C-Bag². Cancer and Covid.
Today is date day. A ritual born in the c-bag era that the day before a new treatment cycle begins Evan and I spend time basking in all our freedoms and favorite things before we’re relegated to a small, airless hospital room for 5 days of being poisoned/healed. We like the simple pleasures - sleeping in, a walk in the woods, kitty lap time, a couch movie, and never not tacos. We try to be chill, to keep the anxiety at bay knowing in the morning we’ll be sitting in the oncologist's office with our list of questions praying that my blood work will be good enough to allow treatment to continue. It’s a strange ask to have. Please, please let me be well enough so I can walk next door and be made sick again. At least I’m not doing it alone. Evan is always right next to me, the pillar of strength and support.
But tomorrow, no Evan. I will be alone in that room - asking the questions, fearing the answers, receiving the news - alone.
I’m alone because Covid-19 and the variant are so out of control in our area that the oncologists’s office is no longer allowing visitors. We haven’t heard if the hospital will allow visitors or if a room is available to begin treatment or if it’s even safe to be in the hospital to receive it. If it is safe to be there, I likely won’t be able to leave the room to do my normal walks, my one joyful break from the tiny room. All this blood work and approving me to receive treatment happens because the chemotherapy job is blasting my immune system to smithereens. I have no defenses. If cancer doesn’t kill me, Covid-19 could - or at least make it a hell of a lot worse, delaying treatment, worsening my short and long-term symptoms - symptoms I already worry about.
According to our local paper this morning, “Heart attack and stroke victims, people needing brain and heart surgery, and cancer patients are in hospital hallways and waiting rooms as Asante [Medford] struggles to provide enough beds for them.” We hit the highest number of Covid patients since the pandemic started and over 90% are unvaccinated.
The New York Times this past week had an article called Who Are the Unvaccinated in America? There’s no one answer. It helped me understand better the perspectives of those who are waiting or afraid or angry or suspicious about the vaccine. I sought out this perspective because I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around it on my own. Watching my body deteriorate, having days where the chemo hurts my lungs, making it difficult to breathe, when my sense of taste and smell go away, laying in that fucking hospital bed walking by intubated people - I could and can not imagine knowing that if I could take one dose of a shot to prevent or stop this from happening I would have. Shit, I don’t know what makes Tylenol work but I take that when I have a headache and it works. I may be in a position someday, if this treatment doesn’t work, to do a clinical trial and you better believe I’m signing up if it means it will save my life or even just the quality of my life. sigh
As Covid spikes, the smoke is rolling in, a one-two dick-punch to an immuno-compromised person like muah. The limited life has now been limited to indoors, all the filters running, no physical connection with others. Not even outside. Fire seasons didn’t use to be a thing when we moved to Oregon and every cell in my body wants to escape my house, to travel, to LIVE my life that isn’t guaranteed. I stay indoors at my house. The stakes are too high.
I’m sad. I’m afraid. I’m angry. It didn’t have to be this way. I’m not wasting any of my limited energy on blame, as tempting as that may be. I believe we live in a benevolent universe with a vast majority of benevolent, loving humans. Yes, that includes the unvaccinated and the vaccinated. I have little to offer besides my perspective - that the choices each of us make always impact others and how the choice to not get vaccinated impacts me and my friends, and other cancer patients like me.
Viktor Frankl has been on my mind a lot. His book, a Man’s Search for Meaning, is going to the appointment with me as a replacement for Evan. A survivor of concentration camps, he speaks on his survival as making a choice. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
He also says “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” If I keep getting angry at climate change deniers and the unvaccinated, am I not also unwilling to change?
I will go alone to this appointment with courage and humor (and Viktor). I will be alone in the hospital if that is what is necessary. I will seek to understand, to get closer to people. It’s only when I get closer (>6 feet please) can I watch for the small crack of light that connects us and only then do I have a shot at opening them up to seeing my perspective too - that all of our choices are connected. That there are rarely perfect choices in life but inaction IS action, IS your choice.
To quote another wise man Mahatma Gandhi, “My life is my message.” May that message be of love.**
Footnotes:
**And, in case it wasn’t clear, PLEASE get vaccinated. That is also my message.