Well, what to say about the last little few weeks? Here are few tag words for the Google search… Frustrating, Manic, Unnatural, Wet, Funny, Depressing, Angry, Fearful, Hopeful, Confusing, Supported, Encouraged, Desperate and Puppy… Well... everyone likes puppies, right?
New Years was stupid, as it usually is unless you’re out at a party or for dinner with your girl or friends. My girl and I watched the clock turn twelve for a while on City TV until Rob Ford came on stage and, realizing that my cancer was only part of the problem of the year ahead, we shut if off and hugged for a while and then went to our various beds. Sigh.
But what a day or so we had after we got home from the Catheter removal party... I quickly found out what every two-year old knows instinctively. Peeing is not optional. For the first couple of days there is absolutely zero control. Your window of opportunity (unless you want to sit in a plastic bag) between when it vaguely occurs to you that you might need to urinate and when the flow starts is about 7 or 8 seconds. The furthest room in our apartment is about 5 seconds away from the bathroom. Running would get you there in maybe three but running is not an option right now. After the first couple of wild streaks I was honestly thinking about getting them to put the catheter back in. How could I live like this for any length of time? It made me think about what it would be like if I was really old or poor or had no one to help me as I have Brooke. It wouldn’t be worth hanging around if you get my drift.
These have been the darkest days so far. I truly don’t know where I am going with all this. During this time, I have had some emails from friends, or friends of friends, that have gone through it all and have risked re-visiting this gloomy time to give me some words of wisdom and encouragement. Bless them for their concern. Their input has been wonderful. But my tolerance levels have still sunk to minus values. I am angry at everything and this whole stupid, messy business. I am angry that I have to wait to February to find out what new hardships may await or whether I am going to be on my way with life ahead. Everything and everyone pisses me off, even my cats (the poor innocents) and yes, even with my loving Brooke who has done nothing to warrant the petulance or thoughtless self-indulgence that sometimes escape from me.
Is this to be it? Are the rest of my days going to be about piss and pads and worrying about how far it is to the next bathroom? Even if my reports come back negative, can I live out the next twenty or thirty years like this?
Still, there is some funny to be had. Well, come on… you have to laugh sometimes. It’s so absurd. I sink into funks about my process and daily frustrations and then I think about people who really have it bad. Who are living with not just these physical humiliations but with crippling pain and with no hope at all other than stretching out the inevitable.
Just before my operation I had accepted a job to write a humourous presentation for a dental supply company. I am amazed to find that I can still come up with jokes for this group. Well, hey, dentists… it sort of writes itself. Also, returning to the blog-writing helps and as I watch the words flow out onto the screen it helps me step back and see it, if not for what it really is, at least as it might appear to me in a different frame of mind. Maybe I’m writing it to myself for later on. I don’t know. Up and down, up and down.
During the last few weeks we (the showbiz community) have lost at least four people that I know of to cancer. Every time it comes down the pipe, people are reeling. The other day I told Brooke when she got home that our friend Peter Donaldson had succumbed to lung cancer. All she could say was a loud “fuck!” What else can we say? He was a great guy and a really good actor. A week before that Gina Wilkinson, more a friend of Brooke’s than mine, but a well-known and loved actress passed away from cervical cancer. Graham Harley… pancreatic cancer. And there were others in this time, too, that I don’t know but by name.
And hiding in there, too, is that perverse imp that sticks its head out from behind the sorrow and chirps in with “Hey, pal, your chances just went up statistically…” You can’t help yourself…
Your priorities get pretty messed up during this thing. You try to stay focused on the meaningful and what you know to be true and right, but the never-ending, dawn to dusk, in-your-face obscenity of it is that you are treading water. You are walking on a line that could snap at any moment and send you, as it has so many others, out into the void, where the best that can be said of it is that maybe there will be peace of some kind there.
Me, I’m not ready for that kind of peace right now. I still have some trouble I want to make.
Well, it is January 26th now and next Tuesday (Feb.1) I will be getting some pathology reports. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, the incontinence situation is improving. Doing my Kegel exercises, but not really as many as I should. (Did I tell you about those? You draw all the muscles you can find down in your groin, upwards into your body and hold for 7 or 8 seconds. This hardens the pelvic floor muscles and hastens healing of bladder control supposedly. ) I’ve done a couple of short jobs out in the studios and a couple of weeks ago we even went down to the boat show. For four hours! Mind you, the convention centre has lots of bathrooms. But still, I had the energy to do it and even had fun to a large degree. We do this convention every year and it helps break up the dreary winter. This year was no exception and was especially welcome. My strength is coming back and with it my attitude is mending to some degree. There is still a lot of fear and doubt and I go through periods where the worry of it is hard to dodge. Sleep is difficult and even though Brooke has been brought back from sun-room exile, I still have to get up in the night and find my way there sometimes to stem the sleeplessness.
The day after I had the catheter out, we had a sort of drop-in for a few friends and family. I was sort of worried that this was too close to the procedure, especially given the frantic nature of bathroom needs, but it turned out okay and nobody got pissed off… on...
We have had a couple of people over since then too, for tea or dinner and each visit is positive and although I dread it beforehand, by the time it is over I am glad it has happened and get a charge out of it. So…maybe things are getting normalized to some point. I don’t like to get ahead of myself though. There’s still February One to get through.
Yesterday my friend, Mike Davidson, contacted me as he had heard about my condition. He, too, had some issues in the last half of last year. He found an 8cm tumour growing inwards from his sternum. They had to cut this away and repair the 'palm-sized' hole in his chest with wire and bone plaster. This they did and despite the painful procedure he's doing okay now with zero margin issues. (Margin issues, as I understand it, is a situation where the cancer has lingered in the area where the offending tissue has been removed. In my case, for instance, where the prostate was connected to the surrounding tissue. This is the most likely problem spot.) What a year.
I am including in this post a rather revealing photograph of my surgery area so you can get an idea of what's what with regard to where the entry port in to the inner realm that is Adrian, actually is.
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| A readers guide to Adrian's guts |
Today (January 29) I had a coffee with Rob Hawk, he of the Thyroid Cancer, and he is now 5 years clear and next Friday heads to New Orleans to celebrate. See... New Orleans... that's what you have to do. It was cold today and kind of bleak, but I had an early audition for an animated movie out of Mexico and then Rob and I met up to exchange thoughts about this whole wacky cancer thing. It's good to talk about everything, especially with someone who's been there and I appreciated it. Not unlike my conversations with Ben Campbell and John McFadyen, both of whom have had Prostate Cancer and are surviving nicely. So be encouraged, you of the League of Rotting Glands. There's light up ahead.
See you after February the First. Either way...
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