Out of the Fog and into the Sheets of Rain

It’s been two weeks since getting cut open and I’m still walking around like an old man, but I guess its time to put some pants on and see what’s going on outside. I’m not taking oxycodone anymore and to be honest, I was pretty disappointed in those little pills. I was in a daze at the worst. I shuffled around my parents’ house in velour Sean Jean jump suit that this guy I hardly know bought me and watched TV, and the pain was dulled, but when I was done with the pills I was fine switching to Tylenol. Now it feels like I did 5,000 crunches and I still bleed a little bit.

This means of course I am cancer free. I no longer have cancer, or at least the Drs can tell. I am now done with cancer. I still have to recover for another month or so from this surgery and I will still have to periodically go in and get tests to make sure that the cancer doesn’t start growing back, but as of right now I am cancer free.

It’s a strange feeling to be cancer free. On one hand it feels like I’ve been dealing with this goddamned disease for my whole entire life, but it’s only been since last September: five months. I’ve spent three weeks total in a hospital and many more weeks hooked up to chemicals that sucked the life out of me and made me think I was just a hollow ghost of a stranger and I have holes all over my arms from PICC lines, IVs and where they take blood. I even had a line in my neck for a few days. Now I am free of all of that.

In a blink of an eye I walked into the hospital on September 2^nd and BAM! CRASH! BOOM! It’s right now. September 1^st I was fine. It was a Monday and I had Mondays off and I had a little cold, but I was healthy and walked all over the city that day running errands and went to an AA meeting and walked home from MLK Blvd. and just felt a little out of sorts. I thought I was coming down with a cold or even a flu, but I felt fine the next day and went to my job, when I had one and it was just one more normal day, but then my chest started squeezing me like my chest cavity was burning. My pride kept me there at work longer than I should have, but I stayed on for as long as I could, but then I really thought I was having a heart attack.

It was goddamn fucking cancer.

I really feel like I went from being a young man to an old man in a matter of hours that day. I will never see the world like I did the day before I had cancer.

I’m starting to move around and I have even gone out a few days ago. I’ve walked through the bright lights of a hospital and a crowded Sunday Fred Meyers. I was tired after each adventure, but I know I’m getting stronger. I’m still in a daze and I have a hard time concentrating, but I’m sleeping all right and eating well.

I’m having normal bowel movements, which anyone going through health problems knows how important normal bowel movements are.

This upcoming Thursday is my XXI anniversary. I almost feel the same as I did 21 years ago in Opelousas, Louisiana after drinking a fifth of 151 with my roommate and getting so ill that my stomach cramped up. I was not having normal bowel movements 21 years ago, so I have that now.

It’s strange to think that for 21 years I’ve not done a thing. I’ve continuously not drunk no matter what was going on in my life. I didn’t drink over every single heartbreak, depression, loss jobs, deaths, changes or any fucking reason. I wanted to. I wanted to for a lot less reasons. I wanted to drink because I wanted to fit in with people that drank, because I hated myself, because I felt bad, because I was so tired of AA, because I had cancer. I wanted to drink because getting drunk feels really good. I wanted to drink because other people drank. I wanted to get high because the highest I ever have been is still ten time better than the best time I’ve had clean.

I didn’t. I know how to stay sober through pain, suffering and like the world will only get worst here on out. I know how to stay sober no matter how fucking insane it seems to stay sober. I know how to stay sober better than most people I have ever known sober. I know the same as those that are still sober… mostly.

I stayed sober through cancer. I got to take Dilaudid and oxycodone. I got to be in pain and stay sober.

What now? I don’t’ know. I do have that realization that life really is super short. I have to come up with my plan for the rest of my life. I guess cancer is my half time show. I did half my life and now I just have another forty or less years in front of me. How do I do that?

I am now cancer free. I won’t beat around the bush; this was the worst experience in my life. I’ve outlived a lot of my earlier life’s experiences and this one block out all others. I’m scared to get cancer again. I’ll probably get cancer again.

I feel a melancholy that I didn’t feel before I had the cancers. I want to explain it, but I don’t think I can. Sometimes the rain falls in slow motion and the sound of rain fall washes out everything else and I can’t stop staring at one spot, but I can see life going really fast in my peripheral vision, but I won’t stop watching the slow motion rain drops hitting the cedar. Someday I’ll have to wake up and catch up with all of you that have been staying out of hospitals and try to keep up. I might be a little slow at first.