April 20

The story of what happened to me during all this is complex. At first I was sure they would find that this whole thing was just an inflamed pancreas and that I was in trouble but would recover. When I got the news about the mass and the spot on my liver I was alarmed but not really sure yet that I had big problems. The Monday of the biopsy all the gloves were off and I knew I was fucked. As soon as I could I read up on pancreatic cancer. The first site I read said that 80 percent of the people who were diagnosed with it were dead withing 6 months. Further, 95% of the people were dead within 5 years. After that, all the figures just more or less concurred, I was pretty much fucked; except for a lot of medical procedures and doctor's appointments, and a lot of real fucking pain, I was a dead man. Then people started telling me about people who lived through pancreatic cancer. So I did some more research into how cancer was classified and what 'levels' there were and so on. The details I got there were not encouraging at all. They measure the stages of cancer by physical size of the, lump or mass. Both of my cancers were large enough, 4 cm or more to qualify me as a stage IV cancer victim. Stage V is deceased. But still stories kept coming to me from everywhere that people can survive this. So I have this vast store of contradictory knowledge about what my fate really might be. The doctors will not discuss what might happen if the chemo therapy doesn't work. Radiation therapy is not an option because pancreatic cancer sends cancer cells out all the time to spread through the body. Even with a small vicinity around the pancreas and where it meets the liver there just isn't a good target for a focused beam. So, chemo is my one shot. The good news is that after chemo my pancreas and my liver both hurt like hell. The doctor was actually encouraged when I told him I could identify where the pain was coming from and that it took some time after chemo for the pain to kick in. (Believe me, the pain is some serious pain, enough to leave me wincing and writhing for hours unless I get some good pain pills.) Luckily, cancer doctors are all about pain management. I got some hydrocodon to take early on, and the prescription is good for along time and a lot of pills in each refill. So now my days are full of pain and misery and pain pills.

Then there is the blood sugar issue. My blood sugars are incredible high. I have hypoglycemia, and my blood sugars have exceeded 600 on my meter. My doctor started me on injectable insulin a few weeks back. That barely touched it. He put me on a 70/30 mix of insulin in addition to using a sliding scale from 200 to 600 for additional insulin. So my days are filled with testing every two hours, if I am awake, then injecting the 70/30 and additional insulin as needed. All I do now is poke, poke, poke and inject, all sounds like fun until you realize I ain't talking about sex. Any given day I poke myself more than a dozen times. I even have two meters to check them against each other. Luckily the blood sugar issues are slowly coming under control. Then there is food, and what to eat when. Not bad enough I got pain meds and insulin injections to keep track of I gotta keep track of when I eat and what I eat. It all comes together in the blood sugar levels. So I have to learn a new diet of carbs and meal schedules tied to insulin injections. But wait, there's more, always more. I have developed a rash from something or another. A really nasty rash from my waist line to my armpits. It itches like hell and I can't scratch it because I may break the skin and get infected. With blood sugar problems and being on chemo an infection is likely and could be deadly. So add Benedryl to the list of meds I have to take. When I add the Benedryl to my other pills, like the pain meds, I get whacked out sleepy and goofy. So, now I have to match an eating schedule with my blood sugar testing and insulin injections and pain pills and then figure out how to accommodate a sleep schedule that has me sleeping almost all the time and goofy the rest of the time. Fuck me. I test when I wake up, eat what I can afterwards, test if I am still awake later on and keep popping pain pills. Today doctor gave me a DEA controlled pain pill that should be good for 12 hours, and I can still take the hydrocodon to top it off if I need it. This is going to be a mess to get straightened out. The upside is that everybody, including the medical staff, encourage me to smoke pot. Actually, with the hydrocodon and the Benedryl it all makes for a very pleasant buzz to go to sleep with. I have had some incredibly intense and detailed dreams. Like movies made by some whacked out hippie with a weird sense of humor.

Through all of this Janice has been a real trooper. She has pushed me, cajoled me, nagged me and tended to me with no complaints. She has called the doctors when I didn't or couldn't, she has taken time from work to drive me around, she works from home as much as she can to take care of me. She has made the house just absolutely sparkling clean. She cooks for me, she does my menu and meal planning. She has been a real angel through all of this. I can tell it is wearing on her but she won't let up or quit. She has really been a wonderful wife. I have to insist that she go to work so she can get out of this realm of pain and cancer and medical crap. I will send her to work most of this week as I am pretty much done with chemo until next week. She needs a break.

I am pretty much a basket case out of all this. I am having some problems dealing with the reality of it all. Statistically I am a dead man by the end of the year. Actuality says that I may well beat the odds. I spend a lot of time contemplating my future and my health. I have to reject thoughts of dying straight away because that really precludes any further thought. You can't make plans if you plan on dying. So I don't allow the possibility. I spend a lot of time wondering what effect the realization of certain death will have on me. I try to plan what I will do when this goes into remission or just plain goes away. I know I will do something different from what I have ever done. I may go into writing full time and see what comes of that. I will likely try several things so that I can get a few new experiences out of life. Several things are not so important any more. Self evaluation is a constant process these days. Thinking about my life is a major episode, it goes on all hours of the day and night. When you sleep all day the obvious result is that you don't sleep well at night. I have had many hours of laying there looking at the dark ceiling pondering life and death, pondering the people around me, and life in general. There are no hard and fast points that come of that contemplation. Best I can describe it is that you get a feeling, a general notion of things and after a while that notion exists as a structure that you add to or take away from as time passes. I have ascertained that my current condition is very much like that instant just before a serious accident when you realize that things are going to change in an instant and you may die, all that adrenalin flowing and the fear of death and the chaos, only I have those instants every time I realize how close to death I really am. That moment of panic and fear just keeps happening, day in and day out, only without the breaking glass and blurry images and jumbled memories, but with the pain, the pain is always there.