[8-01-08] Bacon, Bacon, Cancer

[12;44pm]
     Really tired this morning, so I slept a bunch. These hospital beds are great! On a normal mattress, I can get about 5 hours before my back starts hurting. On my special mattress, 7 hours. In here, 11 and a half hours!
     So nausea doesn't appear to be an issue anymore. They started me on this drug called emend -- that stuff is bad-ass. With these anti-nausea meds, this chemo is a cake-walk... other than getting a bit tired now and then. Oh, and I found out the "super secret privilege" for those in the oncology ward: you can write whatever you want on the menu, and they'll try to make it! Awesome, huh? I hope they have hanging tenders and pepper jack sausages :P But I didn't want to push my luck, so I just ordered a bunch of bacon.

[6:00pm]
     Yawn, just woke up again. Now am I just being lazy, or is it the chemo? I vote chemo, because then it isn't my fault! Other than that, it's been a pretty good day. They started the cisplatin about an hour ago, and no nausea yet! So I think adding the emend made a big difference.

     I keep telling the nurses and whatnot about my term paper, and yet I haven't really worked on it. It's hard to care about stuff in that "other" world. This is my world now, a world of tubes and chemo, and repetitive (and extremely annoying) beeping sounds, a world of friendly nurses who not only give you the medicine, they give you some good company. Where does a term paper fit in to this world? In fighting for my life, of what importance is technical writing? Oh well, once I leave the hospital, I'm sure I'll be able to return to that world and finish the paper.
     But there's a point to all this. When I was first diagnosed, I didn't want to be "cancer boy." I want to be "Austin, the lazy UC Berkeley student", or "Austin, the musician", or "Austin, the computer geek." But cancer? What an ugly thing: cancer. Cancer isn't attractive, or something to be proud of. And I certainly don't think I'm brave or courageous for doing something anyone in my situation would do. I don't want to identify with cancer. I want to be me. So, back then, I simply got chemo, went to school, and pretended everything was fine.
     It worked, for the most part. And that was good, because school propelled me forward. It was a positive distraction, and something I could be proud of. But now, the game has changed a bit. Things have gotten more serious, and there's really no way to hide the fact that you have cancer when you're sitting in a hospital bed with tubes attached 24/7. As for school, my month in Stanford will make that impossible. Nope, no way to hide it. I am "cancer boy" now.
Even this blog will attest to that.
     But there's an upside. I'm so amazed at the level of support I received from everyone -- it seems I'm loved. And this is a little vacation for me. I mean, I get fed three times a day, I get to slack on the internet all day, read the books Liz got for me, or watch the 1TB of movies Barbara downloaded for me, or work on my *ahem*midtermpaper. I can't be bored, and despite the situation, everything's pretty low-stress.
     This whole thing has allowed me to step back and look at my life. Re-evaluate my priorities and whatnot. If I could do anything in the world, right now, what would I want to do? Where would I want to go? In addition, the lack of deadlines, or career ambition, or financial anxiety... all that's been funneled into a drive to beat this. Fighting cancer is swell meditation. It's probably healthy.