Alexander Has Nothing on My Day

I haven’t actually read it, but I have seen the cover of a book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I don’t like to brag, but even without having read the book, I think I'm pretty sure I’ve got Alexander beat. In fact, I will match the period of 5:00 pm 10/25 to 4:59 pm 10/26 against anyone else’s 24 hour period in any competition for the worst day ever.*

Think you can beat me? Try this on for size…

As I have reported here previously, the default emotion in my current situation is loneliness. Yesterday, I finally got fed up enough with coming home to an empty house that I took a drive with a friend to an animal shelter and adopted a cat. She’s a one-year-old female with a stupid name that I didn’t like, so I’ve renamed her Kevin.** Unfortunately, it appears that of all the cats I could’ve chosen, I managed to pick one that is just as misanthropic and anti-social as I am. Upon her release from the transport box, Kevin made a beeline for the space underneath my claw foot tub.Thus, in the last 24 hours, I’ve not actually seen the cat, except for either lying on the bathroom floor and looking under the tub or climbing into the tub and looking over the side where it curves around the back corner. The shelter where I got her said it could take as long as a week for the cat to adjust -– and I’m willing to be patient -– but it’s a little hard not to take it personally when even a rescued cat doesn’t want to hang out with you.

Moving on, at lunch yesterday my friend stated her opinion –- which others have shared as well –- that it was sort of nuts (ok, not the word she used, but close enough) that I still hadn’t been given a definitive answer on whether or not I would qualify for surgery. It was a fair point. The scan was more than a month ago, and that’s an awfully long time to wait for an answer. So today I emailed the nurse who supports my oncologist to ask the question yet again. Her answer was that I was not eligible for the surgery, and that the PA told me that at my 10/15 appointment.

Ahem.

There are two parts to that statement that deserve a response, and since the second pissed me off more I’ll start with that. As I wrote back to the nurse, no, the PA did not tell me I wasn’t eligible for surgery. What the PA told me was that she and the oncologist hadn’t actually discussed the scan or the surgery, but she’d be happy to tell me the results of my scan. Which she did: tumors in the liver, an indeterminate spot on my lung, and what appeared to be two more early stage tumors starting up on my abdominal wall. She also said she’d talk about the surgery with the oncologist, and that someone would email the results of the conversation. Which, of course, no one did. And while it might be reasonable to presume that, say, a healthcare provider could read between the lines of my PA’s description of my scan results and know that those results would render me ineligible for surgery, excuse the language, but I AM NOT A FUCKING HEALTHCARE PROVIDER. I’m only the goddamned patient. And if neither the PA, nor the oncologist, nor the nurse , nor anyone else does not say or write the words in a message directed at me, “you are not eligible for surgery,” then it seems somewhat unreasonable (to me, anyway) for everyone to assume that I know that I’m not eligible for surgery.

Morons.***

But of course there’s also the first half of that sentence: I’m not eligible for surgery. Let's repeat that: I am not eligible for surgery. For some reason I’m reminded of a statement from Bart Simpson: “I didn’t think it was physically possible, but that both sucks and blows.” As one might infer from reading this blog, I’ve done my best to keep my expectations grounded in reality and to not get my hopes up as new options were presented. This time, however, I totally bought in. I was almost convinced that they were going to be able to cut the cancer out of me and, without the horror of additional chemo, I'd get a bunch more years. Guess not.

I don’t really know what I can expect in terms of timelines now, but at this point I’m back down to just two, nearly equally lousy, options:

Option 1 – Ongoing Chemo
My oncologist would certainly recommend I continue on the regimen that we started back in September. The major downside of this one is that I’m just not sure how much longer I can work while undergoing chemo. Some of my co-workers like to argue with me, but I just don’t feel like I’m doing a good job anymore. I’m certainly not meeting the standards I set for myself. I’m always tired and, more important, so is my brain. I think at about half the speed I used to, and at times I can’t even get to right destinations anymore.

The flip side is that, since the chemo presumably extends my life, I can’t really afford to leave my job, either. It's not like I'd ever find another one. So the choice for Option 1 becomes a complicated question of how much short-term disability I’ve got left, whether or not I qualify for long-term disability, and, if neither of those are options, how long my employer will put up my ongoing screwball schedule.

Things to investigate when I'm not otherwise occupied.

Option 2 – The Blaze of Glory

Not to be morbid, but surgery struck me as the most cure-like of the options that were on the table. The rest is just trying to delay the inevitable. But since it’s inevitable, there’s always the option of cancelling all the oncology appointments, stop talking to the SCCA, throw away all the pills, and buy a room on a cruise ship headed around the world or an open jaw heading in basically the same direction. That might make for a reasonably entertaining last few months on the planet.****

The good news is that the only pressure to make a choice between Option 1 and Option 2 is my own. So I’ve got (a bit of) time.

Ok, enough about surgery. On with my day.

Last but not least, at about 11:00 am today I started to get that weird tickling in the back of my throat that tells me I’m about to come down with a cold. In retrospect, I probably should not have elected to spend most of the day yesterday driving around with the top down on my car.

So there you go. My last 24 hours. If you think you can beat that, all I can say is, I’m so very, very sorry...


* Dead children excepted. I will definitely concede that dead children trump most everything.
** Yes, after the minion.
*** Does it make me seem petty to say, I’m really looking forward to receiving my SCCA customer service questionnaire for this most recent visit? Usually I just toss them. This one, however, I think I’m going to fill out in excruciating detail.
**** A friend suggested cocaine and hookers, but I’m just not sure I have what it would take for my blaze to burn quite that brightly. I could barely bring myself to try medical marijuana when this whole cancer mess started, going out like Al Pacino in Scarface seems a little beyond me.