Cancer, Surviving, and the Rhythm of self when your out of tune with life.
February 16th 2022, Downtown Fort Worth , An innocuous unnamed Hospital with some of the most wonderful nurses.
“ I laid in bed when they plugged into my chest. I had dreamed of this moment. Plugging into something. The quintessential cyberpunk dream. The only problem was that it wasn’t a data jack, no VR, no cyberpunk frontier. Just a subdermal port leading straight to my aorta for chemo therapy. The cancer was real, even more real now.
The situation was too much for my caffeine deprived and exhausted brain to handle. I was tired having not slept having tried to do so on a Emergency room bed. They wouldn’t open a bed for me on the oncology floor so I had to go through the ER. Because I had cancer I got the gold treatment and got a bed in a bay with a door. The bed just felt like a half assed medieval torture device. The Catholics were trying to torture the trans out of me but their hearts just were in it so I partially slept.
As the needle pieced my skin finding it’s mark in my subdermal port I felt it peirce the port. The only problem was like a poor constructed Russian capsule it would connect to the port. Sitting half in and half out of my chest they politely and gently struggled to get it in. Then the senior nurse just said fuck it her brain, politely pushing down it clicked into place. I took a peak as they taped everything down. All I remember after that point was a kind feminine voice saying, “This is going to burn a little but don’t worry” as the worm juice flew inside me. I remember her gentle hand touching mine. I went from head ache, nervous, and tired to Benadryl filled drunkenness and a near inability to make simple words. Not knowing if I could modulate words I just politely hummed and grunted two sounds for yes and politely passed out in a drug fueled darkness. The dream was something of a nightmare of my own apocalypses but I slept. Trapped in different situations. Trapped in a body I had problems breathing, problems being me. Less energy, depression, disorientation. But the medicine was working all be it slowly.
Chemo had started. I was in it. It was real. It was happening. No trips to go dancing, not that I could breath, it was happening. I remember in my inability to take deep breaths I felt I was going into space in my subconscious. Dream about taking neighborhood rockets into orbit on old rickety shuttles half scared they’d topple over in high winds. Only finding myself in orbit fearful that the hull of the space station would be pierced by an errant screw or a discarded glove traveling at 30,000mph. Going into my own new frontier, landing on the moon of my cure. Exploring surfaces of vista never seen. Seeing star systems and plasma clouds light years away while the unknown poisons were pumping through my veins which potentially could kill me much as save me. Going after that nebulous proteins, protien-k50 molecule surrounding my cancer’s cellular membrane. That “don’t eat me” protein that makes me sick blocking my right lung’s ability to take in air.”
So here I am three weeks later looking at starting it all over again. Nausea, depression, apathy, lack of energy, and lethargy. My hair has started to fall out. I’m saving it in a bag so I can have something of me if I don’t make it. On the flip side I can turn it into a tribble murder if I do make it. The bone marrow biopsy came back clean and the PET scan showed we caught it early enough. No spreading beyond it’s initial state in my upper loble of I’ve had to stop all my hormones save my androgens. I never realized how much of a crutch they were for me till I didn’t have the crutch. I truly miss them. How they made me feel and how they affected me emotionally. Now I feel a little hollow. I fill that hollow with writing, painting and art mostly. Coding I try to do different things and be creative and think outside of the box. Look where none have looked or look a different way. Some days are good some days are hard. It’s been a full 360 rotation. Going back to the beginning to see how far I’ve come, how many hang-ups I still have and how far I have to go.
