Limbodacious

Any Time Now

This Midwest way of ease, it surrounds us.
I can't deny the rhythm here.

My high-school boyfriend and I used to follow this band around.  Almost every weekend, we packed up his dilapidated Tercel and motored off to a just-far-enough-away town to hear them play.  It was a truly blissful time.  That time when you are just old enough to have some freedom, but just young enough to not have any accountability.  You could go out and cause chaos, but still run home to your parents and beg them to clean up the mess you made.

Who ever knew that life could feel so good?
I need another minute, just a moment to breathe.

We even got to know the members of the band.  One time before the show, I told them that my favorite song was a more obscure one that they never played.  That night they played the song and even "dedicated" it to me.  Dancing with the man I thought I'd be with forever, with a hot quasi-famous singer crooning my favorite song... I felt like a princess.  The luckiest girl in the world.

Amazing how we all want this life a little more every day.
It's crazy how we pick ourselves up just to let us down anyway.

My ex and I have reached a point where I can now recall these moments without a surge of anger or sadness, and enjoy them for what they are - really good memories.  But it's not him, or the music, or where we were standing or how we got there.  It's the feeling, the feeling of having all the time in the world. Driving without a destination, loving with no end in sight.  We have so much time, let's just enjoy this a little longer...

Do you ever truly feel that it's a waste of time to live a day?
I mean, deep inside have you convinced yourself there's much more to get out of the way?

How can it be that just a few years later, nothing can be put off.  The pressure of all the things I must do is compressed into such a short time.  Appointments, schedules, duties, obligations, and there is just no time for any of it.  But back then, time stopped and swirled around the dance floor, and we told it, "We'll let you know when we're ready." 

So, over and over mile signs pass by my side.
The more you try to find yourself, the more you tend to hide.

I can't go back to that time.  I can't wipe away the frustrated melancholy that has attached itself to my life.  From now on, every beautiful thing is tinged with grey, still beautiful, but seen through the lens of pain. I may never have another perfect, carefree moment in quite the same way again.  But I can, I will, close my eyes and remember what it was like. 

I have been falling again for so long, for so long.
I've been off that track.  There's a mystery in that and it's strong...
It seems to me, you and me aren't where we're supposed to be.
We're lost somewhere on the seventh sea.
I found Time, at least I thought I did.
You slipped away, yeah you slipped my grip.
So this day I stood my ground, to wait for Old Man Time.

What's Crappenin', Or, Why I'm Moving to Canada

It was good while it lasted.  Yes, friends I have been dumped.  Oh sure, I wasn't "dumped" per se, but I cannot meet the ultimatum set forth.  Really it was just a ruse to get me to do the dumping so I get to look like the bad person.  I thought things were going well, sure we had that rough patch last year, but I really felt like we were getting better, we understood each other more.  Didn't even have the nerve to tell me in person, told me in a letter, a LETTER!

"Dear Ms. Loyal Customer for the Last Five Years,

We have reviewed your file with our company, and due to the number of claims on your medical policy, your monthly premium will be raised to $1,218.00 per month.  This change will take effect in thirty (30) days."

I know what you're thinking... surely, Rae, you must be exaggerating!  We all know you're prone to fits of hyperbole when enraged!

But I am sad to report that although the letter itself has been paraphrased for the reader's ease, all numbers are accurate.  And in case you live in some sprawling metropolis where things seem to be excruciatingly expensive, some perspective: Uncle Sam, my only source of income, is currently paying me $400 per month.  Our rent is $700 per month.  I am also sad that my condition is still - still! after nearly two fucking years - listed as "catastrophic" rather than "chronic."  The only difference is one of those determinations leaves me essentially blacklisted from getting future insurance because it would be considered a "pre-existing condition."  I'll let you guess which one that is.

"We find your continual use of the services for which you pay us irritating.  However, we do not wish to make it possible for you to take your business to our competitors, so after careful consideration, we have determined that screwing you up the ass is the best course of action.  For us, of course."

I am not usually a vengeful person, in fact, many would even describe me as understanding and forgiving.  But this... this.  This is a disgrace, an action so cruel and heartless...

