Cancer is Boring.

You sit around and wait to get better enough, so that you can then get sick enough to get better.

I’m bored with the whole thing. All the time spent waiting, when I feel I should be all “carpe diem,” but I can’t climb a flight of stairs without getting winded.

I feel like a self-pitying fool, and quite self-centered to boot, with all the time and energy that I focus on me, and others focus on me – the doctors and nurses, and medications and lab results, and blood tests and urine checks ... Can’t you focus on someone else for a minute – can’t I get out of dodge, please?

That’s what part of my mood is. I asked my doctor if I could push back January’s chemo session in order to go to my annual women’s retreat. It means starting about 10 days after we normally would, which I don’t think is a big deal, but I’m not a doctor. He said there’s no study that ethically could test if we push people back 10 days, so he doesn’t know, but he’s not totally behind my request either.

And so, I feel like when the fuck does anything get to be fun again? I’ve had two legitimately fun days, when I went to a Halloween party, and I went to the beach, and it wasn’t about me, or doctors, or cancer, or hospitals. It was about being a goddamned girl, living a goddamned life. Where the fuck is that anymore? 

Knowing that I’m probably going to go on the retreat, or thinking so before I asked my doctor this morning, I started to wonder if I couldn’t also get farther away from this all – like Hawaii far – before the retreat then. And I started to put out feelers to people who know people, and lo, there’s a willing and friendly person in Maui, and a friend with willing air miles.

But, then the talk with the doctor, and a talk with my mom – and why would I want to go to one of the most gorgeous places on earth, a place I've never been, when I can’t even walk a half hour on flat ground? Why would I want to carpe if I can’t enjoy the diem?

I don’t. I just want to not be doing this, this sad, pathetic, self-pity thing. This thing where I sit around and wait to get sick, and sit around and wait to get healthy, and then do it all over again.

The good part is that I’m now familiar enough with this to know what to expect; but the bad part is, I now know what to expect.

I can expect to feel lethargic, and have to append every single text with, “but text me beforehand, just to check that I’m up to it.” I can expect to watch t.v. shows on DVD, even though I’m tired of watching them. I can expect to read spiritual literature every day, and know that it means something to me, but can’t change how fucking stupid and boring this all is.

I was bored with my job; I got cancer. I’m bored with cancer; I should get a job.

I don’t really know what to do. This is where I am, and what I have to do now. The disease and the cure don’t care that I’m tired of them, I have to do it anyway. I don’t want to die.

But I can’t really call this living. 

(I imagine this is where someone posts that poster of the kitten in a tree, saying Hang In There.) Puke.