4 full weeks of treatment, Monday through Friday; 24 hours of nausea; only 3 to 4 hours of sleep; getting up 5 or 6 times each night. 4 weeks of wearing down, of worry, of anxiety.
The treatment continues to be more difficult with each day. The fatigue accumulates; the body doesn’t fully recover with the few days of rest. Each time there is more death inside; more cells that are lost, white blood cells diminished, pounds lost, additional organs affected.
One of the most difficult blows of this fourth week was having to lose my training. I was left without B-63 until the treatment is finished. While I was injected with the chemotherapy on Monday, February 20, the doctor informed me that my platelets (responsible for the production of white blood cells and regulating coagulation) were at worrisome levels. Compared to the level of platelets a healthy body should have, I had less than a third.
I was informed of the risks of hemorrhages, open wounds and injuries that the body would not be able to arrest or heal, since the production of cells that help with coagulation was seriously diminished. The result: any exertion could cause a hemorrhage, external, or more seriously, internal, that could cause a lot of complications and, for this reason, I was order to stop attending my daily training sessions.
As you’ll remember, B-63 had become a motivation for me. An aspect of my life that helped me to remain cold, objective, with my mind fixed on the result; a way of showing myself that my body and mind can still reach goals that seemed impossible. In that moment I realized, once again, that I’m sick; that even though I want and try to hold on to with all my might, I CAN’T live my “normal” life as though nothing were happening. My body was demanding rest and I didn’t want to listen. I was so focused on trying to live a “normal” life, that I forgot to pay attention tot he signs my body was showing asking for a pause in the excessive effort that I subjected it to.
That’s when I realized that the concept of “normal” is a lot stronger than I wanted to realize. The implication of the word goes much further than it’s simple meaning. We hear the word and immediately think of the context that we have pre-programmed of what is “normal”. Is being healthy normal? Is exercising normal? Is being tall, short, white, brown, Catholic, married, gay, normal?
I am undergoing one of the most aggressive treatments that man has created to treat an illness, and I am not just talking about the type of chemotherapy that they are giving me, or whether it is combined with radiation therapy. What I am trying to transmit to you is that cancer treatment is in itself one of the most aggressive. It consists in injecting a person with a series of chemicals focused on killing the cancer cells, but what we often don’t realize is that the sick cells share almost exactly the same genetic structure as the rest of our cells. So, the idea of the treatment is to kill all of the cells that act like cancer cells, which means that little by little, day by day, they are also killing us on the inside, in the hope that the cancer cells die before the rest of the body. This sums up the treatment: play with the combination of chemicals that are more aggressive against the cancer cells than to the rest of our cells, hoping that the first die before the second, and thus we survive treatment.
When I realized this, I was forced to accept that for me, in this moment, feeling tired, sad, unmotivated, unable to exercise, suffering from low levels of platelets, is my new “normal”. That trying to live my life as though nothing were happening, was maybe just a self-defense mechanism to try to ignore a reality that I never wanted. I have cancer and suffering the effects of the treatment is NORMAL.
After this blow and the exercise of accepting it, as always, the calm came. I understood that it is NORMAL that I can’t exercise; normal that I am nauseous all day every day; normal that my wife, my mom, my family and my friends are worried every day about how I am doing; normal that the people who know what we are going through are available and try to help, even if only a little, with our recovery, in any way that they can.
I understood why I no longer enjoy those 20 minutes that I walk every day from my office to the hospital to receive treatment. I understood why, in spite of having the good fortune of working in my favorite neighborhood in the city, full of restaurants, shopping malls, parks, people, pets, joy, music, bars and atmosphere, it didn’t cause the same reaction of happiness each day. I understood that the fact that people pass by you in their cars, on their bicycles or walking, completely unaware of what you are living through and probably not caring, is NORMAL.
But this normality also opened my eyes to another reality that I had forgotten, even though I always thought that because of my personality I never would. I am talking about empathy; that human characteristic that allows us to identify with the suffering, the worries, motivations and emotions of others. In those 20 minutes that I walk each day – due to my conviction, not necessity – I have learned to appreciate the little details that show empathy between us. Why someone shows gratitude to a driver or cyclist who stops to let them pass when crossing a street; or the person who stops just to say “good afternoon”; the person who takes 5 minutes out of their busy day to help someone else cross the street or recover a fallen object. In that moment, you realize that this characteristic, which is rarer by the day, is something that can make us appreciate the world more and be better.
I have seen that it’s not necessary for everyone to know what I’m going through, or to read these lines, or be interested in my case, to show empathy. But those 20 minutes each day have helped me to appreciate all of the caring and empathy of those who do, every day.
The fourth week has definitely been the worst up to now, Wednesday and Thursday continue to be the most difficult, since that is when the treatment is at it’s highest point. But at the same time, those are the days when I receive the most support.
I am starting the last two weeks of the initial process to combat the cancer with my hope recharged, with the dream that the end could be near. The strength and motivation aren’t fully renewed, but I continue, in this daily fight to reach the end when only one remains, US.
Mario
March 1, 2017