oncologists and liver surgeons

today i had the oncologist and the liver surgeon that my doctor is working with call me for appointments next week. we start talking treatment options then.

this has lead to something of a meltdown. there are also broader, family related issues i’d rather not go into that are not helping- and are actually almost as hard to manage as the cancer itself.

those words are so large. oncology. liver surgery. PET scan.  the PET scan the most. i am radioactive. this should feel cool and i am just terrified. i am scared they will find more cancer – that all through my body, there is nothing but cancer, and i am on the verge of nothingness.  this is unlikely.  no one has suggested this. and no one thought it was cancer, either.

i have the name of a liver surgeon for a second opinion as well, in sydney.

today i don’t cope.  i am here with one very, very supportive relative, and one who is making me miserable.  today i wanted the people who matter most to me around – i was lucky – very lucky – to have three, but the family stuff became overwhelming.  i feel overwhelmed by the words and the future and my own terror, and i am trying to breathe, i am trying, but i don’t know how right now.  i just want to go back to a time where this was never going to happen. i cry when i see things that remind me of past happiness; today, it was an oxfam store which reminded me of a teddy bear i call warmy-bear.  or boozy breakfasts at Debacle, or when i first saw Robert Ryman’s paintings in Dia Beacon. when i got my scholarship to go to QUT to do library studies. when i got the job at my current workplace – highly contested, and an amazing opportunity that i still feel lucky to have.  the first flush of jacaranda trees in New Farm when i lived at Bowen Tce with my sister, or picking blackberries on the sidewalk. the cliff face on Bowen Tce, where i would jump the fence and sit there.  art shows and booze and hot nights.  driving to Wee Jasper after work to a weird tiny pub.  all of these memories are attached to people: and there are more and more and more and more and i feel like they flash before my eyes, and i feel so very alone.

I talked on twitter about being alienated from my body.  right now, my body fills me with horror and revulsion. i don’t want to touch it. i feel so happy when people do – as though they are brave to come so close to what is happening. it is all below the skin, it is a silent betrayal, it is me, and me alone, with these tumours and this silent devouring beast crawling crawling crawling like maggots through me, one cancer cell at a time. i also still don’t believe it is Me who this is happening to. how on earth, after all this paranoia, and all this fear, and all this planning, how did it actually happen. NOTE: if you say i manifested this due to my paranoia of cancer, i will actually cut you out of my life because that is bullshit, and shaming, and the last thing i need. i think that every day. i think that constantly. i am blaming myself for what has happened, because it is me that has done it. not as in my actions, but in the non-duality sense of my body, as myself, that has cancer. the cells in my body have mutated, and multiplied, and it was my cells that did it. it was my body. i shudder at this. i shudder at the hideousness of it, and the grotesque site of the tumours on film and video, oozing and filling up voids.

i hope i go beyond this. i hope i come to a point where i can love, and respect my body despite this.  i’m not there yet.

this song has got me through a lot of things.  and it has been the song for a lot of people, for a lot of years. i heard it this morning after lachlan posted me a link, and i cried. i am crying now. i’ll make it through this year if my body lets me.