Well, my little tantrum sparked some interesting comments. This thread makes me aware that I never did 'angry' the first time. I did scared and determined and focused and tough, but I didn't do angry. Frankly, a LOT of what I'm feeling now feels more about last time than this time. Fighting cancer is like a super slow motion battle against a chain saw. Now matter how well you defend yourself, you get cut a little. A little here, a little there. You win, but you know you've been in a fight. The angry is about the inability to keep from getting 'cut'. You can see it coming, you know it will hurt, there is no way to move out of the way.... "The only way out of here is to get past the guy with the saw...." We sit still in the chemo rooms, we lay quietly under the radiation machines. We know (soon enough) what it will do to us, yet we keep going back and doing it again and again. What an incredibly passive way to fight something so deadly. I think thats where the anger comes from.
Give me a weapon, a knife, a gun, even a stick and I'll fight whatever you send through the door at me. I'll be on my feet, I can roar and charge and swing and bite and hiss and scream and hit and kick. But this is an invisible enemy, tiny, diffuse, unreachable. And it isn't charging through the door at us, we brought it in ourselves - its always in there - inside - lurking - threatening - ruining. Roaring and striking doesn't affect it at all. It doesn't care if you are tough, big, little, young, old, strong or weak. Cancer is the ultimate bad guy - ruthless, without conscience, no eyes, no soul, no form - just evil.
So we fight back with potions of invisible molecules and invisible beams created by others. We endure, and suffer and wait. We visit others who press the fight for us. All we do is show up. And keep showing up. We get up when it knocks us down and we show up again the next time we are summoned. We amaze ourselve and our families with how much punishment we can take in this invisible war and keep showing up again. Passive punishment.
Every chemo room should have a firewood pile and some axes for splitting wood. Or an anvil and a collection of heavy hammers with which to pound. There should be a rage room where we could go and scream. There should be a heavy bag that we could punch until our arms grew too heavy. I wouldn't have had the energy for much of any of that when I was in chemo last time, but I would have tried. Maybe the chemo rooms should be shaped like the octagon of the ultimate fighters. The relatively powerless feelings made me angry last time, and here it comes again.
Nothing like chatting with friends to get that 'emotional enema', and dump some of this bad juju. Overwhelmed is converting to determination again - just like last time. 'Poor me' is beginning to convert to 'watch out cancer - I'm comin'. Tom J
