By Gerrad Downs
Life with chronic cancer has given me the opportunity to gauge the impact that cancer plays on day to day life based on how directly inconvenienced I have been by it — a barometer of cancer inconvenience, if you will. I cannot really describe life with chronic cancer in any other terms, because for me, it’s something that always seems to creep back up. It is something that detours my day to day ever so slightly at its best, and at its worse, like the boogeyman under the bed, except you know, real.
The scale runs from zero (i.e., “You don’t have cancer, so why are you looking at scale of how inconvenienced you are by cancer?”) to whatever arbitrary number the scale needs go up to, because the numbers don’t really matter outside of zero. It is safe to say that no one ever has ever had a zero rating.
After zero, the scale might read “Mildly, but not really inconvenienced,” because on those days I have a mini vacation. I get a break from the insanity of the day to day life to have the insanity of a cancer-related appointment. I book my time off work — weekend cancer-related appointments are a rare occurrence for me — and then outside of spending a couple of hours at the hospital, I have the time to spend however I want. Sure, having to go to the hospital in the first place is annoying, and getting to there can be equally annoying, but the small break I get from my day to day is worth the annoyance. I would rather be doing something else, but if I have to talk to my oncologist at some point that day, or go in for an MRI scan, I might as well do something else that I otherwise would not normally be able to do as well. Truth be told, this is what gets me through all my appointments. So far, I’ve had over 30 cancer-related appointments in the last four years, and I have made some kind of plan to enjoy the rest of my day almost every time , whether it be to visit or catch up with friends, spend time with family, or just to enjoy the break that I get, however small it is.
Sometimes it reads “Wait another year, and then try again,” because planning a year away is not a realistic possibility. I am living between scans, and I have to take anything that might occur into account. I was caught off guard last year when I had a seizure and I lost my driver’s license for twelve months. I had to drop what I was doing and adjust all my plans. I now have a massive hurdle when it comes to what is realistic for employment options, and driving myself to work is not something that I can count on anymore.
Another reading may say “Existential frustration” because it can be so overwhelming when my mind wanders into worrying about the things out of my control; all the things I worry about that have no bearing on my daily life and no impact on the current state of my life. Worrying about all the pieces of life I may or may not ever get to witness. Things like birthdays of children that have yet to happen, family vacations, career prospects (Will I enjoy working in my chosen field? I think I will but sometimes it feels like I have no idea what I am even doing), my own funeral. These things don’t have anything to do with my current daily life, but I still worry about them. The existential worrying that most do not usually have to think about .
Right now, as I write these words, that meter is reading “Frustratingly unfair.”
Unfair that I, and the people in my life that care about me, have to deal with the reality that my cancer is never going to go away, and it is more than likely going to cut my life short.
But that frustration is just something that comes with dealing with the diagnosis, and if there is a recurring theme in all my writing, in all of my talks, in how I am going to live the rest of my life, it is that despite the frustration, I am going to do my best not to let it get in the way of living and enjoying the rest of my life, and as long as I keep reminding myself of that, it makes it just a little more easier to live with.
