From last night on (in which I slept well, thank God) and into this morning I'm in "what does it matter" mode. Quitter mode. Fuck it mode. I might stay that way if left to my own devices, but there is another to worry about.
But, really, what does it matter? All my life my luck has been laughably bad. Am I going to be one of the 20% who is cured of this disease at Stage IV? No. Am I going to be one the LESS than 5% alive after 5 years? No. (I found one web site last night that listed it at 8% ... alas, again, no) I'm not going to receive a spot of good luck now from God or the gods or fate or whomever. I'm dead. Pure and simple. Dead. Why bother to quit chain smoking Kools? Which I'm doing as I type this ...
I'll tell you what's going to happen, but first a tiny bit of background. In 1998 I was in pitiful shape after my best friend died. I had crawled inside a whiskey bottle and lived there. I almost died before reason and the loved one convinced (begged) me to go to alcohol rehab. When I got there, the doctor told me my liver was many times its normal size, down almost to my right leg. He told me if I hadn't come into rehab I would have had about a week, maybe 2 weeks to live. I was yellow with jaundice. I was damn near a barely walking drunken corpse. But I lived. And I quit drinking alcohol. I had a colonoscopy that summer. Clean. It was the last one I had, obviously (demonic laughter). After rehab, I was moved to the hospital proper because I had a rare allergic reaction to the anti-depressant Remeron. It lowered my white cell count to almost zero and I was in danger of dying from any germ or infection I encountered, as my body could not fight off infection without those white cells. But the white cells in my blood gradually went up, and I survived that, too. Now:
This is what's going to happen: either the liver that should have gone 10 years ago or a disease -- possible pneumonia, something fatal like that, one a fully functioning immune system should have routinely fought off, is going to get me this time as they should have in 1998. This is the way my life works, I know, in negative, teasing, cruel patterns. There is a trickster, a prankster at work here, and it has a design, a plan. It does.
My colon cancer has metastasized. Imagine the cancer cells are thousands upon thousands of ravenous rats. They were living in the tube of my colon, but after they ate the good cells they literally ate through the wall of my colon, swam into the lymphatic system which, like blood and veins, travels through the entire body. They were trapped but now they have clear transport system throughout my body. These rats are out and swimming and looking for a new organ (or organs) to wreck, because that's what they do. This is what Stage IV is: the rats are out and invading new organs. The part of my colon that originally housed this tumor of rats is on the lower right side of my abdomen. The appendix they chewed to shreds and made me scream with pain is on the right side of my abdomen. The nearest major organ to these original gnawings and tearings is: the LIVER. Oh, they might swim awhile and attack the lungs or the bladder or the stomach or something else, maybe combinations (they do that, little bastards), but I'm betting they go after the LIVER, because that's what should have gone a decade ago from the whiskey diet. That was a very close call, and fate will be avenged. Or the devil or God or whomever. Humbert Humbert (nasty guy but "Lolita" is a great book) called "him" McFate. I like that. McFate.
Or:
Should I somehow make it another 5 weeks without the rats invading another organ(s), or even if they do, and I somehow, with no money, get into some pauper's treatment program and get the chemotherapy which is my only chance ... the treatment I will be receiving is a combination of 3 drugs, collectively referred to as FOLFOX in the oncologist community (everybody has a community these days, huh). Now, one of the nasty little side effects of FOLFOX is a lowering of one's white cell count so that one is dangerously open to infection of any kind. So maybe McFate will have his revenge with my immune system and get me that way.
Either way, though, I'm fucked. Let's face it. I'm a dead man. Not a bad guy, just a sort of zero. I had so much promise, but blew it all. Oh, well. What does it matter now? I will be a blip on an obit page and then forgotten. I know I'm not alone, not claiming to be. There are plenty of us Eleanor Rigbyish people out there. I don't want a funeral. I don't want the embarassment of nobody coming. Don't believe in them, anyway. Cremate me and bury the ashes in the old family plot. A nice, very polite, nonaggressive guy who didn't have the balls to achieve anything in life. We happen. I did one horribly bad thing in my entire life (and some would say even that wasn't so bad): I crushed on and harassed a girl during her senior season of high school. But I took that senior year away from her. I didn't mean to scare her but I did. I robbed her, and that's bad enough. I'm responsible. But I really never had the courage or even the most minor of killer instincts to succeed. I quit a lot of things. Yes, I have always been plagued by depressions, and I was agorophobic and panic attack ridden and a lot of other bad things and bad luck but I'm not using those as an excuse. I simply never had the balls to succeed. I was afraid so I almost always torpedoed myself. Now I'm dying. Big deal. What does it matter?
I'm tired now. Later.
