Pat Cadigan's Blog, page 8

Oh, Hormones, You Are Merciless…

Yeah, they just don’t quit. I’m a swamp when I wake up. More hours of daylight seems to mean more hot flashes. Flashes, did I say? ‘Flash’ implies something that lasts a minute or less. I’m having hot episodes.

I like to think that I’m feeling the side effects so acutely because there’s so little cancer left, and those crazy little hormones gotta go somewhere and do something. I used to try to follow a policy of not sweating the small stuff. Well, now I sweat all the stuff.

But I can stand it. It’s life––messy, sloppy, not always tidy or comfortable or presentable, even kinda smelly.

Love (and sweat) like you’ve never been hurt (or cold); work (and sweat) like you don’t need the money (for anti-perspirant); dance (and sweat) like nobody’s looking (horrified).

Cancer Dancer

…is the title of my story in the anthology Dead Letters, edited by the outrageous and brilliant Conrad Williams, out next month from Titan Books.

This is the cover:

  

So you can see it’s got the quite the list of contributors. I know, I posted this last October but can you really see the cover of a good book too often? Hell, no!

Conrad has been running teasers for the book on his blog. I found this one today:

The thing about London is…

It’s teaser #6 in a series, so you can check out the other five, and wait for more.

I am particularly proud of this story. I say that about all my stories and it’s always absolutely true, because all of them have their own stories. I’m proud of this story because I wrote it during chemo––i.e., not while I was being infused but during the first half of the course of chemo. Or rather, the story unfolded and I took dictation.

Memo to editors and publishers: this was a brilliant way to put together an anthology. Let’s have some more of this kind of thing, okay?

From the Pre-Cancer Annals: The Porno In My Past

Okay, it has come up elsewhere so I thought I’d clarify something:

Yes, I was an extra in the movie  Linda Lovelace For President. 

Okay, I’ll just leave that there for a moment… 

…before I add that I was an uncredited, fully-clothed extra. Part of the movie was filmed on the University Of Kansas campus in Lawrence, Kansas and my participation was completely accidental.

I came out of a class to find the main road through the centre of campus lined with cheering students holding signs that said U.R.P. 

Spotting a grad student friend from the theatre department, I asked him what was going on. 

“They’re filming part of Linda Lovelace for President here and we’re all going to be in it!” he said, waving his sign.

“And what’s U.R.P.?” I asked.

“Upright Party, honey!”

Never wanting to be seen as less than upright myself, I immediately joined the party and cheered myself hoarse as a convertible cruised past with a beautiful woman waving to the crowds. The director did several takes while the light was still good.

Later I found out we had all been cheering Linda Lovelace’s stand-in and I felt a bit cheated. 

The film came out the following year. I don’t know how it did over-all but in Lawrence, Kansas, it was a blockbuster, with all shows sold out every night. And of course, I went to see it. I couldn’t find myself but I know I was there, fully-clothed and uncredited. However, I did spot Micky Dolenz in a bit part as a bus driver. His (very brief) scene was out-of-focus. At the time we blamed the projectionist but later I wondered if that wasn’t by his request.

And that’s the true account of the (soft-core) porno I did as an undergrad. 

That’s Right, Cancer, I Said You Better Run ‘Cause There Ain’t Nothin’ For You Here

Yes, in case you can’t tell, the level of cancer in my body continues to decline. I did a little math and the current level is 3% of what it was when I started chemotherapy in January 2015. I saw one of the doctors on my consultant’s team, a young Asian doctor that I’ve seen before. He was so genuinely happy for me, I kinda choked up.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I had the bad luck to have my cancer recur in the worst possible form but the good luck to have the drugs work better than anyone expected them to. I’d like to tell you attitude is half the battle. I mean, then I could really pat myself on the back (no pun intended, I swear) and say I kicked cancer’s arse. The truth is, I got lucky; the drugs work. My attitude lets me enjoy it.

I would like to be more profound but at the moment, I’m just kinda dazed. Six months ago, I was terminal, at least as far as anyone knew. Today I’m no longer dying of cancer, I’m living with my technicolor Doc Martens boot on its neck.

You know, I don’t think that will ever get old.

