I had just confronted death while laying in my bed on the cancer ward. I had decided death is out of my hands and if it happens, so be it. I had a huge weight lifted off of me when I realised I may very well be dead any day now. It had terrified me before, but now I was fine. Why would you fear something totally out of your control and will undoubtedly happen one day? I didn’t know what happens when you die, so it was a beautiful feeling releasing the stress of it. I was perfectly content at that moment if my body was to lose the battle. Fear is a motherfucker, it controls our every move, whether we have it or release it. Fear of the unknown, what people will think of us, not being accepted, etc. How much does fear control you? I know it sure plays a big part in my life. Generally fear is accompanied with loss. What was I afraid of? Losing my life? What is life exactly? Family? Relationships? Love? Pleasure? All of those. It is scary to lose all of those things. You are never entitled to anything in life, not even food and water, so losing anything is out of your control. Try to look at every single thing you have with gratitude, even a glass of water. It was never yours to lose.
Around this time it was the beginning of April 2006, I was laying up all night not sleeping. I couldn’t stay asleep, I would fall asleep for 20-30 minutes and then be up all night. Anyone that has experienced this knows how horrible it is. Sleeping is when your body heals and immune system strengthens, but also equally important, your brain. Our brains actually heal themselves and sort through low levels of brain damage while we sleep. Think of a computer that has all kinds of shit in it and never gets updated or restarted. It starts breaking down and screwing up, same with our brains. I couldn’t think straight, I was emotional, and I got really frustrated and upset. I knew the stresses of the time and the horrendous beating the chemo was doing to my body, for being the main reason of not sleeping. On the third morning of this, I woke up to a very sore throat, like very bad, I couldn’t swallow without wincing in pain. I knew it was time to go back to the hospital but I didn’t want to seem weak, so I didn’t say anything.
My whole life I felt that I couldn’t show weakness, or what I perceived as weakness. All my hurting and emotions I kept inside. I think it came from having a mother that was nowhere near ready to be one. She was a hurting little girl with 4 kids at 22 years old. I remember when my parents split and we moved to another city, I was 4 years old and my mother was 24. We moved into a duplex, my mother and my 3 siblings and I. Dallas was oldest at 7, Landon 6, I was 4, and Hailey was 2. Hailey and I would go to a home daycare while our older brothers went to school. It was my first experience at a daycare and it’s impact shaped me into a child that had no self worth and felt unloved. The lady running the daycare treated Hailey and I like we were a fucking disease, largely leaving us to fend for ourselves. She made 1 meal for the other kids, like macaroni and cheese, and give Hailey and I whatever she had left over in her fridge. What kid likes leftovers when there is mac n cheese to be had? It made me feel so alienated, and question why can’t we have the good stuff. She interacted with the others but only really talked to us to give commands. She had a constant negative energy towards us and was never friendly. When my mom picked us up the lady would act like everything was just dandy. I didn’t understand why we were treated like this and just made me think that’s what everyone thinks of me. Around this time my mother had boyfriends coming and going. It was hard to feel safe in your home and trust your own mother when there was strange men around and she put you in a daycare where they treated you horribly. These 2 pinnacle experiences wired my brain into survival mode early on, constantly thinking I was unsafe and had to look out for myself at all times. I think it shaped the severe anxiety I would also develop. Science now says your personality is shaped by the time you are 7, your brain starts it’s permanent wiring process at birth and is largely shaped by your early life experiences (although you can “re-wire” your brain with hard work). Childhood trauma can actually greatly slow down brain development. So imagine a child that is living in constant trauma, how do you think they are going to develop? Maybe if we’re constantly telling kids they have ADD, ADHD, anxiety, and depression, just maybe you want to reconsider what that means and why they developed it. (Although, I can’t help saying that to blanket diagnose mass quantities of young people is in it’s self another topic). I developed my anxiety, learning disabilities, relationship issues from living trauma in my childhood. Not having anyone to look out for me, not feeling safe in my home, not feeling safe with care providers, not getting affectionate touch, all created this.