My gyn/onc is forever giving me referrals to weird specialists "in case" I want to check out some side effect or another from treatment.  Well, I am cashing them all in.  All of them.  I am going to milk my awesomely awesome insurance plan for the thirty (30) days that I still have it.  Neurologist?  Sure!  Cardiologist? Why not?  Dermatologist?  Better safe than sorry!  Ear, Nose, and Throat Doc?  Might as well!  Oh, and now that I think about it, I did want that second opinion from the Mayo Clinic. 

I know, they probably won't even notice, so as a make-them-feel-like-shit revenge plan, maybe not the best.  But all the other plans involved some jail time, so I will have to make do with the plan that makes me feel incredibly smug and rebellious.

I am probably overreacting, I know that.  Big insurance companies drop people or raise their rates all the time.  But I just feel... hurt.  The first paragraph there was a joke, but I really did feel like I had a relationship with these people.  I had this nice lady that helped me every time I called, she straightened out all kinds of messes for me.  But she didn't care, nobody there does.  To them I am just a bad investment.  I feel betrayed.  And totally alone. 

It didn't help that immediately after receiving the letter, I had to go to the dentist's office (another office visit, in your FACE insurance company!), where there was some blurb saying 50% of all bankruptcies are due to medical expenses.  And now in a few days, I will have to go tell the doctor who has been fervently campaigning for my life that I can't pay him anymore. 

While the dentist was ruthlessly scraping out the decay and rot, from chemo, in my mouth, I went to a very dark place.  I realized that now on top of not being able to afford my car, my food, my clothes, my apartment... now I can't even afford to live.  Literally.

I wish I had some funny, snappy way to end this post, so I don't bum everybody out thinking Poor Rae... But I don't, the only thing I can think is, this is shitty.

And So the Drought Ends

Hello, estrogen.  How I've missed you.

I have finally convinced my gyn/onc to give me some hormones!  It's scary how excited I am about this.  This is great news because I have been suffering with the following for waaaay too long:

1.  I have been extremely emotional, like crying at Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Animal Planet the very poignant foreign documentaries I am wont to watch.

2.  I have terrible mood swings, act like a bitch, and basically treat everyone I know like shit.  Hot flashes.

3.  Boyfriend and I have not had sex in three months six months my hymen has grown back in protest longer than usual.

So if you don't see me, rest assured that I am fine, and just out having sex having sex dammit I can't think of anything but sex kayaking.

Newsflash: Blogger Will No Longer Recognize Texas as a State of the Union

Texas Bans Gay Foster Parents

That is it, Texas.  We should have let them be their own nation when we had the fucking chance.

In Dog Years, I'm Dead

Boyfriend and I were sharing a quiet dinner at home.  We discussed the events of the day, and he asked me when a good day was to have our friends, The Banker and His Wife, over for dinner.

I pulled the calendar off the fridge... Monday he has to work late.  Tuesday I am doing some electrical work at my father's business.  Wednesday we are going to my mother's.  "Ummm, Thursday might work, as long as we can do it early, I have an 8am doctor's appointment on Friday."  We nodded in agreement, Thursday, early evening.

The thoughts slowly brewed to a boil in our heads... all our friends are twosomes, for every day an obligation... our eyes lifted from the calendar and our matching flatware to each other in a moment of realization.  Oh my god, we are adults.

I don't know when it happened.  It seems like one day he was skipping out on his classes to sleep in at my house, and the next we were calculating mutually-agreeable percentages of the monthly bills for each of us to pay. 

I never pictured myself this way at just 21.  I thought I would be carefree and reckless until at least 25.  But here I am, staring down an impending mortgage and fielding endless questions about whether we are "gettin' any ideas?" at weddings.  Were my expectations of an extended youth misguided? 

I blame cancer.  I really do. 

Slight digression.  When I was diagnosed, Boyfriend and I hadn't been dating very long.  I told him, if he wanted to walk away, if he had any doubt that he could handle this, that he could get out now scot-free.  I meant it.  I knew that we couldn't just be a fun, new couple with cancer in our midst, it would be a serious relationship.  I'm definitely not one for ultimatums, but I knew he had be really be in this with me, or not in it at all.  Luckily for me, he stayed. 

