cancer – day 34

I have a decision to make.

Actually, I have several decisions to make, but the most complicated one is where to do my chemotherapy: down in Sacramento, or out in Yankton, South Dakota. I want to let my parents take care of me, but I don’t want to abandon my life for six months. And of course no matter what I can’t stay at my own house out in the woods, 45 minutes from the nearest hospital and more than an hour from my closest friends.

Anther big decision, if I stay out here, is what oncologist to go to. I’m meeting a new one next week, so I’ll have a choice of where and with whom I do my chemo if I stay in CA.

The other big decision is whether to do six months of 2nd generation chemo where the process and side effects are more drawn out, or four months of 3rd generation (that being the more debilitating immune-system damaging one). Which ties in part to the decision regarding where to do chemo. If I go to SD, the 4-month option is a lot more tempting. Who wants to be in chemo in SD in November? Surely that won’t be good for my immune system.

After meeting with the medical oncologist Tuesday, I was a little overwhelmed, and I texted Mark to see if he had time to have lunch with me, and we went for soup at Pandera (mindful of my cold, which of course Mark caught from me, though I kinda think I caught it from him first, but anyway, we both had soup for our colds). I told him all about everything the medical oncologist had said, and we talked about the different treatment options, and what it would be like being in SD for treatment vs. Sacramento, what my life is like there versus here. And he offered for me to stay with him for chemo, which I wasn’t really expecting and I kind of brushed passed conversationally with a thank you but no real response. I don’t think he realized at the time just what he may be volunteering himself for, in making that offer.

After lunch we stopped at the pet store to get some crickets for Mark to feed his tarantulas (he has three of them), and we went back to his house to feed them. After feeding the tarantulas (well, the smallest one anyway, the crickets were too small for the big spiders), I was wiped out and fell asleep on his bed and he went back to his office at the back of the house to work. I went back there later after a 30-minute or so nap (amazing for me to have done that, I can never do a short nap, usually it takes forever for me to fall asleep!).

I sat down behind him and mulled over my choices. Go home to South Dakota for four nasty months of treatment or six months of not-so-nasty treatment, or stay with him in Sacramento and do the not-so-nasty six month treatment, staying closer to my life and getting to even participate in a little of it when I’m feeling well, as opposed to being in a quiet little town where I know no one and have none of my usual activities to draw me out of the house. So many things to consider, such an overwhelming decision, such an overwhelming situation to begin with . . . I finally dropped my head down and cried sitting there behind Mark, my usual keeping-it-all-in-while-letting-tears-fall crying where tears practically gush from my eyes but I make no sound, I barely breath, but my body trembles with the intensity of the emotion. Mark pet my head and shoulder while he worked and was comforting, and eventually I looked up at him, and he was watching me. I asked “what?” and he said “I’m worried about you.” Well, yeah, me too. I told him I was struggling with what to do because I didn’t want to disappear from my own life for six months. He considered that a moment, and gently asked why it’s so hard to decide. I tried to explain, but didn’t have any substantial answers until I finally took a slow deep breath, looked up at him, and said, “I don’t want to leave you.” Pause. “Then don’t,” he replies. My response made him laugh when I said, “That’s very high risk proposition.” But he was serious, and so was I, and now there’s this real option to consider, of how I really could stay in CA instead of leave for chemo.

Then, randomly, as he always seems to do, Brian texted me, and I suddenly thought it would be really good to have dinner with him and talk about this stuff even though I have this awful cold. Mark had dance classes to teach, and lo and behold Brian wasn’t out of the country and we were able to take my sick bum out for miso soup and sushi. Brian and I talked about all the chemo/cancer stuff, and he ended up telling me many times that he thinks I should stay with Mark for chemo, with himself as my backup, and my parents as my final back up if things don’t work out out here with my care. Both he and my cousin Dan think my parents will come around to letting me stay out here if that’s what I decide to do. And I agree with both of them that no matter what happens, Mom & Dad wouldn’t turn me away if doing my chemo out here just doesn’t work and I need them to take care of me so I go home later. They would never turn me away if I asked for help, even if it was help I previously declined.

Still, it’s an enormous decision, and I’m going to have to let myself have some time to think it through this weekend.

I’ve been weighing it out in my mind. There are several facets to the whole where-to-do-chemo thing, including the location of all my specialists and medical history, financial concerns, my cats, dependence/independence, maintaining my life/relationships/friends, and trusting that my caregivers place my health as their utmost priority. After all, I’m trusting my life to someone at this point (not that I’m going to die during chemo, but still, that’s how important this decision feels to me); this is no small decision. But there are several reasons I’ve been leaning toward staying with Mark in Sacramento for my chemo. One very large reason is that I would still have access to my life, and I think this will make me work harder to heal because I’ll want to go out and do at least some of the things I normally would do, at least during that third week of chemo when I’m not so ill. I’ll still see my friends fairly regularly, and be able to go to milongas, and dance. I think giving up dance would be the hardest thing about going to South Dakota. After all, dancing is both my physical and social outlet. My doctors don’t like the idea of me giving both of those up, even if it is to have my parents caring for me when I’m ill from chemo.

