“Its too late to change your mind, you let loss be your guide.”

-Broken Bells

Chemical Depression

A few months into treatment and things seem to have settled down. Emphasis on ‘seem’. And with the immediate crisis somewhat subsided, the reality of all this settles over me like a wet led blanket. I am completely blind in my left visual field. That includes both eyes. The problem isn’t with me eyes, its with my brain. Sometimes it’s kinda hard to explain to people what I can and can’t see. I can see straight ahead and to the right, but the left side of the world isn’t there. It’s not a black spot, it just isn’t there, kinda like what is behind you isn’t there. Imagine looking directly at a clock. You see all the hours but I only see 12 o’clock through 6 o’clock, the right side. I do not see 7 o’clock or 11 o’clock, and I definitely don’t see 9 o’clock. I have to consciously turn my head or move my focus to the left and when I do this, the left side of the clock comes into view, just like it would if you are looking straight ahead and then physically turn around, what is behind you will come into view. If I were to look directly at your face, I would only see the left half of your face (or from my perspective the right side).

If you want to get a sense of how I experience the world, go stand in front of a mirror, tare directly at your face, then start stepping your left, until all you can see is one half of your face in the mirror. That’s what I see. Now just spread that out to the whole world and that’s what I see. With faces, I am able to compensate by staring at people’s right ear ( looking to my left). This allows me to use my right periphery to take in their full face and head. With things like a face or a clock, I know to look to the left because previous experience tells me there is more to a face and a clock Than what I am currently perceiving. But with novel visual situations, I can’t do that. It doesn’t matter how close or how far away it is. I will read the number 2,200 as 200, because I miss the 2, on the left. Its a pain in the ass. Functionally, I’m like a horse with blinders on the left-side of both if my eyes, all the time. They don’t ever come off. They are not able to tell me if it’s going to get better or if its even more or less likely. They have no idea. I can’t drive anymore. Actually they tell me I could drive, which is fucking crazy to me, because I feel sketchy just walking across the street. So driving is out.

I carry a shillelagh with me everywhere I go. not a cane. A shillelagh. I carry it for two reasons: The first is because I get dizzy in crowds and tend to run into people on my left. People see me walking with the shillelagh and usually cut me some slack. The second reason I carry it, is so I can use it to whip someone’s ass if I need to. Having lost almost 50 pounds on this damn vegan diet, along with half my vision, I no longer feel confident I could defend myself. I feel vulnerable in a way I never did before. While its not so bad that I’d say I’m half the man I used to be, it is metrically accurate to say I’m 75% the man I was.

I try to reconcile this not-so-easy-to-swallow circumstance with the current apparent good news which is that they don’t detect any tumor regrowth… at the moment. For now, they’re calling me NED (No Evidence of Disease). Unfortunately, what I’ve learned about cancer is that doesn’t mean your fine. It just means they can’t currently detect anything. I guess I wouldn’t expect them to be able to detect anything right now. After all, they just got done cutting the problem out, and it takes a little time for cells to grow back into something sizable enough to detect. Thus, they put me on these drugs-, what they call “adjuvant therapy.” I’ll be on them for the next year. I’ll get an MRI brain scan every three months, and a PET full-body scan, every four. Assuming things remain clear for this first year, they’ll start spacing the scans out from there.

I’ll have to get regular scans for the rest of my life, at least once a year. The thinking is that if it made it to my brain, it’s metastatic, and diffuse through my body. This is the cold heaviness I feel. I do not feel safe. My life is consumed with waiting for the next scan, and the corresponding results. I don’t want my life to be all about this, but it’s hard to focus on anything else. The continuous focus on myself and my own mortality is exhausting and makes me feel selfish and self-absorbed. I want to focus on the future and something besides myself but because I cannot take myself for granted. The future can be a tough thing to think about. Before, when I wondered, will I be doing this, that or the other thing. It was the this that or the other thing that was uncertain. Now “I” am the thing that is uncertain, my existence. Do you understand? The cognitive exercise of wondering about what one might be doing in the future, requires an a priori assumption that one will be around to be doing something in the first place.

I’m sorry, Dear Reader, it can all get a bit convoluted for me when I really start to think about it. Basically, the future feels like this tiny candle at the far end of a tunnel; and every time they have to run some test, hell, every time I get a phone call from the the doctors, the flame flickers threateningly, and I become terrified it’s gonna blow out. I try to have faith in it all, and to focus on a positive future, but even then, I’m not always sure what to focus on. I find that I am in a crisis of meaning, not interested in the things that used to interest me; I’m not really interested in anything at all. No, that’s not quite right, “I’m interested in survival. I’m interested in duties and obligations. Things must have a clear, discernible, pragmatic purpose. But you can’t get me to go hang out with friends. I can’t find the immediate purpose, even though I am deeply aware it is meaningful to me. I take no pleasure in it. I sit there feeling far away, wondering what the point of this is, and waiting for Alyssa to tell me that its time to go home. But then, that’s not it either. That’s what I worry an outing with friends would feel like, so I just don’t go. I say no to everything. I refuse to go over the bridge because I worry I’ll get trapped on the other side, unable to get home, be forced to endure some hours-long social ordeal. It’s not that I don’t like other people anymore, its just that I feel my place in relation to people has changed and I don’t understand it. I’m not sure who to be, and I don’t mean that in some overly dramatic way like I don’t know who I am anymore… but then I do kind of mean that. I feel unclear about what to base decisions on, and there’s a timidity to me now that I don’t recognize. I feel like a kid, who got his ass whipped really really bad, then crawled bloodily into his house, and now won’t come back outside.

