LIFE AND CANCER
Cancer, it’s everything you could expect–dead fear in the pit of your stomach, terrifying, shocking – all of it all at once. The first time and the second time. Then comes the pain and the hunger, and the frustration from the surgery and the treatment. You think, ok it’s going to work. The fear doesn’t go away but you have some hope too. It’s not the first time I feared for my life. My unstable first husband when I was in my early 20s truly tried to kill me when I left him. Like my step-father he stalked me. I always thought I could get away and I did. I survived. Cancer feels like a stalker. It has intelligence to hide until it’s too late and it can destroy you. As if it’s a being just out there waiting to come in. Then in the years that it went away I really started to believe it was over. But no, it came back again and again and again. It all became somewhat routine after so many years. I just lived with the pain, hunger and frustration and life went on. I painted. We traveled. I hiked and biked. Two times I had surgery a few days after an opening of mine.
I have the greatest oncologist, Dr. Kedeshian at UCLA. He never gave up on trying to make it go away. I saw patients when I went to the oral cancer floor for an appointment whose faces had been mutilated. I was always grateful, at least all my surgeries only gave me scars inside my mouth where no one could tell. Or a scar on my thigh from a 2007 surgery where they used the skin to wrap on my tongue.
That all changed with the major surgery. When Dr K described it, I couldn’t even take it in. Something clicked off in my brain. Cutting my face open like a fillet, removing my jaw and replacing it with my leg bone. No, that couldn’t happen. We’d tried so hard to keep it contained. It just hid itself better. Not showing up in the same place. It felt like it was personal as if it was out to kill me no matter what. After the surgery I hallucinated. I thought I saw all kinds of things. All bad. I was trying to keep the nurses and doctors away from me standing on the bed swinging, then, somehow, I got under the bed and held on to the bed's leg while they tried to pull me out. I had horrible nightmares. The recovery – I can’t even remember most of it. Radiation. My face locked down on the table inside a hockey mask. The music they played when I went into the radiation tube. I’ll never forget that stupid song. “Going to the Chapel of Love.” Then a new kind of hunger and pain. No medication can stop that kind of pain. Only numb it. I couldn’t talk or swallow. I had to learn all of that over again. Without my super swallow therapist, my psyche/pain doctor, my radiologist, who said in 30 years he’d never seen a case like mine, the other surgeon and my prostheses doctor I’m not sure I ever would have been able to eat real food again.
Bruce was always there for everything. Always having to be my caretaker. I’ve pretty much taken care of myself since I was a teenager. I always supported myself. Always. I felt proud that I didn’t need anyone. Then, I couldn’t walk without help. Couldn’t do a lot of things. Simple things. To not be able to eat or drink or talk at all was otherworldly. I can’t even describe it. I’m sure if I didn’t have Bruce I never could have recovered. My face is still mutilated. I can see it when I see friends who haven’t seen me since the surgery. I wear a mask in public and not just because of Covid. I can usually be understood but Bruce has to translate for me sometimes. I can eat and drink although not like before and I still choke sometimes. I lived. I’m still here. Most of my tongue is gone.
I try not to think about my stalker coming back because there is not much more they could do to help me.