Life is a series of circles and lines that intersect in cosmic three dimensional complexity. Temporal loops bringing us back. (Nature at an atomic level is filled with circles. Nuts, fruits, trees, are many example of circular and oval objects in nature.) Just when we think we are gone there we are back at some point again in our lives. I liken it to a trial in the woods. When you walked it as a child you saw things as a child. Places for forts, places to explore, walked the path not seeing some of the greater truths the forest was hiding in plain sight only longing to climb trees. As an adult I climbed many trees, never falling, hell I climbed anything just to see if I could. Now as an adult I walk I see the marks left by those that came by me. The sick trees, the flourishing trees, animal tracks, signs of people and their carelessness. I see things differently. Look at things differently. The path is different and those things before which vexed me as a teen no longer do. The far off sounds of the high way calling me to adventures and shenanigans'. I’ve been on those. Now my path through the forest makes look inward.
I feel like a river without fish. I flow and I move with the currents around the boundaries which block me. She is the water that flows moving covering everything but doing nothing. I miss the fish flowing through my stream. Knowing that now my waters are toxic from the poisons I wish to kill in me from what probably what modern society has poisoned me with. My genes are not strong enough to fight off the mutations. My water flows. When the poisons of my stream are gone the fish will return. The conundrum has been was I always this river. Can a river be a river without fish? Or do the fish find the river? With no hormones I ponder these questions. I realize I am who I am. Makeup makes me happy. My clothes make me happy. I have always been the river hidden first as a spring tucked under a bush. No matter what that spring has erupted and I flow and I will not return underground. I look at Lady Bunny and other non medical transitioned women and realize I am no less valid. I think that’s why as a group we must grab on and hold our nonbinary friends so tightly. Some come as a place to discover themselves, others a place of comfort to be themselves, and others because they find a binary abhorrent. Like the molecular mechanics and organic chemistry that is my cancer I don’t have to understand fully what it’s like to be non-binary and gender-fluid. Like a river I have to hold them, and welcome them in my pools of love.
Looking back at where I started and where I am now. One of the big ponders I have is what it would have been like if I had been born a girl. No matter I think it would have been an interesting paradox. I would have either ended up like my mother (not a good choice) or a rebellious lesbian. Either way I would be missing the trans experience not really understanding what I understand. Without that understanding I wouldn’t really know what I know or comprehend. So it’s a circular paradox I think. I would be a version of me but not me. Sure I could have had children but it would be different struggles and different issues. If I had ADHD girls generally don’t get diagnosed so that could have led to a lot of issues.
Paradoxically I want I want feminine facialization surgery before GRS. I want GRS but facial surgery is more important for me I think. In a sense that I make good money at my job but I also feel vain and narcissistic for wanting it. Maybe I feel like I don’t deserve it I don’t know but I feel like I should feel good enough with how I look but I don’t. It’s not a crushing thing but it’s something I would like to just get and sand the edges a bit. I’m not super thrilled with the plastic surgeons in Dallas. I’m thinking maybe Boston or San Francisco. Still have to get through chemo and survive but I think during all the chemo I need a dream, I need a goal and for me that’s the goal I really want. I don’t think I look bad I just would like some tweaks to my face. Dr. Spiegel or some of the other surgeons on the west coast I really like. I think I just want to blend more as a river and less as a brook. Just to disappear in the crowd. Just be that nameless hippy weird chick in the background.
I think happiness isn’t going to come with scalpel and chisel. It’s more of a blending with society really. Less anxiety around people. Mostly I don’t care but my time at Peterbilt could get stressful. A crowded women’s restroom, women leaving the restroom when they saw me, a name HR gal being rude. All these things weigh on you. I’m proud of far I’ve come but when fighting cancer it’s the goals that push and drive you otherwise I’ve had a propensity to just give up and sleep all day. Granted my body is tired. But give up at work and rescind to my inner self away from the world.
3/3/2022
Chemo2 : If your reading this March 3rd is not my birthday. I chose it so it would be harder to link my info with cheap half assed algorithms. So here I am. It’s also why I gave my so two middle names. Let him fuck with school giving one day and another another. It’s the small innocuous things in life.
