A Pain in the Neck

What do you do at the very end when it’s time to wrap up your life, even if it’s a tiny little life like mine? It’s a question I’ve been grappling with ever since I found out I had about a year a little over a year ago.  I think, for the most part, I did OK on the big-picture issues.

This latest PRRT treatment either hasn’t worked for me or is being derailed by a blood infection caused by my liver embolization or somewhere else in the bloodstream. I still don’t feel well. I want, more than anything, just a few more months of wellness.

Today I got the news that they want me on IV antibiotics at home for at least 10 more days. This is a compromise. They would rather have me do 14 days followed by weeks of oral antibiotics. But when I have only a few months of wellness, I can’t afford more days given over to nausea and dehydration. This means I have a needle sticking out of my chest at all times. This means daily IVs at home and a return to the life I have been avoiding.

I don’t even know if the PRRT worked or if I ever had a chance at all. The embolization infection is eating up all my time. I had hoped for just a few months of normalcy and today I realized I won’t have that anymore. All this waiting since May for some hope of good news feels as if it has been for nothing.

I can’t stop thinking that if I hadn’t gotten this embolization, I would be out celebrating in the sunshine right now instead of waiting to die in this hospital room. I did a few preliminary searches on embolization risks, but since I’d had it before, I thought it couldn’t hurt. I want to be out celebrating, not debating whether or not a needle painfully sticking out of my chest for another week will buy me a few better weeks later on.

I have practical matters ahead of me. Hospitals and credit card companies want to be paid. I need to wrap up passwords and close accounts.

I have to find a home for my three cats.

I have to forgive people who aren’t sorry. I have to let go of the grudges that have become so much a part of me that I feel like they’re driftwood, keeping me afloat. Instead, it’s time to extract some hard-won lessons from them and move forward, unfettered.

Still, I find myself unable to stop making regular run-of-the-mill plans. I want to see movies and go to concerts and eat things.

I have to stop that illusion now. There are a few things I might be able to do.

I have a freelance story I agreed to write while I thought I would be recovering from the PRRT, before I quit freelancing and devoted my main months to fun.

I feel guilty about the people who are seeing me through this in a deeply personal way. I can’t borrow them for too long. I need to return them to the land of the living before death touches them too much.

I feel like I’ve spent the whole year saying goodbye but it hasn’t been enough time. It will never be enough.

Since the blood infection took over on Wednesday, I have been grappling with what to do. I know now that I can’t go back to the illness and the constant IVs. If the infection doesn’t clear, then I know what I am going to do. I’m going to stop the electrolytes, the antibiotics, all the little things and adjustments they have made to keep me going for so long, the tiny things that keep my tiny life going. Then I’ll finally say to this body, the one that’s been trying so hard to die for so many years, “OK, it’s time.” And we’ll finally be in agreement and done.

I’m tired. I thought I had a few more months of fight left in me, but as it turns out, I don’t. I felt myself give up this morning. The ads I had for the vacations I was looking up yesterday mock me as places for the living, not the dying. The topics that come up in my social media feed make me sad. I want to live long enough to get more fine lines and tiny wrinkles. I want free shipping on home furnishings.

Instead, it’s time to pack up my tiny little life and go.