Get It Right

I look at my growing list of side effects from round three. It's been a more difficult few weeks with more pain, bleeding, temperatures, bruising, tingling and exhaustion than I have encountered to date. It's enough to make a grown man weep.

Then I remember what my friend Sissie said. Chemo is not the enemy. Keep it straight. Chemo is the weapon with which you battle the real culprit, cancer. Cancer is the enemy. Battle cancer, not chemo.

She is right, of course. I try to hold on to that frame of mind, but it's difficult. With the cancer, I felt only a bit of pain now and again, and the cyclical puffing of glands here and there. Nothing that derailed me from work. It is a quiet and insidious disease that does not tip its hand until too late to do much of anything about it. Same as with the rectal cancer. I felt great - best I had felt in years - when I was diagnosed. It seemed so impossible that I was facing a potentially lethal disease when I felt so well.

Chemo is not so polite. It makes itself know immediately, sometimes within hours of administering. The side effects sap your strength and definitely interfere with life. Yet, that is how it is with a battle. There are casualties. Casualties that get in the way and demand time and resources to clear away. Innocent bystanders sometimes get hit; unavoidable. It's hard to see the big picture when you are in the trenches looking at death and devastation.

The trick is to find the right balance between devastation and success. And that is the balance my friend's reminder helped restore. I have survived 9 weeks of chemo. I only have 9 more weeks to endure, and it will end. If I have made it this far, hanging in there seems very doable. That being said, it's easier to conceive of chemo as the weapon and cancer as the enemy. Focus on winning the war, but make sure you have something left to have won.

What will come after the chemo I am not yet sure. I am not convinced of the radio therapy stuff, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it. And with the understanding that whatever other weapon I select, I will make sure that the benefits outweigh the risks. And now, back to the trenches!