BEP Round 1 Day 11

I wanted to say a couple of things today about "care givers" and "the future".  Care givers are those people (or perhaps 1 person in particular) that's by your side through your cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.  They are the rock that helps you deal with all the things that will be coming your way.  From trivial things like making sure you remember to take that acetaminophen dose or drink some water even when your body doesn't want to... to bigger things like scheduling appointments and talking to your nurses about things you are having issues with.  They do all those things because they love you, and they want you to get better.  But, as hard as this is on us living with cancer and living with all the treatments and surgeries... remember its very hard on them too.  They are human, and they are going to have an emotional toll to deal with just like you.

Today, after a couple hour nap I was feeling good... great I might even say.  Probably the best I have felt since I started chemo... I was in a good mood and thinking about things aside from cancer was fun and honestly I didn't even consider my treatment or the enormous financial and physical burden its taken on me.  In that light hearted mood, my wife made a comment that should have been nothing to me but for some reason I snapped back at her and ruined the moment both for me and for her.  This was a shame because it was really a great few hours before I went and ruined it.  I take full responsibility for acting like a jerk, it isn't her job to baby me and not be honest when I am doing stupid things.  Unfortunately this put a damper on the evening, I apologized later and we are better now but I could see it in her eyes that SHE is dealing with a lot too and its hard for her to not show that from time to time.  To all of you out there, remember how much you are dealing with on a daily basis... mentally/physically/etc and realize that the people around you are sharing that load and it weights on them too!  These "care givers" are nothing short of angels, they are doing everything in their power to help us and make us strong so we can fight this crappy thing called cancer... and remember that even when we are feeling like crap they are there by our side!

Now about "the future", I dont' know if I can speak for everyone out there diagnosed with cancer but I will try to just speak my mind about how it affected ME when I was diagnosed.  Honestly, after the amount of research etc I had done prior to my first doctors appointment I was 99% sure I had TC when I walked into the Dr office.  I think if that hadn't been the case the whirlwind of tests and surgeries etc that quickly followed would have been too much to handle... but I did let something subtle yet profound slip through those early days that took probably a week or so to really sink in and for me to realize it. I have cancer.  That sentence means so much, so many different things its hard to really express them all but to bound this discussion I am going to focus on how that sentence "I have cancer" affects the statement I started with "the future".  We all have a concept of what our future will be or can be, what we plan to do what we hope to do.  And cancer is a big freaking kick in the butt to most off that.  Now I am going to to make light of the fact that I do have a quite curable version, and a >95% chance to full recovery and that's fantastic.  But what some people fail to realize, perhaps its because of the work I do for NASA and our need for so many 9s of certainty that an even 5% chance of NOT being cured is a lot to deal with.  Now, I have rationalized in my head things like well "just driving to work" or "just eating at a salad bar" has X% chance of bad things happening but that doesn't seem to really work anymore.

Death is something I have never really dealt well with, mortality is by far the worst part of being human.  When you start thinking about your life and realize that planning for that house or that car or that career move in 2, 4, 10 years maybe pointless it does something to your thought process.  I consider myself a very rational person, however even a rational person has to realize there is a chance that I will die.  Consider the statistic again, ~95% survival, sounds wonderful doesn't it at face value?  Now lets set aside the months or even years of pain and surgery, and chemo, tens of thousands of dollars "surviving" will cost you... and just look at what the % means with some real world examples.  Percentages are one of those evil types of math that really lose value unless you apply them to some situations people can relate to (its often in their application where their misleading nature is amplified but lets ignore that for now).  The population of Houston metro area from 2010 census is 5,946,800 people.  If only 5% of them died that's 297,340 people.  That's a huge amount of people, but I did start with a huge number right so maybe that's not fair... something smaller.  My high school graduating class was ~1000 (I forget exactly), which means of the people I graduated with 50 would die.. that could be nearly everyone I knew on the daily basis in school dead off this "good survival" rate.  Now I am not going to dwell on these numbers anymore but I was trying to make a point that saying you have a 95% survival rate still leaves the door open for quite a bit of death to be in your mind.

Now I was pretty lucky in many was with my diagnosis, how quickly I caught it, and my test results.  I didn't have any spreading to my brain or lungs, my remote lymph nodes were nice little tiny dots and really only the directly associated RP region where it had spread.  So as a TC diagnosis goes, I am quite lucky.  But I still have months of pain and crud going through chemo to deal with (hoping none of the bad side effects like pulmonary toxicity or leukemia or tinnis or nerve damage set in) then assuming I don't have any >1cm LN left and I dont' have to do the crappy RPLND surgery its mostly a waiting game.  But, considering the teratoma in my primary... and the fact that recurrences are not that uncommon from my reading online my guess is that EVEN if I make it through this... this "cancer" thing will be in my life for years even decades to come.  This is going to take an evolution of who I am to allow my life to continue and my life to flurish knowing this.. and I think that's the REAL journey ahead of me... making that transition.  Transitioning to a version of me that knows this information, processes it, and then continues to move through life without fixating on every detail of it.  Anyone who knows me can attest tot he fact that I am quite a bit OCD, and I actually pride my self on my "focus".  When I was a child my focus, or lack of it, was a significant problem.  However, in my adult life I have learned to take that crazy OCD, bounce around energy and focus it onto something and by doing that I am able to really delve deep and do great things.  At work I love focusing on "the next problem" digging into it from all sides analyzing it, going to meetings, coding up solutions, talking it through with my coworkers until we have destroyed it!  In my personal life I do the same thing, I find something interesting I focus on it learn as much as I can about it and do my best at knocking it out of the park.  With cancer I am having to modify that approach, I have tried "focus" and it seems to mostly lead down rabbit holes I do not want to go down.  The initial diagnosis, surgery,and even the first round of chemo (nearly done with btw!!) was almost mechanical.  I did it because it needed to be done, we found this.. next step is this, then we do this, next step is this.. easy no room for worry no room for concern.  But the long term physical and psychological aspects of LIVING with cancer and living AFTER cancer are something I am going to have to learn and grow and develop over the coming months/years etc.

To those of you out there reading my blog going through TC as well just take this post as a "we all feel like this from time to time" type thing.  You WILL have these feelings, you will have these thoughts... what's important is that you just accept that and work through them.  Talk with your family and friends about it, or whatever you need to do in order to work through it but do NOT ignore them because they will crop up when you are feeling down after a round of hell week.. and that's not the time you want to be trying to wrestle through these things.

Goodnight all, have a wonderful New years!  I will probably post again after my next Bleo dose and then when I get my followup with my Oncologist.  During these "off" weeks my plan wasn't to post everyday just when I feel like there is something worth sharing that pops ups so if you don't hear from me for a few days.. all is well :-P