Curiosity I Guess...

Heck, I'm curious as a cat. I have a couple of friends that call me "Whiskers"...

Before I was diagnosed with cancer, most of the stories I heard about cancer patients were not flattering. More or less I was bombarded with stories that sounded like parables from the Bible. What I mean by that is that every story seemed to follow a nice and neat narrative arc that began with impossibility, moved to anger, slid to reflection, and transformed into peace and acceptance. In short, the stories of the cancer patients that I heard did not sound like real life; rather, they reminded me of the hundreds of predictable stories that I'd read in the years of studying English literature. All you ever hear about with the stories of people with cancer is the anger and then the reconciliation of that anger, but there are very rarely real, tangible feelings that come out of those stories. I'm going to try and break that trend.

Fear is a crippling emotion. It makes you do things you would not do, but it also stops you from doing things that you would do. Besides those relatively obvious conclusions, fear is a word that people thoughtlessly use. I would assume that many of you will say that you know what fear is and that you have truly felt it through and through. I would, however, be surprised if most of you have ever felt a fear that actually changed the way your mind operated from that moment onward. 

In this blog I have been reticent to distinguish myself from anyone else because I truly believe that I am not different from you just because I have cancer; nevertheless, I have felt a fear that has altered my life and I believe that most of you have not, despite your feelings to the contrary. Most individuals have moments where they fear for their lives, but the things about those times are that they are moments and nothing more. Try and imagine taking that moment, those seconds, those minutes, or hours even, and extending them for three years. Imagine feeling the most fear you have ever felt - imagine feeling that life-and-death situation - but that you feel it every single second for three whole years straight. Imagine that fear never gets less, but in fact has frequent moments in those three years where the fear grows stronger. But fear is perhaps the easiest of all the emotions I've experienced.

The secret emotion, the one that slips under the rug, and the one that you probably imagine is nonsensical is guilt. I have been inundated for three years with a guilt the extent of which I can never truly make clear to you. Fear is difficult to endure, but one can endure. Guilt, though, is inescapable, because you are not battling an emotion with an origin from within. The guilt I feel each and everyday comes from the pain, hurt, panic, fear, and worry that I've caused my family, friends, and loved ones.

You see, most people are too preoccupied with the difficulties facing the cancer patient to see how the loved ones of the patient are being affected. My fiancee Katie spends almost every single second of her life worrying about me - how I'm feeling, have I thrown up today, did I eat enough, is my abdomen filling up with fluid, does my back hurt, do I feel nauseous. She is constantly tired because her mind is so preoccupied with me that she sleeps lightly just in case something happens to me she can be there in a moment's notice. Her life is completely altered because of my deficiencies. And this is more or less the same for my father and my mother, not to mention the preoccupation of my brother, sister, and other loved ones, though it may not be to the same extent. 

Those of you who know me well should know that I have never been a person who depended on other people very much. My parents have always been there for me and that has been a comforting safety net, but I have always done things on my own. I've always been considered a man's man. A guy who could fend for himself, who could physically handle most things, I was a guy that you would call to move your furniture, or to back you up in a fist fight. Cancer has taken so many things from me - my health, my hair, my appetite, my iron-clad stomach (I'll be back in form one day Emanuel), my strength - and it has forced me to be a burden to my loved ones. They of course will say that I am not a burden, but I feel like a burden. The albatross that hangs from their necks, that keeps them from sleeping comfortable at night, that impedes them from carrying on their days as they normally would. 

When I visit friends and family for dinner, they have to adapt their planned menu around me, and if they don't then they are made to feel guilty when I don't eat. You see, everyday I manage to change in some way the way a person would normally conduct their life. At work, my cousin, who is very serious about working hard, is willing to allow my work to go uncompleted if he even suspects that I am feeling less than well. I appreciate that he is so understanding of my difficulties, but it's difficult to accept that I am now the person who has excuses made for him. I used to be the rock that everyone could count on for a die hard demeanor, but now I'm looked upon as a weaker, less capable version of my former self.

I am humbled by so many of these things, but humility cannot take away the guilt. Even as I write down my consumption of guilt here, it is not an adequate description of what I feel. It's a lose-lose situation because if I make it out of this situation alive, which I whole-heartedly believe that I will, then the last three years will have taken so many opportunities away from those who are closest to me. If, however I do not make it out of this situation, then not only have those who care about me altered their lives to make mine even a little more tolerable, but they will also have to reconcile the loss of their son, fiance, brother, cousin, nephew, or uncle. Lose-lose... 

You always hear about the anger, the pain, the nausea, the difficulty, the strength, the determination, and the perseverance of the cancer patients, but what you do not hear about (perhaps because you refuse to listen, or maybe because the sufferer is reluctant to explain) is how the cancer patient suffers from an overwhelming guilt. My life means nothing to me if not for my family and my fiancee. That's why the guilt breaks me down. I hope you understand that I know it seems silly for me to feel guilty that the people who love me care about me enough to alter their own lives. You will tell me that they do it because they care. I know they care and I know that's why they do it; but you must know that I feel guilty nonetheless. I hate making people worry and my loved ones, especially my Katie, can't help but constantly worry about me. 

She's a worrier. That's why I call her "Whiskers"...