There isn't a title. It never begins.
Can't
believe
how
hard
this
is.
What happens when Bob's Burgers is over? When I have binged all of them? Like I did with The Great North.
Back to watching cartoons
Like I used
To
Only now
Mr.
Rogers
Is
Dead.
Someday I will be, as well. Perhaps I will see him in dead land. Or maybe death is like surgery, where you seem to simply not be present in reality anymore.
I think about my fate. Everyone has one. Mine stands and insists.
It assures me that someday in the coming years or decades or weeks, I will cease.
Then, I will live in dead land. Maybe.
Or be in the surgical nothingness of eternity.
It's August
Already.
---
The blonde-haired girl writes poetry. She gets up at 4AM and works on her novel.
I don't know what it's about. Hopefully it's not some long screed about how awful I am.
I do my best not to be awful. Sometimes "best" isn't nearly enough. I know.
---
I am full of poisonous drugs. They show up at my house, delivered unsuspectingly by the post, a box with warnings. Warnings for healthy people.
Venclexita
No kidding. I have to rip off all the warning signs to get to the stuff. It may as well be plutonium. I think I need certification from the NRC even to be in the same room as those pills.
They must be kept away from children and pets, and healthy people.
I'm not supposed to be near healthy people for 2 days after the infusion.
I, alone, am allowed to consume these tablets.
They hurt. Little pills of hurt.
My body is a war zone between the natural process of cancerous self-destruction
And the modern genetic chemistry of mankind.
I'm in the crossfire, taking hits from both sides. All of this ages me. Years go by in days. Months in hours. I get grayer. Smaller. Skin sags. Eyes cloud.
If I was my own pet dog I would expect my owner to be steeling himself for the inevitable, final vet trip.
I mutter these things when I'm talking to my doc. It's not that I want his sympathy. I just want the truth as he knows it: yes, we have hope. All medical procedures offer hope.
But I learned how to talk to doctors, as so many of my friends are them.
This works:
"Doc, in your experience, when someone has what I have, how long are you still seeing them for appointments?"
I once asked that of my father's oncologist. After he refused to give me an answer to "How long does he have?" he answered that question.
"Days," he said.
Turned out to be hours.
---
But this is monoclonal antibody stuff that didn't exist when dad had leukemia. I learned that the mile-long generic names of these drugs aren't just the spew of overimaginative marketing people. They're descriptive.
If the name of a drug ends in m-a-b it means "monoclonal antibodies."
Monoclonal antibodies bind to and kill specific things (hence the monoclonal term). In theory, they teach your immune system to kill things it might be blind to.
I go to the hospital, and they pour a liter bag of obinutuzumab into a vein. That stuff is supposed to train my immune system to kill leukemia.
The dangerous pill-form drug that comes to my house quadrupled sealed like a bomb core, strips leukemia cells of a protien that makes them immortal.
And then my newly armed immune system can kill them directly.
That's the theory, anyway. (It actually sounds pretty cool to me.)
Unlike chemo, which is simply a means to poison cancer cells - killing you (mostly) in the process, this stuff is immunotherapy.
If anything kills you
It's yourself.
---
At the moment of my father's death, according to my brother, my father said, "This is good. I'm ready to die."
We could only imagine the pain he was going through to make him say that.
Or.
Maybe it really is ok. Maybe that was his parting gift. To let all of us know.
It's ok. It's what's supposed to be.
---
I have a very hard time holding a thought. There is very little in me that wants to write. I have no wish to document this. I'm doing it because the blonde-haired girl insists.
Writing is what I'm supposed to do, apparently.
At least
According to her.
---
But I am not close to the end. I'm just on the path. The Gazyva will allow me to jump off, temporarily. I mean, nobody lives forever.
Really.