Fear, or the Lack Thereof

I’ve never been afraid of cancer. Both my parents had it; my mother and older sister died from it, as did my paternal grandfather. When my diagnosis came a decade ago, I wasn’t scared, I was—in a strange way—relieved. Now that it was iut in the open, I could begin to deal with it.
In time the illness made me feel dirty. I had a difficult time explaining that to friends, to a shrink, to members of support groups. As I went through biopsy after biopsy, some negative, others positive, as cancer solidified itself in my life, I grew to accept it, resent it, be ashamed of it. It made me feel physically unattractive, as if I wore it like soiled trousers. I got angry at the pain it caused, at the embarrassment of having to flee to a restroom after a bout of chemo and, on at least one occasion, not making it in time. I dreaded the biopsies because each required two or three weeks of painful recovery time and, somehow of deeper concern, each called for total anesthesia. I was and remain persuaded the body is not designed to be put to sleep with chemicals, that this practice causes long-term harm and may damage the brain.
I wrote about it often. For a while, doing so made me feel better, more whole and less troubled. I could even write with a degree of objectivity that has long since departed. Now, I hardly write at all, about cancer and other afflictions with which I share life. It hardly seems worth the effort, and I believe the readers who follow this blog would prefer to be offered lighter fare, sort of like the Facebook inundation of cute puppies and winsome kittens.
I was fortunate to have friends who drove me to and from the procedures and, before COVID, listened as the surgeon told them of possible side-effects. On more than one occasion, I was driven and picked up by my life-long friend Paul, and I am persuaded the medical staff believed us to be an old gay couple. They were kind and compassionate, telling Paul that I might be constipated for a time and that my libido might suffer. Paul nodded soberly: Yes, of course, he understood… I could see his chest shaking in repressed laughter—a rare moment of levity in the post-op room.
Right now, the battle is to get my kidneys to behave. The immunotherapy I did for more than a year has apparently damaged them, and they’re shooting out creatinine at an elevated level. I have to deink three liters of water a day, and as a result visit the men’s room hourly. It’s ok, I can do that.
Facebook, ever watchful, is now running riot with ads for highly absorbent men’s underwear. It’s so nice to know someone cares…