I lost essentially half of the year each of the last two years to cancer treatments. My inability to commit to future dates caused me to be dropped from an important teaching gig. Chemo-induced emotional and mental distress contributed significantly to the end of my last relationship. I keep confronting my mortality in large ways and small. And now with so much going on in my life socially, emotionally, professionally, I'm once again staring down the barrel of the profound disruptions of cancer.
Even if this lesion is another round of cancer, what then? My oncologists have expressed differing opinions about the treatment courses. I only have one more course of chemotherapy available to me, then we're pretty much done with that option. Do we use that last bullet in the gun on this go round? Do we have surgery only? What do we do next?
It's pissing me off. Frustrating me. Making me angry and sad. I suppose some people would say that control is always an illusion, but cancer, even the simple threat of its recurrence, strips that control away and leaves me with uncertainty piled upon uncertainty.
Cancer sucks.