Cancer Meditations III
Diving to Darkness
I’m in the darkness. There is no light around me. I hang onto my tether and breathe.
Every outcome is the perfect outcome. How can I assume what lies behind any door is better?
ER hospital rooms ranked (low to high):
Stretcher in the hallway: Not actually a room
Room 13: Why does this exist? Also, no doors to block sounds or smells
Room 11: Sample n of 2, but not a lucky room, no doors
Room 2-10,12,14-15: No doors
Room 1: The special room with a door and toilet, accessible if they need a stool sample
Critical Decision Unit: The promised land: tranquil; every room has doors. Accessible after initial tests are done.
When I was first diagnosed, I immediately read the Book of Job. Satan’s words shifted my perspective: "Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side?...But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” I'm grateful for the chance to be tested.
Are percentages of survival equivalent to the percentage of myself retained? I want to be cancer-free, but I’m scared about my other organs—a Theseusian paradox.
I listen to the same playlist daily during radiation to calm me down. It always ends with the lyrics, “Where the time of our lives is all we have, and we get a chance to say, before we ease away, all of the love you’ve left behind, you can have mine.” I don’t want to leave any behind.
The cumulative treatments feel like the worst rape I've endured. I recognize this agony. My body must break to be free.
An angel visited me last night—a glowing white spirit kneeling beside me as I slept. She showed me how to step outside my body, away from the pain.
Anemia made my resting heart rate skyrocket, and my blood pressure plummet dangerously low. Anemia risked a heart attack in my healthy (cancer not withstanding) 34-year-old body. It robbed me of walking on my own and drained me with relentless fatigue. I’m here to fight cancer, but anemia is the thorn in my side.
MRIs are like a robot symphony.
There's a bell you ring when your treatments finish. I stare at it every day.
I've befriended my fellow radiation patients, an assembly line of tumor destruction. Every day, someone starts their journey, and another finishes. One woman had two treatments left when they found another tumor in her other breast; she decided against further treatment. My heart breaks.
I now understand Maslow’s Pyramid. Without health, all other doors are closed. You don’t have the energy for more. You just don’t. But even without health, you can choose how to view your suffering; you can transcend with purpose.
The blood transfusion made my throat close. I imagined it must feel like what it feels to be a balloon, to feel a one-way swelling and no chance for deflation. Oxygen in my nose got me back to earth.
Every ER visit, I pretend I have a punch card. It makes me feel better. Maybe I’ll get a sandwich out of this.
If I had unlimited funds, I would decorate every hospital ceiling. Humanity dwells in liminal spaces.
Maternity pads are the only ones that can support my fluid and blood loss levels—bitter irony.
On one of my first hospital visits, I saw this painting. It looks eerily like me as my future self - a sign that I will make it through.
Peace is my crown, and no one may take it from me.
I have the perfect red dog to go with your painting of your future self!!
You can do this, Louise. Love you. XOXO bOX