An Honest Post from the Pits of Despair

Yesterday I met with a new oncologist, Dr. Sana Jeffreys, who works out of Aurora Cancer Care in Kenosha.  I found her sort of by magic after oncologist #1 threw me into a fit of rage and made me swear off Western medicine FOREVER.  Dr. Jeffreys gave me a tiny inkling of faith that not all allopathic doctors are messengers of Satan. 

During the time that I had been seeing the first oncologist, Dr. Treisman, I began taking a number of homeopathic remedies prescribed by my primary care doctor, Dr. Kamsler.  My rebel hippie heart had hoped that these remedies would work fast enough that my CT and PET scans would come back miraculously void of cancer.  I had been reading about the evils of chemotherapy and radiation, and had decided I would not be taking part in that toxic scam.  When Dr. Treisman called me "stupid" for asking if he could recommend an alternative to chemo, it empowered me all the more to throw my fist in the air and say, "fuck the system".  I came home that day and jumped on my trampoline for an hour with Refused's Rather Be Dead blasting from my speakers:

Rather be dead than alive by your social values

Rather be dead than alive by your tradition

Unfortunately, this actual feeling of death and mortality has been looming heavily over me lately.  When I was still teaching, it was easy to ignore a lot of the physical pain and discomfort I felt on a regular basis.  No time to cry when you've got three boys wrestling in the back of the room and Ana's got BabyBel cheese wax stuck in her hair.  But now that I've stepped away from my job, reality has set in that I have a massive lump swelling out of my chest.  I'm short of breath and veins bulge out of my neck and ribcage where they shouldn't be.  I have night (and day) sweats so bad that I sleep on towels and change costume multiple times a day.  And perhaps the very worst thing is that I itch--head to toe, inside and out, nonstop, all day, everyday--so that I cannot get even a moment of sound sleep.  

Yesterday I had to admit that I don't have time for my alternative dreams to work.  Hodgkin's Lymphoma is curable with chemotherapy, but if I choose not to do it, I won't have a long life ahead.  Anyone who knows how deeply melancholic I am can attest to my casual attitude toward death.  But I don't want to die a sweaty, itchy mess.  I don't wanna die with body builder veins protruding from neck.  I wanna die with my fucking fist in the air.  I wanna die in an apocalypse hurricane.  I wanna die from spontaneous combustion.

So I'm not ready to say it yet...but I'll do the thing.

The wishes of the soul are springing
The deeds of the will are thriving
The fruits of life are maturing

I feel my destiny
My destiny finds me
I feel my star
My star finds me
I feel my goals in life
My goals in life are finding me
My soul and the great world are one

Life grows more radiant about me
Life grows more challenging for me
Life grows more abundant within me.

Rudolf Steiner