Click images for desktop size: "Sorry, Wrong Number" by Unknown One day during our chemo-therapy "support group" sessions the two people in charge of it were running late.
There were two of them: A pretty young woman with a severe disability that forced her to walk with a peculiar rolling gait; a bearded psychologist who liked to stroke his beard and make profound announcements. At least he thought they were profound. The members in my group never discussed these laborious sessions so I can't say that they found his statements as torturous as I did.
He was a Notre Dame fan, even though he didn't go to Notre Dame and for some reason he thought it would endear himself to me by proclaiming this over and over to me. Probably clouds my memory of him now as well as my opinion of him then.
The woman was a social worker. We would have felt better about her except she kept trying to be empathetic and that just made us pity her all the more.
So there are the nine of us sitting in our circle in our uncomfortable institution type chairs when this oil company exec pulls out one of those hospital oxygen masks. He's got a long chunks of surgical tubing hot glued to the intake and exhaust ports.
He explained in great detail that he was going to attach this to a tank of helium. I got quickly
Click images for desktop size: "Puppies" by Unknown interested. Once Tom and I got a tank of helium and spent a good week walking around talking like munchkins to everybody at any inappropriate opportunity. It was fun and cool. We even worked out a rapid version of "We Represent The Lollipop Guild" that started out in cool high trembly harmony and, as the helium wore out, descended into a crazed sounding baritones.
This exec wasn't looking to sound crazy cool. He explained that if the chemo didn't put him into remission he was going to hook his mask to a tank of helium. Hook it all up to himself, turn on the gas and drift off to the endless sleep.
He explained that he'd talk to some of his doctor friends and they all assured him this was the easiest non-painful ways to commit suicide.
Anyone who's ever been puking up clear bile for a few hours while watching clumps of their hair fall out into the toilet while their veins and lymph nodes burned in unholy white fire from chemo would have no problem understanding his macabre plan.
No one wants to die of cancer or leukemia. Its a terrifying kind of death. But no one wants to ever go through chemo ever again. Its too vivid a pain that doesn't dull in memory.
So we all understood. It started the most animated conversation I'd ever seen in the support group.
Click images for desktop size: "Hanabi" by Unknown For the next twenty minutes everyone laid out their suicide plan. Only one woman said that it was foolish to consider suicide after all we'd each been through but then she added that she had no intention of dying from cancer and if it came to that she'd put her husband's 9 mm in her mouth an pull the trigger, sparing her family the grief of watching her decay until she passed away.
Listening to everyone's preferable mode of death was pretty interesting. Being human and American it soon became competitive with details and flourishes. One woman wanting to emulate Jayne Mansfield and Claudia Jennings by speeding along the FDR Expressway and ramming into a giant buttress that hung over the road just a couple miles past some exit or other.
Being what I am I was fixated on the idea of a tank of helium and how much fun it would be to have some now. So that the next time the psychologist asked me how I was feeling and when I grunted out my usual, "Fine" and he dismissed me with his usual, "Fine is not a feeling, tell us how you're feeling" I could answer him in great detail huffing on a balloon of helium and doing that great munchkin voice, ending the performance with a solo rendition of "We Represent The Lollipop Guild".
Somewhere in there the social worker and the psychologist must have entered the room.

Click images for desktop size: "Holeproof Hosiery" by Philip Coles They were pretty shocked at what they were hearing. I imagine at first they were pleased to hear us inter-reacting and being semi-raucous. They probably smiled smugly to themselves, thinking all their hard work was finally paying off. Then when they heard what we were talking about I suspect they kind of freaked. Maybe they took it personally. Like some personal failure they couldn't convince a mess of adults to be joyous in their suffering.
The psychologist lectured us for about 20 minutes about how stupid we were and the social worker went on about how she could understand how we felt but that yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah.

And we went from being enthused story tellers and fantasizers to being another room of suffers who resented the world for not suffering like we suffered. Some grew surly, as usual, because the gods did not elevate us to sainthood for enduring the suffering and the temptations we endured.
Most grew depressed again, counting the days, minutes and seconds in their chemo trials, afraid to pray for release because it might seem selfish while one or two's thoughts drifted to their families and worried how they'd feel about their love ones being bald and emaciated, sick and sad and lonely in their private hell, a hell they'd never imagine sharing with their kids or their spouses because some hells are too intense and too real and seem to ridiculous to want to inflict on anyone you care about. Most of the time you want to spare people you care about, spare them even a glimpse of that glowing smoldering revulsive grief and pain.
And that's what they social worker and the psychologist didn't understand, what they couldn't grasp.
You can't get encouragement to survive in hell. You survive because you have no other choice but to go on to the next second of the next day. You don't expect rebate. You don't expect cessation. You only want to get through the time you have to get through.
I had a dog who had to have chemo and have a leg amputated because of cancer. I spent a lot of time with him during his chemo. He was suffering and had no idea of why or how. He only knew he trusted me and he would lie there with his head in my lap while I squatted in his kennel. Once in a great while he would slowly and with great effort thump his tail to let me know he appreciated me being there. The fact that he could lie there in his misery and still think it important enough to let me know that it was important to him that I was there is just one small piece of proof in my mind that dogs are, in some ways, better than people.
He lived for 3 years after all that and he was as happy as he'd ever been. Not once did he blame me for forcing him to live which was, after all pretty selfish of me; forcing him to live so I could enjoy seeing him laugh and play.
That's what I was thinking about when the psychologist finally finished up and suddenly asked me, "How are you feeling today?"
I said, "Fine," and he went into his usual spiel. I wished i had a tank of helium.

I'm not feeling better. I guess I just adapt well to being ill.
On Monday I was upset. I tried to do some yard work. DIdn't get too far. Sat on the sofa and put a movie on TV. Slept right through the whole thing. Put on another movie. (Couldn't re-watch the one I'd slept through. If it was any good I wouldn't have fallen asleep. Right?)

Click images for desktop size: "Zuma Beach" by n0rcalguy I slept right through that one too. I seemed to be picking out boring movies.
I don't like sleeping, especially during the day. It bothers me for all the standard reasons.
I felt pretty wretched. Even though the sleep probably helped me heal and kept me from feeling worse it agitated me to waste so much time. I tried to console myself by thinking that I'd slept more this day than I had in any night in the last week.
I tried to get somethings done. I felt to thick skulled to remember exactly what that was, but I remember trying.
On Tuesday I woke up feeling about 40% better. After an hour I felt about 20% better and it held that way all the day.
I stayed awake the whole day. Watched 3 movies. They were all pretty dull. I mean the best of them was "Doom", that old The Rock movie based on a video game . . .
I also watched "Irma Vep" a pretty pretentious French flic that starred Jean Pierre Leaud, he the star of "The Four Hundred Blows" and all the way to "Last Tango In Paris". Now he's about 65 and looks it. He is still remarkable talented. The real revelation was Maggie Cheung. She was incredible playing . . . MAGGIE CHEUNG! Cheung is the female in a lot of Jackie Chan Movies and the good "bad girl" in the Heroic Trio movies. Her she was acting as herself as a Hong Kong actress hired to go to Paris and star as Irma Vep in Leaud's remake of Felliuade's "Les Vampyres". Leaud has a nervous breakdown who is replaced by another intellectual filmmaker who fires Cheung for purely racist reasons. It was pretty boring except for the two leads.
And I finished by watching "In Bruges" which is this Brit flic that's not as clever or telling as it seems to think it is. It was pretty boring but I did manage to stay awake.
I'm worried that my illness is worrying and depressing people.
It shouldn't.
I woke up feeling about the same way as I felt going to bed. I can cope with that without much thought or effort.