Family

Finally had to lose my shit at my mom.

She's been pushing my buttons my whole life anyway. She pretty much invented my buttons in the first place.

When I was 17 she tried to convince a surgeon not to anesthetize me during testicular surgery. Not like, during a pants-on appointment, but as they were pretty much wheeling me to the O.R. with nothing between me and the world but an irrationally one-sided garment.

She told me she didn't like the idea of me being knocked out, which is really her way of saying she doesn't like the idea of her being knocked out. So she was going to ask some questions.

I told her if she was somehow able to convince anyone to even try cutting my balls open while I was awake, I would rabbit.

Thankfully, when she made her pitch, they turned her down. Because doctors know what a TERRIBLE IDEA that is.

Now she is calling family members and telling them things I let my doctor explain to her, but advising them not to mention it to me. Because I don't know yet. She tells them "he hates to talk about it" because the impatience she senses when we talk can't possibly be anything she's doing.

I'm impatient because she is the world's worst listener. She listens to little and hears less. And she likes to talk to me in this tone of doubt almost to the point of indignation. She just can't believe all this chemo they want me to do. Literally. She refuses to believe it. Like I'm doing it for the fucking hell of it.

I wonder: when she talks to her friend or her sister (other people in her life who have cancer), does this fly? Maybe when she says "But why do they want you to do all this chemo?" in that tone, they answer with equal indignation: "I don't know!" Instead of perplexedly stating the obvious: so I don't die.

I am happy to offer that answer (and did), but I don't even understand what could bring someone to ask the question. Why do you think cancer doctors prescribe chemo? I mean if you had to guess.

Then she poo-poo'ed the idea of me taking would could be an equally life-saving medication. Like I was being duped into becoming someone's science experiment. TOO LATE, YOU RETARD.

To read this blog must make it seem like the whole world is soooo bad at relating to me now that I have cancer. That's totally untrue. It's just a shitty situation, being treated differently and being forced to live under cancer's rules. Some people in my life are naturally more intuitive about my needs, and more patient with situations that are unpleasant or unpredictable.

 My parents aren't failing in the "Can we come visit you?," "Call us if you ever need a ride anywhere" or "Let us know if you need money" departments. They just had 18 years to make me like them enough to want them around, doing those things, and they biffed it.

My brother's not much better. He really wants to spend time with me, he says. "We can take a day off work and go out on the town and have an adventure. Trust me, it will be so much fun." Does he put that kind of pressure on all his outings? Or does he roll that out just for siblings with cancer who can neither go on carefree adventures nor take any more time off work?

But it was cathartic to blow up, I guess. "Corrective" has also been suggested. With people like that, what else can you do but blow them off or tell them to shut up?