Uh, Make That The Day After Tomorrow, 03 March

In all the excitement of my terribly exciting life, I forgot to mention receiving a call from the Macmillan Cancer Centre last Friday changing my appointment from today to Thursday afternoon. I was busy being in suspense.

So, um, not today. Day after tomorrow. Oops.

Only 15 More Shopping Days––

––until my next visit with the oncologist. Where did the time go? It seemed like only yesterday I was stressing about my pre-Christmas appointment. We ended up having a celebratory Christmas Eve dinner with my wonderful son and his wonderful girlfriend. I have a hell of a lot ahead of me now and it’s all going to be hard work for good fun. I’m looking forward to all of it. I’m thinking about all the hard work I have to do, all the planning, all the writing, all the problem-solving, including problems that haven’t even happened yet. Because concentrating on all those things keeps me from working up a case of what-am-I-gonna-hear-from-the-oncologist-this-time anxiety. A couple of my fellow-travellers have had very good news in the past few months and I concentrate on that, too. Good omens. A rising tide lifts all boats. (Yeah, I know it doesn’t always work that way but when you gotta keep going, you go with whatever you’ve got.) 

Meanwhile, here’s a photo my friend Ellen took of me in Hay on Wye last month. The Silver Fox curls itself with no help from me. The fur coat is totally fake, I promise.

  

Throwback Thursday

  

For Throwback Thursday:

Me and…

…my best friend, Farfel, in our first trailer. Yes, for those who may not know, I spent my very early years in a trailer park, one of many that flourished after World War II. It was a way for returning GIs to get onto the property ladder––the idea was to start with a trailer and gradually move up to a house.

At this time, we lived in a beautiful spot in Wallingford, Connecticut. The trailer park was located well off the highway; you drove through a wooded area to the clearing where the trailers were. We all had yards to play in and a playground. The people who owned the trailer park raised ducks. I used to go down the road to their house and help the wife feed them. There was a nearby pond where wild ducks stopped over when they were migrating. I had a lot of friends and we were all free to roam around unsupervised, in a way that would have social services on red alert if you did it today. I mean, I was three when I trotted down to the duck pond to see the wild ducks. Sometimes I went with friends, sometimes I went by myself.

When things got bad and my father lost yet another job, one of the neighbours would give my mother and me a lift into town so we could hide out in a movie theatre. I remember seeing The Ten Commandments one afternoon, at an age when my mother claims I should have been too young to remember anything. I don’t remember the whole movie; what I remember specifically is what happened when Moses came down from the mountain and found everyone worshipping a golden idol.

The thing about a trailer is, when you move, packing is easy. You just nail down anything breakable and go. We eventually moved away; my father parked us behind the gas station he owned with his brothers in upstate New York. No park there; things deteriorated. Old Eternal had to call the police for help when she tried to leave. The Highway Patrol had a barracks right across the road from the gas station and they sent a couple of strapping young men to make sure we could remove our belongings and put them in the U-Haul my Aunt Loretta and her partner D had hooked up to their car. It wasn’t the first time the police had come to our house but I knew it would be the last and I was right.

The move meant I had to drop out of kindergarten but that didn’t bother me a bit. The school was also right across the highway, not far from the State Trooper barracks. Most of the kids weren’t very friendly and neither were the teachers. I overheard my kindergarten teacher referring to me as ‘that trash from the trailer behind the gas station.’ I didn’t tell Old Eternal until after we left. Old Eternal assured me she was just jealous because she was only plain old trash.

Strained days, but Old Eternal managed to make a lot of silk purses out of those sow’s ears.

Happy Birthday, Sorry You’re Dead

Well, it happened again…I wished someone a Happy Birthday on Facebook and then discovered they had passed away last year. This is what happens when you have an impossible number of Facebook friends, most of whom you don’t know personally.

Some people would say this is an example of how social media blunts the human experience. I say, it’s nothing new. Mass media already did that, and has been doing it ever since the assassination of JFK and the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was the first conflict of that nature that came into people’s living rooms with Walter Cronkite. A few decades later, we were calling the first Gulf War the First Nintendo War. By that time, the desktop computer was virtually commonplace. By the second Gulf War, a home without a computer was as unusual as a home without a telephone.

