A Pain in the Neck

I’m making this update in the middle of the night from the hospital. I was in too dark of a place before to write anything. I’m supposed to be home by now, but they are reluctant to let me go, since the antibiotics make me so sick, it’s hard to keep up with my electrolyte replacements. My reassurances that I’ve felt this terrible for at least the past month and I should be able to slog through several more weeks doesn’t seem to ease their minds.

I have friends coming to town for plans I made when I thought I’d be done with the PRRT and on the mend. Instead my possibly superinfected embolization spot hurts, and the antibiotics give me the exact same symptoms as the tumors. I just need to get through the next few weeks of antibiotics, but it’s an uphill battle.

I’m just so tired of feeling so sick all the time. I can do it for a few more weeks, but I’d like to do it at home instead of here. Or I’d at least like to get out this weekend. I’ll leave and come back. I have no one to bargain with. I need my body to just give in just a little bit instead of being infected and uncooperative. I have put up with its melodramatic dying act for months now and I’m tired of this nonsense.

I’ve had a hard time talking to my mom for the past few days, because I’ve been in a terrible mood and I don’t know what to say to her sometimes. She is going through a lot but she’s generally a very upbeat person. My mom sent me an email today with a few heart emojis, meaning that she specifically logged into her Gmail, which she rarely does, just to send me those little hearts to cheer me up. It’s one of those things moms do that seem small but that are actually really big.

The other day, one of the hospital’s social workers stopped by because I’ve been depressed. Your body trying to kill you in your early 40s in a humiliating fashion will get you down. We talked about mortality. She said a lot of people rail and ask why this happens to them and asked me why I wasn’t doing that. I didn’t really have an answer. I think maybe I already did the why-me route. It’s probably in this blog somewhere.

Pressed for an answer, I still don’t have one. I guess I assume we all have terrible things happen and it’s just a matter of what terrible things you end up with. In the grand scheme of things, this is bad, but if being sick and maybe dying pretty young of cancer is it, then it’s not that bad. A lot of people in my life have gone through some terrible things. We’ve all gone through some awful things, right?

But this has kind of been it for me. Everything else in my life has been really lucky. I’ve had good luck with jobs and coworkers and my career and my friends. Things often fall into place for me. Over the years, bitter people have seemed jealous or annoyed that maybe I seem to come by good things so easily, so maybe my cancer helps even it out for them. People who go through life thinking that the world owes them something will never be happy though, so I think even my cancer doesn’t provide them with the kind of justice they’d like.

Some of the bad things that have happened recently have happened to me: the loss in February, the illness. I’ve had to actively make some of the good things happen. I was also very proactively holding on to some of the things in my life that were making it bad for many years, and for the past year, I’ve been so free and happy. (One of the tabloids that a friend dropped off proclaimed that Jennifer Garner has been having the best year of her life. Me too! I thought. I’m so happy for us, for me and for Jen. We deserve to be happy.)

The blood infection was very bad luck. Two types of cancer is bad luck. But I’m still very lucky. Today my mom sent me the heart emojis. My boyfriend cheered me up and brought me a fresh hoodie, and we looked at fun things to do when I’m finally out of here. My catgodmother was able to stay with the cats during this unexpected turn of events and she got keys for my friend who is visiting from Ohio. I know my New York friends are going to take care of my Ohio friend tomorrow and let her in and I don’t have to worry about anything. Another friend left flowers at my apartment while another was going to drop off food, and my network of friends have all been in touch and have been making things easy for me, taking care of the animals and the apartment and one another. People are dropping things off and offering to help so much I can’t even accept it all.

I just want to get out of here to enjoy everything. Or at least have the weekend. I’ll be miserable for a few weeks if I can just have a little bit of time and then the time after the antibiotics.

In the end, I think I just told the social worker that I’m still pretty lucky.