The first chemo at the cancer center wasn’t bad. I had allot less energy than I thought I would. The Benadryl knocked me out. My body took it pretty well all in all. I was able to sleep for about 80% of it and I brought a warm blanket and slept. My partner brought me Mela’s taqueria which was nice! I love real Mexican street food. Texmex is ok but damn I love me some Gordita, mole, Guisado, and Pazole! I got Gorditas though and a fucking Horchata. One of my favorite drinks. It’s like all my favorite spices mixed in rice milk bliss.
Overall it didn’t go too bad. I think cancer has reminded me of my mortality, the preciousness of time, and complexity in daily life we don’t see. I think we spend so much time in our daily crisis zones we forget. Birds moving, animals in our yard foraging for food. The cycle of life moves on around us and we are small. We went to Magnolia for Ice Cream at Melt after and I just noticed how greedy the zoning board in Fort Worth had become. Putting up architectural monstrosities next to historic buildings. No plans for integrating brick, form, and design into a 30’s style architecture. Just ugly glass and stone. Some looked excellent others hideous. I think when you stop looking at the details in life and form you miss what’s going on in your community. The intellectual apathy in place of developer greed.
So far this chemo has been ok. The prednisone is making me a little loopy but not bad. Luckily there’s Xanax. That helps. I’m doing good overall. Tired and fatigued but introspective. It’s a strange feeling but not a bad one. It’s what you do when your pumped with toxic chemicals. My chemo port worked like a champ. No issues. The nurse popped it right in and bammo we were good to go. No complications. I felt bad for an elderly woman who was very sick. Because of my trauma with my mom I think I have this in yielding need to help strangers but hooked up to an infusion pump full of Benadryl it wasn’t my place. She was severely disoriented, but they got her home. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to work there. Those are the places we don’t see. Not scary not a happy place, but maybe a place of hope. Hope is the one thing they’ve not found a way to kill yet.
I guess with my hormones gone the crutch of my emotional depth has been partially lifted. Estrogen is a powerful hormone and progesterone is a powerful sexual intoxicant. I think my body is still producing them all be it at much smaller levels. I take a androgen blocker that was cleared which ironically is a anti-cancer drug bicaldimide to block the T. All of this leaves you a little bit like a cool desert. The winds blowing the kernels of sand in waves along the vistas. It’s like being caught between the up coming storm and surrounded by the stillness at this point. I feel the chemicals and poisons inside me. I know they are doing their jobs so I sit trying to take as much of the world in as I can not know what my future holds. My mind is no longer stationary. It’s a floating orb drifting in the expanse of my memories, correlating them to my present. Watching and seeing everything that goes on around me and content to just watch, observe, and see. I think there is art in life if we know where and how to see it. Biased though I see that it is in those places I find comfort. Distanced from the realities of poverty on Lancaster and the daily struggles for survival, sanity, and living. I am privileged but sick. I have many friends, and a loving partner after turmoil. I see my luck for what it is. But I still revel in watching certain spaces for it artistry in motion. I couldn’t do that if I wasn’t privileged. Our medical system is intrinsically broken. I’m lucky I have good insurance. It’s easy to appreciate art when your stomach is full and your lungs are blocked by cancer. These thoughts intertwine in my mind as I drift to our possible futures, and imagine our past.
Looking at how my city has changed uncaringly putting up metal and steel monstrosities crowding out those who need it most. I think back to when it was a sleepy little town and wonder what they would think of the drones, cameras, cars, and automation in our industrialize life. I think back to my own past both good and both bad. How I’ve changed and how I’ve not. How I’ve grown, and how I’ve returned to that 14 year old person who wrote the paper on the hippies. I think we are the same. They still live in me I’ve only grown from that tree into a bigger tree seeing past the oaks which bore me.
I am still that tree. My leaves have not changed, my bark is my bark. Only my color is different and chemicals will not change that. I focus on that fact daily and remember when I started and reflect on how far I have come.
Doing well. Surviving. Some days are good some days are bad but I am doing ok. Life changes and like a river I try to flow around the rocks that impede me.
