Emu-ism

I wagged chemo this week. If I’m honest Im a touch on the depressed side right now and I just couldn’t face it. The thought of the cancer growing just wasn’t enough motivation to get out of bed. You know those days when you’re meant to get up for work but you’re tired and cozy and you start questioning how much you really need a job to survive?

I was questioning “how much do I really need to live”?

I did have a slight tickle in my throat so called up and said I couldn’t come in because I was sick. Technically you aren’t supposed to enter the hospital if you have any slight potential Covid symptom and going to the cancer centre with a bunch of immunocompromised people is just plain irresponsible, right?

Karma being ever by my side decided to make my head cold claims a reality and now it feels like I’ve been gargling razor blades. Lucky I ditched after all. So while I’m off the hook for playing hooky as far as the world around me goes, I still know that I bailed out because I just didn’t want to go.

I don’t know what made this chemo harder to face than the others, it was supposed to be #6, that’s the halfway point of the total planned 12 cycles, I should have been chomping at the bit to get over the halfway hump but instead I was lying in bed thinking fuck it, I’m done.

Do we even really need more chemo?

My oncologist argues yes, apparently it mops up left over microscopic cancer cells, but I got last weeks CT scan report back and it’s looking fabulously metastasis free.

Sticking your head in the sands of denial and thinking that it’s all better now and will go away is easier than facing the possibility of being on ‘maintenance chemo’ until we eventually die. A friend referred to this habit the other day as “Emu-ism” – a term I now love and am stealing.

I find myself conflicted with other parts of myself about the meaning of this technically excellent scan result because the first CT scan that we had only showed the giant tumour on the ovary and completely missed the bowel primary and all of its little babies quietly stowing away in our pelvis.

It’s hard to trust modern medicine when it’s let you down so much in the past.

I don’t know. It still feels so surreal that “I” ever had cancer in the first place that I have taken to compulsively patting my stomach and feeling for the ileostomy bag then running my finger down the length of the thick zipper scar on my torso every time I think about it just to confirm it ever actually happened to us.

Is happening to us…