(Tom: This is one of the realities I work hard to avoid by formulating my products as I do.)
@rhughesphd writes on X:
The hardest part. The unmerciful hardest part of cancer. And I can’t get it to stop. And I never will. I had my surgery in November of 2020. 13 hour brain surgery. Something went wrong. I woke up March 1st, 2021. I easily recall the exact moment of opening my eyes and I experienced a fear I didn’t know was possible. I am sincere when I say I did not know if I had died. I was in unknown territory. I could not communicate and I felt heavy and light physically at the same time. I tried shifting my eyeballs to the left and to the right to see if my peripheral vision would grant me understanding. Only dizziness escalated. A week later a speech therapist gave me apple juice to see if I knew how to swallow. Another week further in putting me back together like I was Humpty Dumpty who had fallen down had me situated in a room as a 63 old man who had taught college for 22 years and holds a doctorate in Psychology now being challenged to see if he can write his first name. 18 months later I finally left the wheelchair. I subsequently lost my hair from chemotherapy. My eyes resembled a wet soaked sponge for no other reason than the chronic fatigue intersecting with an undesirable amount of weight loss. There were no visitors. It was covid’s calendar. This was a hell that only hell could entertain and if someone would have told me years ago I would be the subject of a physical, mental and emotional transformative rehabilitation I would have thought such an experience would be nothing other than fantastical delusions.
And to think this wasn’t the hardest part. What could be? What could possibly on any level of imagination, supersede a solitary moment where you don’t even know if your awareness is of death or life. But there is a moment that is harder than all of this. And I unable to hinder this moment from incessant recurring.
It is every time, and there are too many of these anticipated arrivals, where I witness a cancer patient, after learning of their diagnosis, arriving at the hospital for the first time to begin their regimen. They bring with them a mental empty black vacuum of not knowing. What will be experienced? How long will they be there? How soon can they go home, what is the cost, do I need a particular pharmacy, how long will I be sick? Will it burn? They sign the consent to treat, accompanied with unanswered fear, unanswered apprehension, unanswered anxiety and at times an unanswering God. To watch this is to live tormenting powerlessness. As they are wheeled by me all I can do is offer a nod of eye contact while I take my right hand and form a fist and tap it over my heart acknowledging that they possess an unstoppable strength they are not aware of but are about to find out.