Thursday, February 7, 2013

Uncomfortably Numb

The relationship between treatment and blogging has become somewhat predictable after six rounds. On Friday, I'm flying high and with the steroids overpowering the chemo, I'm eager to post, to write, to talk, to do something. Saturday, there's a balance and a veil of normalcy; I have energy but generally feel no need to post. And then comes the fog of Sunday and Monday. Cloudy. Jumbled. Unfocused. Words and letters form in my head, but it's as if they've been tossed in the air and fallen in a tangled pile of recognizable incoherence.  I don't know what to do with them. 

They sit there and occupy my mind in no productive manner, teasing at possible thoughts. I try to decipher their meaning but it really takes until Thursday -- until today -- before I can find a quiet space in my mind, before I can clear away the detritus, toss this mess of ideas into the air and reassemble them in some order. 

But that's not really what I wanted to write about. 

I want to talk about numbness.  

Inevitably, these days I'm surrounded by cancer. I work it and I live it. For the most part, I'm used to the daily encounters of creating cancer content -- I may have ran away from it at first, but I returned a year ago with a renewed purpose and voice. And to a great extent, I'm learning the new normal of life with cancer, even as I step into the uncharted waters of life post-treatment. 

No, what I'm sometimes overwhelmed with is the sheer routineness of yet another cancer anecdote. It seems like a day doesn't go by without learning of someone else I know who has been diagnosed. Somebody's uncle has pancreatic cancer. Someone's son was diagnosed with ALL. An old-friend's mother (or daughter) is being treated for breast cancer. Someone's husband has a brain tumor. 
A word cloud based on my blog feed,
courtesy of wordle.net 

I'm not trivializing the news -- far from it. But the volume of diagnosis among friends, family, acquaintances, friends of friends, or more far flung connections, is hard to process. Sometimes I think it'd be easier to list all the people I know who don't have cancer. 

On the one hand, I feel a certain kinship with these unknown strangers -- and  yet I also want to create a certain distance. To assert that their cancer is not my cancer.

At times I want to say: "enough is enough." There's no more room at the inn. This dreary little club has all the members it can take. 

--michael
  

7 comments:

  1. There is something weird and unsettling about the breadth and depth of the cancer community, one that we become acutely aware of as we enter that 'inn'. In your case, given your work at Dana Farber, must be even more intense. Finding the balance between connection and distance takes time, and tends to evolve as the journey continues.

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  3. It must be very difficult to juggle cancer at home and work. I know when both my mother-in-law and stepfather were Dana-Farber patients, and I was working there full-time, I too felt a bit overloaded. How I maintained my sanity was by separating the two things -- my family's cancer and my "work" cancer. I am sure this is much harder when it is YOU who has cancer and not just numerous friends and their loved ones, but look at it this way -- you're working to help make things easier for others and so that we can someday find a cure. Put me in the category of the folks who are very glad you came back to your "day" cancer job.

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  4. Yep, that day of and shortly after treatment is great thanks to the steroid high! :) "This dreary little club has all the members it can take." Love this! So true. I can't stand to hear of one more person being diagnosed with cancer, but since my diagnosis, it feels like everywhere I go someone else is also being diagnosed - and they all want to tell me. My heart is overwhelmed at times.

    I'm also a follicular lymphoma patient, diagnosed in 2011, completed 6 rounds of B-R and am now doing 2 years of maintenance Rituxan every 8 weeks. Glad I found your blog - love your mix of serious & funny because it takes both to fully deal with the little monster. Best wishes to you!

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    1. Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you discovered the blog as well. I run into a lot of NHL patient stories but not that many fNHL folk. I'm not sure whether I'm doing the maintenance Rituxan or not. Can I ask where you're being treated? If you'd like, you can reply via email if you don't want to do via comment. I'm at msbuller99@gmail.com.
      --michael

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