Know Your Audience and Rough Patches

I’m scared today. A lot has happened over the past 8 months that has scared me and continues to do so, but this is kind of different. I’ve been presented with realities like “you have cancer”, “you have a tumour”, “you have a blood clot that must come out”, etc etc etc… No brainers basically. This is what you have and this is what we have to do to intervene at this point. No major choices to make.

First of all, let me tell you that I had a shitty week. I spent Monday through Wednesday in the Surrey Memorial Hospital emergency ward because of shortness of breath. Some other stuff happened too, I think, but Wendy would remember that better. I felt shitty, to say the least. I may have been getting pneumonia, I’m not sure. They eventually drained almost a litre of fluid from the space between my right lung and rib cage. I felt better after that and was released. That was a long, boring and somewhat traumatic 3 days. It kind of wore me out for a number of reasons. I won’t get into them at this point. I’m tired of complaining about them. Lol.

On Friday I was given a choice to make that can and will affect the rest of my life, however long that may be. Based on the tone and comments made by Dr. H., he was suggesting that I don’t have much time left (that’s where knowing your audience comes into play). He even commented on Wendy’s enthusiasm with respect to my recovery and laughed. It didn’t really sink in until after the appointment. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this in the past, but that’s a major peeve of mine when visiting specialists. They make me feel like death is right around the corner and they are here to help me get there in relative comfort. The problem is, I don’t want to die right now, and I was hoping they could help me get through this rough patch until the next one. Clearly we don’t see eye to eye.

Okay, wait a minute. I just got sidetracked. Here we go again…

On Friday I was offered a chordotomy, which involves severing a nerve in the cervical spine to eliminate pain on the right side of my body. It is a permanent procedure. There is no going back. I am apparently a good candidate for the procedure as I am in palliative care and my pain relief threshold through narcotics has been reached. Blah, blah, blah.

The reason I am scared is simple. I want to pull out of this death tailspin and get back to living, but every Doctor I see makes me feel like “this is it. The end of the ride is near and it’s time to get off.”

The chordotomy will remove the sensations for temperature and pain on the right side of my body, from the neck down. That means down my right arm as well. That means it may affect how I play the guitar. As I write this I see how stupid that sounds but it’s still really important to me. I don’t want to be in pain and I hope the procedure works, but it may mean that I won’t be able to feel guitar strings anymore. I’m not sure. The Doctor seems to think that I’ll be fine and should feel them but no one is 100% sure.

Another reason I am scared is because I can’t seem to pull out of this tailspin right now. The mental one and the physical one. I can usually pull out of the mental tailspin pretty fast. I would like to think I am mentally strong but this one is dragging on and on. I see my body melt away in the mirror and I watch the numbers on the scale go down everyday, and I have to admit I feel like my body is failing me. I get focused on that and then I can’t get back on the mental fast track. I’m finding it really hard this time around. Maybe that’s why this chordotomy thing is bugging me so much. I don’t know.

So if anyone out there has some spare mental strength they can throw my way, I would appreciate it. I’m having a really hard time right now. This has been the roughest patch so far.