Contrasts in Here Be Dust

”If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

The odd thing about the type of cancer I had, what makes it so surreal for me, is that at no point did I feel the effect of the disease itself – only the treatments. This is far different from those cancers that loudly announce themselves with palpable symptoms.

My cancer had been a stealth cancer, unknown to me for at least a decade, then known only because a doctor had gone beyond “standard of care” and had flagged my tumor after the tumor, fully visible, had been graded as “benign” for years.

From quietly minding my own business and suspecting nothing, I’d been thrown into lumpectomy, chemo, radiation, and now anastrazole, along with the world of cancer’s “collateral damage” that has so far manifested as osteopenia, exacerbated carpal tunnel syndrome, and some weight gain (knocked down for the time being by my bout with what was likely E. coli on July 19-20), plus low BP (80-something over 50-something at my July 21 radiation oncology checkup) and some vertigo.

Contrast that with my dysmenorrhea, which had debilitated me profoundly yet was often dismissed, including by doctors. As I had written decades ago, you can’t go on disability for menstrual cramps. Yet compared to that, cancer and all its treatments combined were a walk in the park for me. Even my anaphylactic reaction to Feraheme – potentially life-threatening – barely affected me in comparison. I knew I was suddenly in danger, but I also knew I was in very good hands and in a location designed to pull me out of danger.

In contrast, I had battled my cramps alone, often finding a spare room in which to lie on the floor and sequester myself. Or, if I had to travel, I would hold onto whatever I could until I could walk again, for a few steps. In a very real sense I was a pariah, in a way that I never experienced as a cancer patient. On the contrary; I have a medical team that wants to help me, that takes my stealth disease very, very seriously. It’s surreal.

My bout on July 19-20 had felt much more real than cancer. It hurt a helluva lot more. The cramps themselves felt very familiar, even though their physical location differed slightly from dysmenorrhea. Actually, my dysmenorrhea had included abdominal as well as uterine cramps, so what I had felt during my bout amounted to “dysmenorrhea lite.” In many respects I knew what I was dealing with.

My cancer was a phantom. It was potential agony waiting to happen – like a gas leak beneath a house, a slow build-up, an undetected but deadly hazard that could erupt at any time. Suddenly I must evacuate the house, dig up the yard, risk damaging the foundation, leave infrastructure vulnerable to the elements, all so that the “invisible” hazard can be removed – one hopes for good.

This is not to say that I haven’t experienced Stuff – as in baldness, fatigue, the other discomforts from chemo, the need to concentrate my energies in support of the battle in which my body was engaged. My need to schedule errands in time with my higher-energy days. The need to hire outside help for yard work.

To be sure, I endured debilitation. But I had already known close to two decades of debilitation, so I knew the drill. I didn’t give a crap about my hair – was in fact fascinated by my baldness – and as for the rest I felt only, “Here we go again,” and got ready to hunker down. I adopted the mindset of “time to endure” and “time to survive.” If I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, then I just did what I could.

Activities that had once interested me currently do not, at least for the time being. This is not anhedonia because other things do interest me and give me pleasure; it is a refocusing. I have enough experience to know that this state is not necessarily permanent; I may well refocus again. But I am not invested in whether or not I do. Mentally I float on my back on the water, soaking up the sun, at rest – until such time as I feel a tug to do something else.

Full size

I did this piece in response to the prompt “Dream” in my Creativity Heals group. It’s based on an image from a dream I had some weeks ago. For most of the dream I wandered around an unfamiliar house of glass and chrome. Then I stepped outside and was surrounded by ginkgo trees in a very bright, saturated green. After all that glass and chrome, the effect was downright magical. For the piece I drew several different ginkgo leaves freehand and duplicated/rotated them throughout the image.

A friend of mine has been enjoying adult coloring books, which inspired me to create this. The original size can be downloaded and is best when centered on an 8-1/2 x 11-inch paper with half-inch margins (margins will be slightly larger at top and bottom); it can also be brought into digital painting programs and colored there. I will use a thinner line in future drawings. I’ve printed my own copy and am coloring it in, using both fine-point and ultra-fine-point Sharpies. Well-sharpened colored pencils will also work.