March 1st in Posso's Prompts

“To hell with your cancer. I’ve been living with cancer for the better part of a year. Right from the start, it’s a death sentence. That’s what they keep telling me. Well, guess what? Every life comes with a death sentence, so every few months I come in here for my regular scan, knowing full well that one of these times – hell, maybe even today – I’m gonna hear some bad news. But until then, who’s in charge? Me. That’s how I live my life.” - Walter White, Breaking Bad

It will never fail or cease to amaze me how people react when they found out about my cancer. The reactions vary from sympathy and apologies to anger towards something you can’t physically harm. Why are you crying over something that I have? What are your tears possibly going to change over the fact that I have to have my testicle cut out of my body? I know you feel bad that I continuously shit my brains out while being radiated but I mean the best you can do is rub my back and sob with me.
This day in age with our technological and scientific advances, hearing the word ‘cancer’ should not be synonymous with ‘death.’ It isn’t a death sentence anymore. Christ, I didn’t even understand why they classify my testicular cancer as stage zero - if you just cut it out of me, I don’t have cancer - it was that simple (or at the time, we all thought)
Once they found a mass on my prostate and decided again that it was fairly treatable and not as severe as other forms of prostate cancer, I was like, man. This sucks, but obviously it could always be worse. I tried to be independant and take care of myself for the majority of the first time, with Heather hanging around for some of it, and close friends like Hiram keeping an eye on my hurricane like self destructive outbursts, I had a girlfriend that wanted to be more involved (and secretly I think she felt like she had to when I felt like I couldn’t ask for help) and this time the radiation and treatments were going to be worse but I was going to still manage through it, mud butt, poopy pants and throw up galore.
Cancer has developed into this term that strikes terror and grief into people and sure, there are versions that are terrifying and obviously life threatening. I think in some twisted way I knew I was going to survive and was just more upset it wasn’t so severe. As shitty as that sounds, I didn’t want peoples sorrows and grievances when I knew that it wasn’t like I had an inoperable tumor or a life sentence of months or days. I had this inner battle with myself that felt like I was letting people down by not being sicker and not meeting this concept of cancer that had been drawn up and projected by media.
‘Why aren’t you more sick?’
‘Why aren’t you losing your hair?’
‘Why are you only doing radiation? Is it even cancer? I thought you had to do chemo to have cancer?’
I had to and still answer these questions weekly. I didn’t lose hair because I never had to do chemotherapy but I had radiation burns for months after the first time and still have them after this last year of treatments. I lost weight because I couldn’t eat ever and I would shit and puke out anything I would take in. Drugs didn’t help me feel any better and the only thing that seemed to balance me out ever was getting drunk at the end of the week after all my treatments. With the brachytherapy I had radiation put inside of me. Ever pass a kidney stone? That was the only comparable feeling to passing something smooth and the size of a grain of rice through your pee hole. It happened a few times in the last few months. I’m not implying I know how others that have gone through cancer treatments feel but let me tell you - I can’t remember a three month period until this year that I have actually felt somewhat normal. On the flip side of that, I have had to have my groin reconstructed twice with hernia mesh and muscle repair thanks to infections and operations and I suddenly now feel the dull throb of ache that I forgot I had with sobriety lately. There’s this self pity inside me that says, well, if I haven’t felt and looked like the normal described cancer patient then I must not be as important. Saying these things to myself, writing them down, make me feel crazy; I know I had cancer, and that’s still life changing and scary in itself, not to mention I have ten of thousands of dollars of debt to show for it but sometimes I feel like I would have had to have been sicker for people to understand how grave of conditions I still battled, and realistically, battled alone.
Cancer shouldn’t be that scare word that it is in society still; survival rates have changed with scientific progress. I shouldn’t have to feel bad that I didn’t have it as bad as others and definitely shouldn’t take it out on myself that I have been lucky to have been diagnosed and treated as quickly and well as I have. The emotional and physical turmoil my situations have caused don’t need to be normalized to people that don’t understand and to this day I am working on being proud that I have been able to fight rather than be ashamed I wasn’t worse off.