But I didn't think that I was facing the same ultimatum with myself.  That you simply can't turn back to the days of blissful ignorance once you have borne this responsibility and seen your own mortality in action.  That in undergoing the pain of sustaining your life, you leave childhood behind.  I didn't know it was an either-or proposition.

I remember having so many things I wanted to do.  I wanted to be silly and frivolous.  But now those things seem so... well, silly and frivolous, and I've got more important things to worry about.  And while I guess I could just go out and do something totally irresponsible just because I never got to do it, that seems even sillier and counter-productive.

Don't get me wrong.  I like having a beautiful apartment, with nice furnishings, and a feeling of security with Boyfriend... responsibility surely brings some wonderful rewards.  But every so often, I will look at myself and think that I am not exactly the person I was supposed to be.  That I skipped over some substantial chapters in the Book of My Life. 

I wonder if I sound foolish, if people older than me are thinking, "You're 21!  You're plenty young!"  It does feel strange to make the decisive statement that I am all grown up already.  I know I'm young, just not young at heart anymore.  Sometimes I catch myself saying about some silly person, "What is she, like 19??"  It seems ridiculous, I am hardly older than her in a quantitative sense.  But in experience, in what has happened in those years that separate us, I feel decades away from her. 

So I am going to start marking my age in cancer years.  For every six months of cancer life, I will add a year and a half to my age.  Therefore I am about to turn 26, which puts me back on my previously mentioned adult-at-25 life track. 

I feel better.  All that "age is just a number" stuff is bullshit.  Things make more sense, being 25 and all.  Now I can say, "Man, where did the years go?" instead of, "Man, where did my life go?"

More Things to Worry About

Please read:  "Better Dead from Cancer Than Having Sex"

I must gouge my eyes out.  I couldn't have just read that.  No, this cannot be true.

Oh, but it is.

Menopause Meets... Puberty?

As much as it pains me to admit this... you probably hate me.

I was popular in high school but not bitchy-cheerleader popular.  I am naturally thin no matter what I eat or how much I exercise.  I did not gain any weight when I hit puberty or menopause, and my boobs are disproportionately large for my body.  Even though I washed my face with Ivory soap, I got through the entirety of my adolescence without one blemish.  I aced all my classes even though I never showed up.  Ok... am I that girl you hated in high school yet?

Don't worry... you are about to get your revenge.

I don't know if it is the hormonal changes, or chemo, or what, but I am having a spell of terrible acne at the time when everybody else is getting over it.  Plus I can not keep my hands from picking at them, so even when they clear up there is one of those nasty scars.  And now that I am on Doxil, I am pretty much red and puffy all over.  My skin is hideous. 

Go ahead, laugh and point as I get my karma handed to me.  Had a nice, long guffaw at my expense?  Good, now help me.

What products help acne?  The prescription drug for it interferes with some medicine or another that I am taking, I can't remember which one.  Plus I think it may cause depression?  My gyn/onc recommended going to a dermatologist of course... although I am desperate, I am not 1,000-bucks-a-pop desperate. 

Come on, it will be just like the after-school special where the popular girl is crying in the bathroom stall because she got her period and the misunderstood loner-by-choice girl helps her, and they become bestest-best friends forever!  Ummm, without the period.

Okay, fess up.  You were the cheerleader in high school weren't you?

Repent Ye with Bigoted Bumper Stickers, Or Ye Shall Perish in an Intentional Motor Vehicle Accident

Thank you for your kind comments on yesterday's post.  I slept off most of the morbid thoughts, and am now progressing into the rage phase of my existential crisis, which will swiftly cycle into the manic-upswing phase.  So bear with me.

Today a car passed me going at least 90 mph, with a multitude of bible-banger bumper stickers (say that three times fast).  As the driver and his infant daughter in a car seat in the front of the car flew by me, I was shocked by the sticker that encompassed the entirety of his front and back driver's side car doors.

JESUS HATES SIN!

Ummm, is that so?  I never really picked up on any relation between Jesus and morality.  Thank god you were there, Mr. Unsafe Bigot Driver!  I am saved!

Do these people actually expect to elicit a drive-by spiritual awakening from other drivers on the highway?  Do they really think they are helping people by broadcasting their religious views in this fashion?