Trying For Perspective

I tell my doctor how I’m feeling at one of my bi-weekly visits,

“That’s the Mek,” my doc says, referring to to one of the medications I take. “I hear that from a lot of people; wipes out your energy. You need to drink some coffee, or those 5-hour energy shots. You can’t let yourself get too depressed. You’ve got to stay positive.”

The idea that a 5-hour energy shot is going to take care of this is laughable to me. And depression doesn’t quite capture it, at least not in the regular sense that most people tend to use that diagnosis. I’m not laying around-can’t get out of bed-crying-and feeling sad all the time. There is just no pleasure or joy in my life. The color is missing. There’s an absence to things, to my experience. I tell my reflexologist, Angie, how I’m feeling at one of my Reflexology, (or as I call them) ‘foot torture” sessions.

“This is your small brain talking,” Angie says, digging into my foot with her stick.

For those of you who don’t know, reflexology is the ancient Chinese practice of medicine that applies pressure to points on the foot. These points supposedly correspond to areas in the body brain, etc. The idea is to stimulate healing in these parts of the body by applying pressure to the corresponding area on the foot. It is fairly painful, at least the way my therapist does it.

“Yeah, his small brain,” my friend CD says, pointing to my crotch. CD is there for his torture session, right after mine.

“Hahaha,” Angie laughs heartily. Then, more seriously, “You need to chant,” gesturing at me once with her stick.

The various complex, metaphorical structures of the human psyche that western psychology has created to explain and understand human psychological suffering, are more simply and practically divided by Angie, into two constructs: your Big Brain and your Small Brain. The difference between them is what you might imagine: Your Big Brain is what you’re using when you eat healthy, go to bed on time, clean your house, control your temper, etc. Your Small Brain is what you’re using when you consume donuts, chips, whiskey, smoke, hit the snooze bar, when you sit around watching tv, when you lose your temper, and yes of course, when you make idiotic short-sighted sexual decisions.

“I know you’re- YEOW! FUCK!” I start to respond just as she digs into some tender part of my foot. CD grins at my pain. “You’re next,” I point at him.

“You see how much you stress yourself out?” Angie says. “That’s your adrenal.”

“Whatever it is, it fucking hurts!”

The cool thing about Angie, is you can cuss and yell at her, and it doesn’t phase her one bit. She doesn’t hurt you any more or any less. She is always the same.

“You have received wake up call from the Universe,” Angie says. “What you have put in your body, how you have not managed your stress, all of this must change. You know what you were doing before, and now you have stopped. Other people do not get this chance.”

“I know you’re right.” I say it simply. quietly.

“Some people get in a car one day; that car crashes. They never walk again,” she shrugs, looking to the side, out the window. Then back at me, “This is not you.” Her logic is simple, without pretense, setting me straight.

“I know. But I can’t stop thinking about: What if this tumor comes back? What if it’s in there? Still growing? He thinks he missed some cells you know?… The neurosurgeon… I’m not even sure they got the diagnosis right. They keep calling me a ‘zebra’ no, a ‘zebra in a top hat.’ They might have me on the completely wrong meds.”

“This is your small brain talking now.” Angie slams the door shut on my spinning, “Doctors are always interested in diagnosis. Is it this tumor or that? I don’t care. When I clean up my house, I don’t pick up a piece of dust and look at it,” she holds up an imaginary dust speck between her index finger and thumb, squints at it. “I don’t ask: what kind of dust is this? I just clean it up! Throw it away!”

I nod silently, somewhat skeptical that a correct diagnosis is completely unnecessary and useless, but I’m not gonna argue with her while she’s got that stick in my arch.

“You’re tumor grew in an environment you created,” pointing the stick violently at me again. “You have created a new environment. For 4 months now, you don’t eat meat, you don’t eat cheese. You don’t drink alcohol. You get sleep. you manage your stress.You help your body heal itself. You keep doing this. You will be fine. You are fine.”

“I just feel this dread all the time. I can’t get away from it.”

“This is why you need to chant.” She softens a little. “You want to chant now? Together?”

“Ok.”

“nam-myoho-renge-kyo…”

I don’t know what you make of all this, Reader. Maybe you think it sounds like a bunch of bullshit? Maybe you think it sounds intriguing? Maybe something else? As always, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m just telling you what happened.