I haven’t written in a while. I haven’t shared in a while.
I recently got asked why I stopped writing. Why I stopped giving updates.
The honest answer is that writing about yourself is hard, specially when you don’t have the most positive outlook on yourself and your current situation.
The fact of the matter is that I have Stage IV Cancer. Adenocarcinoma. I have it for the rest of my life, and it is affecting my everyday life. Every morning I take nine pills/vitamins to get my day started, and that doesn’t include the blood thinner shot my wife needs to give me before she leaves for work.
Having cancer absolutely sucks. It is a suck on the body, and it is a suck on the mind.
It has been a been of a tough go.
I am on Lexapro now. That is an anti-depressant for those who don’t know. I have suffered through some dark periods in my life, and the cancer has exasperated many of those threads in my personality. Being on Lexapro is strange because it takes away the highest of highs while also minimizing the lowest of lows. No longer do I cheer when the Patriots score one of the few touchdowns this season. It’s more like a surprised “wow” sensation, and it’s not just because New England as a team is terrible. For example, I was watching the hail mary throw from Jayden Daniels against the Chicago Bears live in my living room and all I did was look at Emma and utter “wow”. She was more in awe than I was at the ridiculousness of that play than I was.
But it is a trade off. I need those extreme lows limited because they have started to creep into my head more and more over the last couple of months.
The last Stanko Update I wrote was back in September, just after I had finished radiation therapy on my back. Now I am here in early November, putting my fingers to work again, and my back is still an issue.
The radiation therapy did not help my back. Even after the month, the doctors said to give it, my back is still acting up on me. When the pain first started to really amp up again, I was told that I needed to get injections into my back of a steroid that would kill a nerve near the spine. This would supposedly help with the pain.
It did—for about a week. And oh, what a week it was. I thought I was going to be able to go back to work and start doing normal things again. It didn’t hurt to bend down and feed the cat. Sure, I was stiff, but the improvement was remarkable.
But then the pain came back.
I woke up on a Saturday, a day when Emma and I were going to attend the UConn homecoming football game. The back was bad in the morning, but we persevered through the achiness. We were going to make it. We got to the tailgate spot, and the pain was worse.
And can I tell you one of the worst parts of this day? This day that Emma and her brother planned so diligently for nearly 20+ people to enjoy?
I had to watch my wife load the car full of all the tailgating gear. The tables. The grill. The two coolers. All the food. All I could do was stand there and offer my moral support like an absolute bum. Then we get to the tailgate, and she has to unload it all and set everything up. I do what I can putting out chips and organizing the tables, but I should be doing something different from what I should be doing. Meanwhile, every time I try and do something, I have someone telling me to sit down and relax…and the sad part is I needed to.
I broke down in tears at one point in the tailgate because I needed to take an Oxycodone pill for the pain. It was the first time I had to take one since the injections in my back. I was a prisoner to a lawn chair, parked far away from the chips and salsa. I couldn’t mingle around and be part of different conversations. I couldn’t partake in any of the drinking games. I couldn’t even get up to get myself my own burger or hot dog.
It was humiliating. I broke down. I went into the car and had a moment to collect myself. I had serious doubts about whether or not I would make the game.
One amusing note: the way the Chassagnoux tailgate timing works compared to my own is way different. What do I mean by that? We didn’t get into the stadium until the end of the first quarter. Meanwhile, I like to be there for the introductions and the national anthem. However, on this day, it was not the biggest of deals because I needed the time to muster up the physical and mental strength to shuffle over to Rentschler Field.
We did not make it the whole game. We left at the end of the third quarter. Thankfully portable chairback seats were brought for Emma and I, and that greatly alleviated much of the pain that would have come from just sitting on cold bleachers. As it turned out, sitting right in front of us were four old men in the 70s, clear season ticket holders, and they all had chairbacks as well. I was with my people.
With the pain in my back increasing, one would think I would not be as gung-ho about going into work the upcoming Monday. Your logical brain is right, but I had to try and go for myself because I had promised myself that I would. I wanted to make it a full short week. I wanted to work Monday through Wednesday because I had Chemo on Thursday.
I made it one day, and I barely made it a day.
It probably doesn’t help that I returned on the busiest day in the New York office in a long time. It isn’t every day that a coworker’s livelihood and working arrangement are up for a vote.
While I was at work, there was a two-hour window when my body was shutting down. I was sitting down in the control room and watching my coworkers try and bang out an audio issue, and all I could do was sit still and listen. It felt great to be amongst the chaos, but I could not do anything in the chaos; I was like a gull flying against the wind standing still and making no progress. I wanted to chime in and help, but my mind and body were in a different place, trying to get the energy to continue on with the day.
There was a point when my boss, who has been oh-so-patient throughout this entire cancer diagnosis, asked me how I was doing. I had to be honest with him and tell him in the moment that I was not doing that great. That is something I never thought that I would do. I am used to being the crash through a wall to get things done and work till your body fails you. But what if your body fails you before you have a chance to start?
I got home from work that Monday and disintegrated into Emma’s arms. Tears were coming out my eyes before the door closed behind me. My back, my whole body, and worst of all, my mind could not comprehend doing that workday and the commute again.
It is not fun when sometimes your back acts up to the point where one is collapsing in pain in the kitchen and someone needs to race out a chair to help catch you from falling.
It sucks. It is beyond frustrating.
So, why have I not written about myself lately? It’s because it is frustrating as hell to be living in captivity of pain. The idea of putting words down to try and capture this annoyance is not appealing to me. I am living through something I never thought I would have to, and I have to watch those I love adjust their lives to my inabilities.
It is so much easier to give understanding than to ask for it. I am in the position of having to ask for grace from so many people because of my condition. I am irritated that one day, my back can feel okay and be tolerable for 12 hours, only for the next day to wake up screaming at me like a child who just had a nightmare.
It is hard not to feel defeated when you have no way of fighting your enemy. That is how I feel with the back pain, and that is how I am feeling overall with my cancer. I wish I had the rah-rah FUCK CANCER spirit, but the reality of my situation is that it’s hard for me to get up for the fight. It is getting harder for me to get up every morning and feel motivated to do something. It is getting harder for me to see the light at the end. Is there one? I don’t know.
That’s why I haven’t been sharing. I don’t have much to offer except for chagrin.
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