My doctors also, every one of them, has reservations about me going somewhere else for chemo where they do not know the doctors or what kind of care I’ll be getting. There may be fantastic oncological care in SD, but still, my doctors are here, they know me, they know each other, and staying with Mark it will always be easy to go to any of them at any time. Plus he lives within walking distance of Sutter Memorial Hospital, not a bad thing. I worry about what will happen if I have a neurocardiogenic syncope episode in SD and they can’t find the right kind of heart specialist and instead of doing what my cardiologist would if I were here under his care, they suddenly dump in a pacemaker or something completely unnecessarily and now I’m stuck with that thing for life too. On the other hand, staying with my parents has the financial advantage of costing me absolutely nothing, not even for food, and I have my own nice room downstairs with my own desk and walk-in closet and lots of familiar things and my cats there with me every night, whereas at Mark’s I don’t think I would have any space entirely to myself, and my cats have to stay at my house in Volcanoville because Mark is allergic, so I would only see my cats once a week at best, when I am well enough to drive myself home to see them, or I let someone else drive me home to visit my house and my cats and my forest. Though at least I’ll have access to all of my stuff whenever I go to see my cats and can swap out for whatever I’m in the mood for instead of being stuck with whatever I thought to pack in terms of clothes, and I could still go for walks in my woods and enjoy some of the things I love so much about where my home is. Like lying in my hammock watching my trees move with the wind and feeling that serenity that is special to that my special place. Though at least in the last two years living out there I’ve learned better to keep that serenity with me, still, it’s so complete when I’m there.

With my parents, though, I know with 100% certainty that they will put my health and safety above all other concerns, absolutely and unequivocally. I can’t say that I know that of any other living being on the planet, at least not with such complete trust. And that makes it risky to trust my life to Mark like this. Granted, he won’t be on his own caring for me, Brian is close by (when he’s not half-way around the world for work), I have lots of other friends here who keep asking how they can help, and my parents can always take over if it doesn’t work out in Sac, but the possibility that Mark may in some instances let teaching or other concerns slip ahead of thinking first of my health and care worries me. If I’m in pain or throwing up from chemo, taking care of me has to come ahead of the fact that it might make him late to teach a dance class with Donna. Hell, that may mean he’ll have to suddenly cancel out of a class or something else seemingly important at the last minute. Will he do that for me? Likely not in our normal relationship, but what about when he’s supposedly caring for me during treatment? And how will I handle the fact that he can’t care for me every minute of every day and he needs time to recover too? Just because he’s caring for a cancer patient shouldn’t mean he has to abandon his own life, at least, I would hope I wouldn’t do that to him. What about when he wants to go to a milonga and I’m well enough to be home alone but not well enough to go with him or my white blood cell count is too low for me to be out dancing and risking infection? What about when I get on his nerves, being there all the time? What if it turns out I’m really sick all the time from chemo and really need him all the time, driving him crazy, making us both nuts with the neediness? I hate asking for help. I hate telling anyone I need them to do anything for me. Obviously I have to get over that. And I would have to trust him, in a way I have never trusted anyone in my life other than my parents. They earned it adopting me, especially my mom, holding me for months, me this crying shaking deformed six-week-old abused shuffled foster child afraid of the entire world with a complete and absolute mistrust of all human beings. Any trust I’ve ever had of anyone in my lifetime has only been possible because my mom gave up her own life for those several months to constantly take care of me and love me and show me that she would never hurt me or abuse me or stop loving me.

The more I think about it in those terms, the more stupid I feel for even considering staying with Mark. Why the hell would I do that to him, put him to what could be such an incredible life challenge, why would I challenge myself like that? No matter how horrible it gets, no matter how hard it is, no matter how terribly it destroys their own lives, my parents will not fail me in this. Can Mark say that? Even if he believes he can, will he? Really? And can I get over my own trust issues that have plagued me all my life, both isolating and protecting me from the world? Aren’t the next six months going to be hard enough as it is, without testing my own strength of character as well? Surely surviving cancer is a spiritual growth experience in and of itself, without me further challenging myself to grow as a person in the experience. Ah, but therein lies the rub: it’s in my nature to challenge myself, and to want to continually improve what humanity I am or bring to this world, and I can’t imagine a greater life challenge or learning opportunity for me than this. To be humane and kind to others through a health crisis practically designed to bring out the very worst in our selfish human nature . . . I’ve only been at this a month, and I already can’t believe how hard it’s been to try to be kind and patient, and I know the exact moments when I’ve failed most miserably, though I also believe the people who have commented the opposite to me . . . so far those moments of patience and attempted kindness outweighing the failingings, I hope. But I know it’s only going to get harder. I am still so naive in this experience.

Ugh, I feel sick to my stomach.