The last week of this experience has been pretty hellish. After many additional tests, including a CT scan, the doctors ruled out surgical complications, a hernia, and another abscess. The excruciating pain in my abdomen is now thought to be caused by … drum roll, please … c diff. In other words, the antibiotics given me by the surgeons to prevent infection have killed off all the good bacteria in my gut and my intestines have been screaming mad about it. Now I have to take another antibiotic to … do what exactly? I have no idea. I’m not sure I want to know.
I just found out this morning, too, that even though the post-surgical labs were all negative for additional cancers (insert huge sigh of relief), the cellular structure of the cancer itself is not identical to what was discovered three years ago. It’s something unusual. The more the surgeon tried very kindly to explain in English, the more bewildered and frightened I became. If I want to read the lab report myself, I can look it up on the hospital’s patient portal. Then, if I dare, I can start to Google.
Meanwhile, today, I’ve been puttering around the house in preparation for loved ones to come visit for Thanksgiving. Folding laundry, making brine, and taking out the recycling keep my hands busy but not my higher brain functions. I cannot stop my busy, intelligent brain from attempting to parse what has (and has not) happened for the past five days.
During difficult times, I really do not like being this smart. I am not naturally hardwired to set worries aside and just veg. I want to research and formulate questions for people who know more than I do. Unless I consciously stop myself, I will link disparate numerous data points together to create a composite answer.
Is it an accurate answer, or a satisfying one? Not usually – not when I go through that process fueled by anxiety, anger, or sadness. Having cancer means that, at any given moment, I feel some degree of all those feelings simultaneously. Throw sleep deprivation and pain management medications into that mix, and boy howdy: I’ve got a soufflé of disquiet growing inside my head that I really don’t want to poke at.
Do I really just have to say the bald, obvious words? That I’m scared and I want to live? That I’ve got accomplishments up my sleeve that I still have to discover, that I don’t even know about yet, and it sucks hot volcanic rocks that I might not have the time to find out what they are? Goddammit. Isn’t all of that obvious?
I don’t know. But I’m even less convinced that going full-blown writer on the facts, with the Internet and doctors and librarianship on my side, will be truly reassuring. Tomorrow I might learn some new detail or twist that unravels all my fine research, too. It keeps happening. That much is true and I don’t have to contemplate the truth of it to know.
medicinal sausage 