Journal 7.8: Setbacks
Last time I wrote, I was optimistic about going home tomorrow. This morning, the doctors informed me that the lymphoma has regrouped and that I need to start a brand new round of chemo today. I'm currently getting my premeds. Here are some words to describe how I'm feeling:
-pissed
-depressed
-demoralized
-cheated
-shocked
-violated
-deceived
-bitter
This was totally unexpected. This was supposed to be the time that I ACTUALLY got to go home, to recharge my mind and regroup for the months of long battles ahead. But no, instead I'm in the same bed waiting to get more death chemicals that will make me feel like shit for the next week, give me fevers and nausea and take away my appetite and force me further toward addiction to the pain meds. I'm floored. The rug has been pulled out from under me. Again.
I'm not ready to think any positive thoughts right now. I'm not going to inspire you today. Today I feel like the mouse with that little piece of cheese dangling in front of it, forever chasing but never getting a bite. Every prize is taken away from me somehow, either by my body, the doctors, the administration, or some combination of both. I know I'm supposed to be being strong, but being strong has nothing to do with my spleen and liver, and my spleen and liver hate me (and love lymphoma). My body is useless. I've always hated it, but now it's trying to kill me, so all the more.
I want to sleep in my own bed. I want to go out in the backyard during the afternoon and look at the orange trees. I want eat dinner and watch the Padre game with my little brothers. I want a cheeseburger. Is that so much to ask? Is it, really? I've written before that there were all these things I used to take for granted and how I never will again, but the longer I'm stuck here, the farther away they feel, the less of a person I become.
One thing about perspective, though... fucked as this may sound, it helps thinking about how I'm not the only young person in a shitty situation like this. Like all the soldiers in Iraq on endless rotation. The refugees in countries like Sudan and Sierra Leone. Little kids who've had their arms hacked off, or been raped, drafted into militias and forced to kill their parents... now uneducated twenty-somethings with no future. All that happens. Daily. This world is one fucked up, cold place, and most people don't give it a second thought. So while I might not be able to go home... hell, I could be dead by Christmas... I still don't have it as bad as millions of people our age because at least I had the Padre games, the cheeseburgers, the little brothers to hang out with, the orange trees to look at and years of sleeping in a safe bed.
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