First World Problems, Part 1

Mexico trip has been canceled. The first and most important take-away here: this isn't a choice I made that it makes any sense to question. There isn't an alternative "But maybe if you..." or "Did you consider..." situation. At the beginning, it was worth waiting and hoping, because 1.) my diagnosis wasn't 100% clear and 2.) my treatment plan wasn't totally ironed out and 3.) my physical response to chemo had yet to be experienced. Even my doctor advised me to wait it out a bit. Now my doctor is on board with my decision, which I look at much much less as "I chose to cancel my Mexican vacation" but rather as "Cancer prevents me from going to Mexico right now." Yes, this sucks hugely, but that's the way it is.

Here is why: the longer I do chemo, the harder it gets. The riskier it gets. I have bad days and I have worse days. Passing bouts of headaches and nausea. My body just doesn't feel good. It's busy doing a lot of gross things, like dying inside and being poisoned.

If I am not meticulous about my health, I experience discomfort immediately. I need lots of sleep, proper hydration, and I have to make sure I don't get too stressed out or I start to feel sick. Caffeine and alcohol have to be consumed in moderation (understatement) and my weight has to be watched carefully. My immune system is getting weaker every day, so if I catch the most harmless of bugs it could make me dangerously sick.

While a relaxing vacation may sound like just the ticket, the thing of it is I can't actually take a vacation from having cancer. That's the point of vacations, you leave your worries behind. And party a lot. I don't get to do either. And at the same time I'm taking a huge risk, because in Mexico I'm far away from my doctors and my hospital and in the hands of who knows what health system.

If you're me, you get it: there is no choice. Going away in the middle of "waging my war against cancer"* would be stupid. I'm not chickening out. Take my word for it. I have no desire to be anywhere like 85% of the time besides my sofa. Or my bed. I'll travel and celebrate when I stop feeling gross every day.

If you're supporting me through this crap, the best thing you can do is accept it. Go to Mexico and leave me behind in wintry Massachusetts to do chemotherapy. Sounds pretty crappy, I know. But the last thing I want is to damper anyone's vacation because I can't be there. In fact, the opposite. Please have more fun than planned. For me. I want drunken sloppiness to occur in my name! When people get back, I want to hear crazy stories of awesome things that happened when bad decisions were made (stay safe everybody) because y'all were like: Should we call it or have one more round? One more round, for Scott.

*If you haven't watched Norm McDonald's "Me Doing Stand-Up" then you don't get why this is funny. Maybe you don't have a Netflix streaming account, or a desire to laugh your face off.

Dr. Horrible Is Taken Already

Happy New Year everybody! I hope, like me, you rang it in in style, trying to make yourself hungry and watching Clone High with your girlfriend. 4 chemos down, only 8 more to go! My hair is really starting to come out now, it's getting a little weird. Which is just how I like it.

What else, what else. I have a PET scan scheduled for Friday. So when I meet with my doctor before my next round of chemo (the following Wednesday) he will give me those results, let me know if the chemo's working. Which it probably is, chemo is notoriously bad for cancer. But if it's not quite cutting it, we may have to throw some radiation in the mix, and I do not want that. All the literature says it comes with lots of feeling shitty and absolutely no super powers, except possibly mutating small children.

Although. With no hair and a mutating babies superpower ... I'll be working on a villain alias and signature catchphrase just in case.

Can't Buy Me Love

There's nothing like cancer for when you're feeling low about yourself. Your body is trying to put you in a shitty mood daily. It's only natural that at some point, you look at your life and say "Well shit, I am almost thirty, totally broke and unsuccessful. And I somehow managed to get cancer. Like I sat on the wrong toilet seat, or smoked the wrong cigarette, or stood too close to the wrong microwave, or drank out of the wrong water bottle, or who even knows what the fuck."

But the odd thing is cancer has made something very clear to me that was not before. I have not completely fucked up my life. If I had, I would be like "Shit, I have cancer" and literally no one would care. Instead, all kinds of people are trying to help me and letting me know they give a damn. In terms of investment and return, it sort of seems like I've been making some good choices.

Like, metaphorically.

Obviously not with real money.