My chronology may not be perfect but the upshot is, we can’t blame social media for things that actually began with mass media. And while the human experience as a whole may be blunted, that doesn’t mean we’ve become worse, somehow. In fact, the human experience has to be blunted for us to function––we can’t feel every tragedy, every disaster keenly or we couldn’t stop crying long enough to get out of bed in the morning. Or maybe ever. It doesn’t mean we don’t care. If anything, it means we have to think, not just feel bad.

Anyway, thinking or not, I have committed a birthday faux pas. And as usual, I feel awful about it. When the person’s loved ones saw that, they probably wanted to go upside my head. Because that’s how it is when you’re on the sharp end of a disaster, whether it’s something of epic proportions or the personal loss of a beloved friend or relative. Your life has changed forever, and yet the world goes on like nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Like, WTF? The stock exchange opens and closes. The sun rises and sets and rises again. People go to work, go home, go grocery shopping, go online, tweet, check Facebook––and they can’t even take a few extra minutes to find out if someone’s alive or dead? Seriously, WTF?

I could come up with some bullsh!t about how a person is still alive in the memory of those who loved her or him. Yeah, it’s true but I don’t have any business saying that about someone I never actually met in person. There’s no good way to spin this kind of mistake and it would be weaselly even to try.

What might help is getting a notice that someone has passed away when it happens. Granted, it’s not exactly a priority for families and loved ones––”Oh, damn, Charlie’s dead––better update his Facebook status.” And then what do you put in the ‘About’ section––”Currently Works At: A Better Place”? “Personal Information: It’s complicated”?

I’m sorry. I’m not really being flip. It’s just that I spent all last year whistling past the graveyard and I’ll be doing that till I can’t whistle any more. But what I need to remember––what we all need to remember, I guess––is, everybody leaves behind people who care about them. Their feelings are important. However we speak of someone who has passed, good or bad, affects them directly. 

Me, I’ll be trying harder not to add insult to injury. I doubt I’ll always succeed but I can live with that.

It’s My One-Year Chemoversary––In Your Face AGAIN, Mortality!

That’s right––one year ago today, I started the first of six rounds of chemotherapy. My oncologist had told me the treatment was strictly palliative, because recurrent uterine cancer is inoperable and incurable. I might live about two years but it could be less. I had told her I wanted to treat it aggressively––I wanted all the meds, all the treatments, and if there were any experimental treatments or medications I might qualify for, I wanted those, too. (I have no problem with being a test subject for experimental drugs––my Aunt Loretta consented to take an experimental drug when she was terminal with breast cancer; that drug is Tamoxifen. On her behalf, you’re welcome.)

I wasn’t exactly scared of chemo. I had heart surgery when I was five; I’ve broken a bone now and then; I’ve given birth; I’ve survived septicaemia and anaphylactic shock, and two weeks before I left the US, I had my gall bladder removed via laparascopic surgery. As a kid, I had a phobia about needles but I managed to develop a work-around so that I don’t run away screaming; it worked so well, I used to donate blood regularly, just to prove to myself how tough I was. But needle phobia notwithstanding, I’ve never been afraid of hospitals or doctors. (Disclosure: I’m terrified of the dentist. Fortunately, I have one who understands me.)

In any case, chemotherapy was something entirely new to me. Paul McAuley had told me about his experience; while he had a different cancer and thus a different regime, his tips about the cumulative effects of chemo and the phenomenon of “chemo brain” helped me prepare myself mentally. Lee Wood actually took a couple of hours one night to give me the benefit of her experience and I still cannot thank her enough. Both Paul and Lee had much more intense courses of treatment but there are certain things about chemotherapy that seem to be universal: the cumulative effects, chemo brain, and chemo fatigue. (Other side effects, like neuropathy, nausea, hair loss, and loss of appetite, vary with the drugs and the individual.)

Anyway, thanks to Paul and Lee and other good friends, as well as my Macmillan nurse, I went in for my first round of chemo well-prepared but still a bit apprehensive. It was an entirely new experience and when you’re over sixty, you don’t get many of those.

