In addition to the chemo induced fatigue, not much of desire to eat (and what I do eat is largely soup, cream of wheat cereal, pudding, Boost, juices, etc.) and the constant pain in my calves and feet, I have a cold. On a scale of 1-10 I am at 1. The weather is cold and cloudy with periods of rain, snow or hail. In spite of the woods being full of buttercups, the purple and yellow of the crocuses around the house and the obvious budding of the serviceberry bushes, it seems that Spring is still a long ways away.
On the way to treatment today I was reading the paper in the car. Anymore you don't need a whole lot of time to read the papers, unfortunately. I peruse the headlines to see which ones deserve reading, go over the Opinion Page, the comics of course and the obituaries. Generally in the obits I am interested in seeing how many of the people were WWII veterans. One today described an older man who had been diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, Stage IV, three and a half years ago and how he had "battled" and "fought" his "war" against cancer, a "hero". I asked Peggy not to ever describe me in that manner. I served in a war, I'm not a hero. I have cancer and I go through the treatments, I'm not a hero.
Returning home I spent the day on the couch and in my chair watching episode of the BBC program, "MI-5", a British spy craft series. After Peggy returned from visiting our daughter Caryn and the girls, she fixed dinner. I got out of my chair, put a couple of logs in the fire, climbed the stairs and went to the bathroom. I was so out of breath that had to be a "squatter". How utterly useless you can feel at that point. We talked about it and Peggy said how hard it is to watch me suffer. Being down, with the fatigue, the eating issues, the pain in my legs, having a cold, the depressing weather, it's not easy for her to be on the outside of all of that. But she's there, trying to get me to eat and drink liquids, taking medications, doing the chores I don't do. I feel as sorry for her as she does for me, I suppose. There are so many things she wants to do and here I am, a bit of an anchor.
After dinner I came back down to my lair and picked up my ukulele. I have had it for four months and while I have made progress I will be the first to admit I have a long way to go. That's OK, I am enjoying it; I can play a number of chords and move my fingers over the frets to play a few songs.
One of the songs that I am working on is "Harvest Moon", by Neil Young. I think it is a wonderfully sweet and romantic song . I was going over a little part of the song which is simply two chords and the three chord refrain, "And I'm still in love with you, I want to watch you dance... again. Because I'm still in love with you, on this harvest moon", then the refrain. I played it several times, singing quietly along and then the flood began. I just cried and I cried, as quietly as my singing, to myself, alone.
I am not very good at expressing my feelings, I know. What was this outburst about? Love. Loss. The future. The things I don't talk about very much unless someone asks me directly or when I am talking with my counselor. Why is it so hard? Some of it was the modeling of my parents growing up; some of it was the training while I was an intelligence agent and then as a counselor. As a counselor I always encouraged my students to talk about their feelings, but it must have been one of those "do as I say, not as I do" kind of things. If it were just me that was effected by that approach, it wouldn't be so bad, but it was a disservice to Peggy and still is. We are a strange lot, us humans, aren't we?
Dave, I just read this today, after I read your decision making blog. The contrast is striking. You were so down before you went to Boston and though you aren't exactly jumping with joy now, at least you aren't crying into your ukelele. It sounds as if you have hope and hope is a wonderful thing that can keep us going for a long time. By the way, you don't want to be called a hero, but to someone like me, you are--or should I just say, heroic. To me it is heroic to keep on in the face of pain. Maybe we are all brave, maybe we could all do this if faced with it. I hope so.
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