may occur after medicine has been given by vein as a result of the irritating effect of the medicine." Of course this took a day to affect me... 2 to actually get me to the ER.

It just sucks. There's no eloquence about it. No touching poems. No long descriptive words. This is, I needed to study to take the MPRE on Saturday (ethics portion of the bar exam), and the number one leading guy in my field of research did a lecture today, and instead of doing either of these things, I was stuck in an ER... a crappy ER where they had me thrown amongst wheel chairs, they didn't even bother to get me a room or bed, next to some guy with a nasty case of the flu. It throbs to type... you know... b/c i've got a giant mellon for a hand.

I'm sooooooooo tired of always having to just deal with things. Its bull shit. People always think your soooo strong. Also bull shit... you deal with it b/c there is no other option. So as usual, i'm immediately back in the library. Studying. Missed one of those great life opportunities to meet someone I want to be when i grow up... but hey, what would i of had to say anyways, right?

I need a lot that i'm just not getting right now... I just have to keep pushing for a few more days, then maybe I can just collapse for a while.