My life after cancer treatment

In my last blog, I wrote about the anxiety I felt when I approaching the end of my chemotherapy. The sixth and final cycle was looming. Each cycle had hit me harder and harder, knocking me down more and more. So much so, in fact, that a week into my fifth cycle, I recorded a video saying goodbye to my family and telling them how much I loved them and how sorry I was to leave earlier than expected (at age 59). I was afraid I would die that day before they got home from work and school. I wanted to leave them something. I watched the video today. I really looked like the living dead (only with a fancy British pilot’s cap).

I really didn’t want to go to the hospital for the sixth cycle. Really! I was convinced that the chemo, not the tumor, would be my downfall. The doctor’s constant refrain, “We kill you to save you” was never far from my thoughts as I sat in my lonely bedroom watching Tang-colored chemo flow through my veins.

I tried to convince my wife and friends that five cycles was enough, that the healing rate was only a small difference. I even tried to dissuade my oncologists from certain treatments as a compromise (one less lumbar puncture or one less chemo bag). But in the end, no compromise was made. I endured the entire sixth cycle as I had endured all the others, reluctantly.

My only consolation was counting to the end of everything: the last chemo bag hanging on my rolling IV pole, the last intrathecal injection (into my lower spinal disc), the last night tossing and turning on the bed uncomfortable, the last shitty institutional hospital meal, the last outpatient immunotherapy treatment, the last nighttime prick in my stomach, the last time my wife had to drive 200 km round trip to drop me off or pick me up to the hospital. Each “last” that fell gave me the strength to finish.

“Hang on, body. Almost done,” I told myself over and over.

I am not a quitter. I have been a fighter all my life. Why was I considering running away from my cancer treatment and stopping it?

I am not the only person to have such feelings. I’ve learned that it’s common to consider throwing in the towel at some point. Cancer treatment is brutal. I remember something a wise man once said: “Getting old is not for sissies.” I would modify it to read: “Being a cancer patient is not for sissies.” It takes strength and courage to keep coming back cycle after cycle. It’s hard to go back when your body is finally on the mend and you’re feeling better, only to have the chemo knock you down again. I’ve heard other cancer survivors report that they too wondered if they should continue their treatment. It’s a personal matter and it’s completely understandable.

During my six months of treatment and hospitalizations and countless blood tests, I never felt like a fighter. I struggled with my emotions. I wrote the following poem after finishing my second cycle:

THE FIGHTER

People always say that people diagnosed with cancer are “fighters”.

“It fights cancer,” they say.

But I’m not so sure.

I just finished my second round of chemo…

a week in the hospital both times.

I am not a fighter. I am a giving up.

I’m just lying in my bed giving in to the remedy

let doctors and nurses put whatever they want in me:

Hang another chemo bag,

swallow a bunch of pills,

roll for a spinal infusion.

“We kill you to save you,” they remind me every day.

And they don’t lie. I have already lost ten kilos. All muscular.

I am not a fighter. I’m just a frail, bald, scared little old man

lying in my sickbed waving a little white flag torn from my pillow.

The good news is that I’m done with my cancer treatment. I rang the bell (see photo of me ringing the bell as my wife, daughter and staff look on). I am cancer free. No more hospital rooms, no more nurses and technicians waking me up all night to take life-saving measurements and draw blood, no more bi-weekly transports to X-ray for lumbar punctures, no more being knocked down just to fight for get up to be knocked down again, like a kind of crazy yo-yo.

The road ahead of me now is the road to healing. It’s a long road, that’s for sure – of that I have no doubt. But I welcome what is to come, the challenge to rebuild what cancer has taken from me. I can’t wait to get into the gym. My anthem during practice will be Sia’s mega hit “Unstoppable”. I plan to share my progress with you.

For the first time in a long time, tomorrow seems more certain, as if I really had my place there. Isn’t that all everyone really wants: to see a future with themselves, happy, loved and healthy?

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