The Macmilan Cancer Centre in London is a beautiful, comforting place, set up to care for cancer patients as people. Juvenile and teen cancer patients have ther own separate floor, with videogames. (I considered sneaking up there to see if they had Sonic the Hedgehog but when you’re hooked up to an IV, you don’t sneak anywhere. Plus, they’re young people with freakin’ cancer; they shouldn’t have to put up with some old lady hogging one of the game consoles.)

For my first chemo treatment, they gave me a bed instead of one of the comfortable easy chairs, just in case I passed out or something. They put a cannula in my arm, gave me some anti-nausea meds and some steroids. And the moment the paclitaxel hit my vein, I knew it. I felt different. Later I found out paclitaxel contains alcohol; what I felt, among other things, was tipsy.

The whole thing took maybe five hours. Afterwards, I had to have a scan that required me to drink something called ‘contrast’; in the wee hours of the following morning, Chris had to take me to the emergency room for the unrelenting nausea. (It’s now impossible for me to drink ‘contrast’––it just comes back up automatically but that’s okay, they give it to me intravenously).

I had six rounds of chemo, every three weeks, ending in late April, all documented in blog posts here, some with very silly photos. I was lucky––I didn’t have as hard a time with chemo as many other people do. The regime wasn’t as punishing. And I was luckier still––the palliative treatment was unexpectedly effective.

But that came later. A year ago this morning, I was getting my first infusion. All I could do was think positive. If I only had two years left, then I would do everything possible to make them good ones. But two years isn’t a negligible period of time––a lot of things can happen in the field of medicine in even just half that time. I wasn’t going to expect a miracle but there was no reason to rule out the possibility of a breakthrough––one that would let me live long enough to see a cure. 

The one thing that never occurred to me was that existing treatments might work better than even my experienced oncologist anticipated.

And here I am a year later. Technically, I am still terminal, in that my cancer is inoperable and incurable. There are four (I think it’s four) forms of recurrent uterine cancer and I have the one with the worst prognosis. But a year on from my first round of chemo, I feel confident in saying that I am terminal in name only. The level of cancer in my body is so low that there is no way of knowing how long I’ll live––just like someone without cancer. Instead of dying of cancer, I’ll be living with it.

Of course, living with cancer is like living with a grenade with a loose pin and an uneven temperament. Cancers have been known to disappear altogether, or suddenly turn aggressive and run wild. Or just sit there and do nothing. When scientist Stephen Jay Gould was first diagnosed with cancer, he was given eight months to live––twenty years later, he died of an entirely different cancer. But for every Stephen Jay Gould, there’s a Graham Joyce. 

And that’s just how it is.  The truth is, we all live with a grenade with a loose pin and an uneven temperament. There are websites and magazines and videos that would have you believe that eating enough cruciform vegetables and olive oil will absolutely prevent cancer. That’s horseshit. There are things you can do that will reduce your risk of developing this or that variety of cancer. If you don’t smoke and you don’t work with asbestos, your chances of developing a cancer caused by  those things are vanishingly small. But cruciform vegetables and olive oil won’t Scotch-Guard™ your organs against all carcinomas. Yes, you should eat healthy and get exercise––because if you do have the bad luck to get a visit from the Cancer Fairy, you’ll be have a better chance of kicking its arse.  But there are no guarantees, for any of us.

No guarantees, only chances. Right now, I have a very good chance of living for at least another five years––by which time, I may have an even greater chance of living another ten, by which time––well, you get the idea. 

But like everyone else, I don’t actually have to worry about living for another five, or ten, or five hundred and ten years. I just have to get through today; tomorrow happens tomorrow. One day at a time is all any of us gets. Good thing––I sure couldn’t have swallowed the last year whole.

2016 Progress Report

So far, so good, and the day is––well, not young but still full of potential. Or half full, anyway.

Yeah, in general I’m one of those glass-half-full people, although when someone asks, I always say that it really depends on what’s in the glass. For example, if it’s nasty-tasting medicine you have to take, half-empty is half the battle––go, you!

If it’s cheap-assed booze, just knock it over and say the cat did it. If you don’t have a cat, say it was like that when you got there. This hasn’t failed me since I turned seventeen. Prior to that, I couldn’t get away with anything.2016 Progress Report

I’m silly today.