Those early experiences in my childhood greatly effected me in a school setting. I found it extremely hard to learn, I couldn’t connect the dots a lot of times. I could see stuff in my head but didn’t know how to write or say it. I would read something and not know how to make it into sense, and I didn’t understand what it was saying. I would be told how to do something, and struggled with putting it into words or action that I understood. It took me decades to connect these 3 pathways of learning, and I still greatly struggle with it. I still have a sore spot to “feeling” or “looking” dumb. My teachers and other students used to call me dumb and said I would never get anywhere in life. This was further amplified by my mother and step father constantly belittling me about my report card and homework. No one understood, including myself, that I had too much background noise and my brain was too busy looking for threats and dealing with severe anxiety to concentrate in school. I didn’t give two fucks about school, I was trying to survive and worried about what was going to happen to me when I went home after school. The school system created a snowball effect because of its many failures to address and identify what was really going on with me. It drives me fucking crazy when I hear teachers belittling kids in their class for being distracting, not caring, not learning, you have no idea what is going on with that developing mind. Teachers should be taught more about trauma and how it effects brains and a little less of the nonsense they are forced to learn in university. And through it all, I kept it all bottled up and in, fearing to show weakness or lose control, which leads me back to going to the hospital.
I eventually couldn’t take the pain anymore and I went to the emergency room. This was my first experience with the ER staff while on chemo. I had a hard time not getting angry but I tried my best to put myself in their shoes. “This young complainer just walked in with a sore throat, what a pussy!”, is what I felt like they were saying. They didn’t take me very seriously. I learned from the cancer centre that I should be telling any health care worker I was dealing with, that I was on chemotherapy. So I informed them, if they couldn’t tell by looking at a bald skeleton, my blood work was not good, and my white blood cell count was near 0. The first nurse I dealt with, left me in the waiting room. I waited a short time then informed her that I shouldn’t be around other people when I had no immune system. I felt like such an asshole complaining and telling her how to do her job, but I had to look out for myself. She put me in a observation room where I waited 8 hours. Yes 8 hours of sitting in a chair to eventually get my blood taken. I tried explaining to my direct nurse that I should be in a private room with minimal contact with other humans, and she told me the doctor has to see me before anything happens. I finally have the doctor come in and he asks me a few questions and treats me like I’m wasting everyone’s time. I’m not trash talking the hospital staff, they have very difficult jobs, however I was so god damn frustrated at this point, I would have went home if my life wasn’t literally on the line. A few minutes after the doctor left, a beautiful angel (a nurse) came in my room apologising. She told me that my blood work had come back and that I should shouldn’t be around anyone. She lead me to a private room with a bed and told me that no one is allowed to come in without a mask and that it was very important. She wrote a sign on the door saying not to enter without authorization from her and everyone was to wear a mask. I loved her to pieces. At one point I had a lady come in to take my blood again, they were trying to find out if I had an infection and whether it was from my body or my hickman catheter. I informed her she needed to wear a mask because I had no immune system. She said. “It’s fine, I’m going to be quick.” I was so pissed off, but I was too weak to talk shit to her. My health wasn’t a real concern to you because you are going to be “quick”? Fuck you, I thought. As she left and shut the door I overheard that beautiful angel start giving her shit. I loved her even more.
There was one point during that April in 2006, I was laying in the hospital convinced I wasn’t going to last another week and I got angry as fuck. Angry that I didn’t have a mom around like my friends did to take care of me or comfort me while I was dying. Like was that too much to ask? For a mother that was present? It seemed everyone around me had one. I use to have a few pity parties here and there. When I did, I used to think “What a waste of my time, stop whining about it”. I used to get hard on myself for my internal complaints. I had a hard up bringing and I didn’t feel I had anyone, so that has translated to me being a super hard ass today. I have very little patience for people that whine and complain, including myself. You are allowed to have pity parties but keep them short and sweet, then look forward.
I had lost 50 pounds in just over a month. I had started chemo a pretty average weight at 175 pounds for my 5’9 height. Now, just over a month later I was just over 120 pounds. I was skinny as fuck and fragile. My whole body ached all the time, I could barely pull myself out of bed to go to the bathroom. It truly did shock me how fast our bodies breakdown when we don’t use them. How crazy is it that a healthy 22 year old man can be bed ridden and lose most of there body shape in such a short amount of time. It didn’t help that I had sores in my mouth so bad at one point all I could do was drink freezing cold fluids to numb the sores and pain. I had quite a setup going, I had jugs of ice, water, and ginger ale. I would stir the ginger ale to make it go flat faster, it would destroy me if I drank a carbonated drink. As the ginger ale got flat I would dump ice in that jug and pour another ginger ale to start stirring again. I felt like a chemist stirring and mixing drinks. As I drank that ice cold ginger ale it would numb the sores in my mouth and throat so I could get something down without serious pain. Eating food was totally out of the question at this stage of treatment. Think of trying to eat and swallow food with your throat full of sores and incredibly painful. Even the powerful opiates I was on didn’t take away that pain. To this day, I LOVE ginger ale.
Writing about Life 