D. B. Sweeney

So when they tell you your hair is going to thin, what they mean is that you are lucky: rather than have all your hair fall out at once, you are just going to shed like a husky in the springtime. If you are blessed with locks as thick and luscious as mine, you can keep up the appearance of health for a while, maybe even for the entirety of your treatment. Watching my hair fall out a little every day: another piece of cancer good news. Fortunately my friends understand actual good news, so I have some. With my awesome new iPad I can read Buffy comics or play games or do crosswords, not to mention chat and update my blog, all from the waiting room! On one device. I would absolutely shave my head for nice things so I call it a win. Merry Christmas, however: my washing machine just broke. My awesome new iPad doesn't wash underpants! There is no app for that. My life is a circus of strange luck lately.

Burying the Lead

Like clockwork I got really bad muscle pains a week after my infusion in the arm where the chemo was injected -- THE FIRST TIME. Obviously not the last time, they used the port! Half the reason for getting that thing was so I wouldn't have arm pains but apparently my arm remembers and is STILL MAD.

My oncologist's proposed solution: an Oxycodone prescription. Yeeeaaap. Now I do hard drugs.

The strips are off my port surgery incisions and that area of my chest is looking mighty manly. Not in terms of muscles, obv, but like I went through some tough shit. The stories scars tell excludes the part where they give you nice happy sleepy drugs the entire time real shit is going down. All they say is "Where are your chest scars, pussy?"

I had a beer and I did not explode. The weird alcohol pain is gone, so drinking is on. Phew, now I'm interesting enough to be a character from Mad Men.

Though I can't drink often and never a whole lot. So thankfully I baked some brownies that are MAGIC! Get it? With the cancer?

Pop culture tells me that me and my cancer are much more interesting if I'm drinking and doing drugs.

The brownies' secret ingredient is TLC. Yes, first I steeped and simmered both tender love and care into some butter until all the TLC was extracted. Then I used that butter to make the brownies.

You really feel the love working on you, and the care. But it takes like an hour.

It's a mellow, subtle feeling that's not too crazy. To quote Raymond Carver, these are brownies you can reason with.

Oh, it would be nice to get a little of that Chinese Food Effect: food that makes you want more food.

In other news, my hair is starting to fall out.

Motile

Hey, I got the results of my sperm test back!

Only problems are that 1, I don't know what any of these numbers mean and I currently have no doctor to explain them to me, and 2, thanks to the medical community's innovating use of fax technologies, there is a key spec on this report that might or might not be a decimal point.

My concentration (commonly referred to incorrectly as the "sperm count") is either 7.3 million per cubic centimeter (which is equal to a milliliter, turns out) or 73 million. Average is apparently somewhere between 20-40 million.

It's a small spec. I might have A LOT OF SPERMS.

Average motility is 60%. Mine is 59%, but estimated at closer to 35% after unfreezing.

Dr. Wikipedia helped me make sense of these results, so the fact that I have lots of super sperm is now confirmed with absolutely no doubt.

At least, I think the long and short of it is that if I need some sperm at some point, I got some. Also if you need some, let me know.

In-Between Days

I spent the last night of my In-Between Days (yep, there it is, title of my cancer memoir, nailed it!) taking second place with my awesome pub trivia team. Tied for first then lost the tie-breaker, but hey, at least dinner (Last Supper) was free.

Cheeseburgers, see you in a week. Although this smoothy I made is phenomenal. Sorry cancer advisers! I am eating foods that taste good. I know that's against the rules.

The in-between days sort of made me forget how much it sucks to feel full and a little nauseated and tired and like lights are really bright. Now I'm back in it, chemo round 2, what is there to say? Nothing.

So I will just post some pictures of the journey thus far. Many were snapped hastily in hospitals with cheap cell phone cameras, so as photojournalism goes, probably not going to blow your socks off.

Ultrasound of the neck lump, back when no one knew what was wrong with me. Correction: back when no one knew what was wrong with me except all my doctors, who were like "shit, this kid totally has cancer but I can't actually tell him that until we get decent biopsy results."

Biopsy #2 when it was still stripped and purple from the surgeon's pen. Now it's a neat scar, I like to tell people I got into a knife fight. With cancer.

Two days after the port placement surgery. Suture stripped and still plenty of bruising -- see how the blood followed the line of the bandage that was on it? Science! You can see the port poking out like a third, evil nipple.

Chemo round 2, through the port. That bib matches the intense butcher's apron thing the oncology nurse wears, in case of any unlikely spill. Chemo drugs are super toxic! Wouldn't want to get them on your shirt or skin or you know COURSING THROUGH YOUR BODY.

That second-to-last shot has Facebook profile pic written all over it.