Of course not.  They don't give a shit about your eternal soul.  They just want to show the world that they are better, and to inform everyone that all you non-white-upper-middle-class-Protestant-militant, abortion mongering, towelhead faggot, reasonable sons of bitches are going to HELL. 

Well you know what asshole?  I don't believe in hell, so take your antiquated, holier-than-thou, baby-endangering, intolerant, war-loving, fire and brimstone BULLSHIT bumper stickers and shove them up your ass.  After you remove the stick, of course.

And by the way, your daughter is so going to be a lesbian Democrat when she grows up.  If you don't kill her, that is.

Don't Hate Me Cause I'm in Denial

I have been a bad, bad blogger.  I know I have just been writing these short, silly posts and not talking about anything substantive.  I have been trying to distract myself from That Thing I Don't Want to Talk About, but... I guess the time has come. 

Stop!  This will be super depressing.  If you can't handle that right now, stop reading here.  By the way, I am not morbid, or hopeless, or whatever.  All questions are rhetorical.

The Thing is my tumor markers going up.  I thought not thinking about it would be best, because I can't really do anything about it besides worry myself into a panic attack.  But attempting not to worry about it has become quite a worry itself and... well, either way I'm on a crash course to mental instability I guess.

My gyn/onc assures me that Doxil causes the tumor markers to go a little haywire at first, and it probably doesn't mean anything.  But, I have seen a lot of chemo regimens crash and burn before, and this was always the first sign.  So I guess my objectivity is, well, non-existent. 

The possibility of Doxil not working is not, in and of itself, the upsetting thing.  The upsetting thing is that I have pretty much exhausted all treatments options known to man, and this one was my last-ditch effort.  If it doesn't work, I am pretty much screwed in the worst possible sense.

I will have to acknowledge the fact that I may never get better.  At this point in my mental conversation with myself, my thought train derails and goes to the scary places.  Places where you have to ask yourself the hard questions. 

Do I want to continue treatments if I know they won't work, and only make me miserable?  What have I done with my life?  And the truly unbearable... Could I die content with what I have accomplished?

I happen to know the answers to those questions.  It's not finding the answers that's hard, it's finding the strength to ask yourself.  I don't know yet if I need to ask them of myself, it's entirely possible that I won't.

But I know it's possible that I will, too.  Sometimes the weight of that knowledge bears down so hard on me, I feel like I will be crushed by it.  I will never know if I am going to live to be 80, or if Death is just taking his sweet time coming around the corner. 

And that can play some major mind-fuck games with you.  That's why most of the time I ignore it.  Maybe some people think that's avoidance, or whatever.  But no matter how much I obsess over it, trying to reconcile the issue with myself, none of my efforts will ever tell me whether I am going to die or not.  So what's the point of wasting all that energy? 

So, like all idiot humans confronted with something this difficult to get a grip on, I ditch my tried and true pessimism, throw all reason out the window, and "hope" for the best.  I hope my bloodwork comes back better, I hope Doxil works... it makes me feel like I am doing something to help, chipping in. 

But I'm not.  I'm not doing anything that will affect the outcome one iota.  It reminds me of the question posed by Carrie in a surprisingly insightful episode of Sex and the City... "Is hope a drug we need to go off of, or is it keeping us alive?"  Do I face the worst case scenario head-on and try to resolve it?  Or do I keep plugging along with blinders on, counting on the divine powers that be to throw me a bone?

Who the hell knows??

Odds 'N Ends

Even though my unpublished drafts are piling up on me, I am totally digging Louise's overview post, so I am going to copy her.  These are the things I would like to mention, but don't feel like writing a whole post about.

1.  Had chemo today.  Uneventful.

2.  My current obsession is teaching the dogs to swim.  Well, watching them swim.  It took all of five minutes for them to "learn."  I am going to try to put up some pictures of that soon.  Tres adorable. 

3.  Infections galore from surgery, arm, blah blah blah.  Not feeling too hot. 

4.  Trying to quit drinking caffeine.  So if you think I seem a little snarky... no, it's not your imagination and yes, stay out of my way.  Much more on that later.

And finally... this idiot who for some reason clicked on the site of someone on the totally opposite side of the fence (PUN OF THE DAY!!!).  Debbie... is that you??