So in February of 2023 I left a 20 year career in comics to do ?!?!? something else. The joke I made so persistently that people believed it was "leaving to start a podcast about how much I don't like the movie 'Avatar' by James Cameron." I did not start this podcast. I will never start this podcast. It will simply remain a performance piece that is constantly running off-off-off broadway wherever people gather and I am there and "Avatar" is mentioned in any way.
I would like to be very clear that my plan was NOT to find out that I have cancer and then spend the year doing that. But here we are.
My attitude at this time is primarily "wow I'm glad I got that mammogram" mixed with "this is very inconvenient" mixed with "I don't know why people are being weird about this I have cancer, lots of people have cancer, I'm going to go through a pretty aggressive treatment regimen because OF COURSE I am going to do that, it's not REALLY a choice, like it's technically a choice but one choice is waaaay worse" and "please stop trying to introduce me to people you know who also have cancer, I promise I know so many people who have cancer." (Friends who have cancer, please, I would love to hear whatever stories you want to tell me. Because we are friends. We can also talk about not-cancer! I love to discuss my other interests and hobbies, and yours as well!)
With that said, I am trying to accept all gestures in the spirit in which they were intended. It is, apparently, very weird when you find out that someone has cancer! There's a lot of flailing. That's fine. I appreciate that I know so many people who care about me and want to help. Also when the person running my chemo teach (a session where I learn about chemo!) said "so if you want to have visitors" and I cut her off and said "oh no thank you" and we just skipped the entire section. No thank you! I'll never know! Just let me play video games in peace, treasured, treasured friends. I love you so much. From a great distance.
The only thing I'm maybe angry about is that I am a person who has taken the pandemic very seriously. I continue to take it very seriously. I haven't really spent any amount of time indoors unmasked in public settings in like three years. And very, very few people in hospitals these days are wearing masks. So that's...complicated. It's fine. I'm angry about a lot of things (not the cancer, actually) when it comes to the pandemic, so this is a thing I was already mad about, and now I get to look at it. Apparently if my white blood cell count drops low enough, people will mask around me. Which is...something? I appreciate it? A COMPLICATED TIME TO BE A PERSON GOING TO A HOSPITAL A LOT.
So what's with this blog? I don't know. I think I'm going to forget things, I think my attitude about things may change (or maybe I'm going to get it 100% right from the start! An incredible achievement in cancer-having!). I'd like to be able to get these thoughts out of my head, and maybe I'll look at them, maybe I won't. I'm certainly imagining future me looking over these posts and going "wow you really thought it wasn't going to be that bad" and no, future me, I KNOW it's going to be REALLY BAD. So far it's been ok, though.
Very quickly: Mammograms: kind of uncomfortable, over pretty quickly. Not that bad (for me). Biopsies: I don't like them! They're very poky. Not too painful, just weird. And the lymph node one was sore for ages. MRIs: the contrast feels really cold and these are extremely loud. I also almost fell asleep in my first one. They feel very much like a science fiction movie. I don't hate them but I might change my mind on this as I have two more tomorrow morning very early. CT scans: the contract on these suuuucks. it feels unsettlingly warm and I was very aware of my heart for a couple of seconds in a way that I didn't care for. Yes, I have mentioned this to a medical professional in case it's important. It's fine. Nuclear bone scan: takes forever! not loud. I...also may have almost fallen asleep in this one. Port insertion: anxiety-inducing ahead of time because I kept worrying I'd forget about when I had to stop drinking alcohol or eating food and consuming liquids. Also there's a lot of waiting at the beginning. And a pregnancy test (boooo) and a blood draw and an IV line. The actual surgery? I was OUT. General anesthetic. Which wasn't too bad, came out of it well, a little groggy, a little sleepy. The surgery site feels pretty ok. I was expecting more pain, but it's just a litle achey. I did have a breathing tube (not completely intubated but at the back of my throat) and I've definitely been spitting out a little blood from that. Again, though, not too bad. I was also not nauseated at all, which was super cool. I basically went and took a long nap and didn't do much and it was a good day. The night before I had screaming nightmares about getting stuck in an elevator and missing my appointment and having to reschedule everything so I probably should have taken some anti-anxiety meds, but maybe next time! So that's everything so far. It's been ok. I have a great medical team, I live 15 minutes away from the hospital, I have good insurance thanks to COBRA, I have enough money that I'm not maximum stressed about that side though this is America so it is still a cause for the occasional panic attack because ANYTHING is possible here but mostly only in bad ways, but what I'm trying to say is that I'm just very, very lucky. So this is where I'm going to blog about my medical stuff, my mental state, how I'm thinking about all of it, how I'm handling it.
So if you're reading this, you probably know me, and you're interested enough in what's going on with me that you're reading this VERY long post. The tl;dr is I'm good. I'm happy, I feel good right now, I'm going to go through a bunch of stuff, and the hope is that I come out the other side in reasonable shape and ready to finally start that "Avatar" podcast.
