It Was Supposed To Be A Travel Blog, Not A Cancer Blog (Santa Barbara, 3:15pm November 13, 2015)

Let me set the scene for you. I am alone in the cancer center parking lot. The cancer center is closed.

I am slowly radiating away the radioactive bath from my test for metastatic breast cancer a couple hours ago. 

It is a Friday. I am hoping for results today… which I may not get.

On Tuesday, I had a blood test which while not conclusive for cancer, has better odds for accuracy than most things in life.

Many people said, “Well, don’t worry until you know conclusively.”

Can I shoot those people? 

I have had cancer twice now. I honestly don’t know how many surgeries. I am missing factory installed body parts. I have been on four types of chemotherapy spanning years. I have done radiation. And I am in my thirties.

So far, every woman on my maternal side has died of female cancers. 

When you cut down to it, my odds fucking suck.

So I called my cancer support group friend on Wednesday. She said something really prescient. When cancer is displayed on TV, people go for tests and within four minutes of screen time, they have the diagnosis. TV and most people never talk about the agony of the wait. It is AGONIZING.

I don’t know if I have cancer. I strongly suspect it has spread to my abdomen for a variety of vague reasons, none conclusive. 

I was supposed to leave on a six to eight week business trip in two days. It is surprising to me to discover how much I was looking forward to this trip and how much I feel it is being pulled away from me.

I was supposed to deliver one of the biggest projects of my professional life this week; I didn’t.

For the first time in years, I have felt great in the last few months. Really great. And happy. And like my life is going the direction I want. And like I have control of it.

And it is slipping through my fingers like sand.

I am technically old to be having kids, but I always had dreams of meeting someone amazing and having a couple of munchkins. I would be lying if I said I have not had names picked out since childhood.

Names which are fading…

For children which I suspect will never be.

I am a strange one. I LOVE facebook. I posted this morning “Today I am asking the universe for favors and my friends for prayers. In lieu of hugs, a like of support would mean the world to me.”

The outpouring of support was amazing and something which I cannot even begin to explain how grateful I am for everyone there. So grateful it brings me to tears.  I really don’t think I can explain how much this means to me.

It is also in a strange way the best support. I need support, but I need the right support. Support that says, “I care.” That is all I want and I want a lot of it.  But that is really all I want at this point. (No company, no calls, just, “thinking of you.”)

I am alone in this parking lot by choice. The people willing to be supportive and present, don’t, quite frankly, provide the type of support I need. Forgive me, but fuck the cheerleaders. Let’s be realistic here. The ones best for right now, are too far away, some of them so far away as to be dead for years, of the same malady. (Rest in Peace, Mananya Tantiwiwat.) I don’t have a significant other, and I have to be honest, sitting alone in a cancer center parking lot sucks. But if I knew the right person to call…. for the support I need...

(And don’t get me started down the road of whether it would even be fair for me to have a significant other, given the likelihood of just torturing them with my dying sooner rather than later.)

So in the last day, walking along multiple beaches, I have my A, B, C, etc plans. I know what I am going to do for the range of possibilities.

But I am so angry. I really liked my life. I loved my work and the three continents of travel I expected to do in the next six weeks. I was looking forward to seeing old friends in strange places. I feel great and was finally looking forward to actually considering dating for real.
I was happy.

The last time I had a rediagnosis (yes this is different from a recurrence), I felt like I had failed cancer the first time. My rediagnosis occurred when I was working 40 hours a week, spending 20 hours a week in the car, ten hours a week in classes and another 20 studying. I was not happy.  Unlike many survivors, I had not made changes for the better though I had definitely made changes committing to a long term life.

This time around, I AM HAPPY. I like my life. Quite frankly, people tell me it shows. Everyone I has seen recently says I am “glowing” and I am. (I hear glowing so often recently, from so many different people, it is just weird.) Cause I like my life. The only improvement I wanted to make was someone to share it with. 

If you move in cancer circles, you know the #FuckCancer movement.

#FuckCancer.

Cool: I love my life.
Stupid: This cancer fucking crap going and screwing the whole thing up.

PS: At 4:45pm, I was provided with the diagnosis of metastatic cancer.  By the way, this diagnosis was not on my list of planned contingencies. I will likely be asymptomatic for years, with a cocktail of modern medicine. A decade may be optimistic. There will be no munchkins and that retirement fund, no need. Kind of feel like I saw the future, and it says, “Game Over.”