www.cancermonster.net

I was raised in America’s Southeast, where getting hit by lightning might make the evening news, but only if you come away from it with supernatural powers. Here in Oregon, they report the mere existence of a lightning bolt escaping from the heavens. Getting hit by lightning here would be headline. The chances are so slim because lightning strikes so seldom.

The chances of a person, any person, developing a cancerous tumor of any kind is high. More than one in three if you believe everything you read. Getting cancer is like lightning just happening in Florida in the summer between 1:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon. Getting a sarcoma is harder. Sarcomas are like lightning strikes in Oregon. They happen, but not very often.

Getting a Sarcoma in your left butt cheek is like having lightning strike you twice in an hour while walking down the city streets of Portland.

It doesn’t happen. Except to me. Go figure. I am one in a billion. How about that.

As I walked through the treatment center today, I once again took stock of all the literature and books available. Breast Cancer, Colon Cancer, Cervical Cancer, Prostate Cancer and on and on goes the list. All very nasty Monsters. Terrible fights all around me.

No books on Sarcoma. No books on Muscular Cancers. Nothing at all about butt cheeks.

Soft Tissue Sarcoma means the tumor is in support and connective tissue like muscle, fat, nerves, tendons, joints, blood vessels, or lymph vessels. Only about 1% of all cancers out there are Sarcomas. Most of those, about 50%, occur in the limbs. 40% happen in the trunk or abdomen. 10% occur in the neck or head. Where is the left BUTT CHEEK in those numbers?

I am that single tree on the hill.

Today, the Lovely C, who was in on the simulation poking, returned from her vacation. She asked how I was doing, how was the pain. I gave her the standard line: “I am fine, how are you?” As long as I take the pain medicine on schedule, I am fine . . . so far.

“Well your smile is big!”

What else can you do? It hurts my face too much to frown all the time. It hurts my spirit too. So I try to smile and shrug it off in public.

Except when using a scooty-cart at the grocery store. You have to look sad and achy when running people down in a scooty-cart or people just think your lazy. If you own your own scooty-cart, you can be jolly. No one lugs around their own Hover-Round just because they are too lazy to walk. It would take too much work . . . And lazy people. . . Since I borrow the store’s scooty-cart, I save my smiles for outside the grocery store. Very few people are giddy about groceries anyway. So it’s all right.

I presented H with a little wire and paper flower doo-dad I made this morning as an apology for telling her yesterday that I secretly called her names during the tattoo session. “I was just joking around, I didn’t mean it.” I shouldn’t have said that I called her names. I did. But I shouldn’t have told her about it! She hugged me and said that she hadn’t taken it seriously. I couldn’t take a chance that she might be secretly mad while poking around back there again. I had to cover my . . . well you know what I mean. She is the one doing the zapping afterall.

And Zapped once again I was. Seven down, eighteen to go.

On my way out I met up with BB and had a nice chat about motherhood. And then Dr G stopped me to ask how I was feeling. I was limping slightly. That concerned him. I told him that as long as I take the pain pills on schedule and not try to be brave and push through the pain, I do much better. In the beginning, I listened to all the well meaning warnings about getting addicted to the narcotics in the pain pills. I have had chronic pain for years and have had a hard time getting pain pills from well meaning doctors. I have learned to manage my pain with a certain amount of acceptance and a whole lot of OTC anti-inflammatory drugs. But the CancerMonster kicks the FibroCreature’s own tail when it comes to pain. Without the narcotics, the tumor pain is debilitating. So I have no choice but take the narcotics.

Dr G explained that “they” have done studies on cancer pain. The chances of a cancer patient getting addicted to narcotics is as slim as . . . as getting a Sarcoma in the tush. And pain inhibits recovery.

“Yes, I read that book.”

“Oh, good. Take the pills.”

The book I referred to is from the American Cancer Society. (publication number 9498.01 version II/August 2005) titled Cancer Pain - Treatment Guidelines for Patients. I definitely recommend it.

I so enjoyed making the little paper flower for H that when I returned to my inny apartment, I decided to bring my art supplies into my room and make some more for the rest of the crew. I have nothing else to do anyway until tomorrow’s alien ray gun session.

Nothing else to do except one thing. I need to find a fall back location in the Portland Metro to move the family motorhome after my surgery. This may be needed if I can’t do my rehabilitation on the coast. Dan says he won’t be without me more than the five weeks of radiation.

Dan is my “Split-Apart.”***

We are all doing what we have to for the fight, but there is a limit to the time our hearts can take being apart from each other. “Split-Apart” souls, once united again, can’t be separated for long.

It’s a rule.

.

.

**Some believe that in heaven, one soul is divided into two. Separated into two lives, the two parts must find each other again in order to be whole once more. Each half is a “Split-Apart” of the other.