Losing Myself
We are all ghosts of a sort, the aftermath of something that occurred before and the potential for something new. What we call “I” is a perspective in which we attach narrative. That narrative and perspective from moment to moment is a constantly shifting thing, there are big shifts and little shifts, large and small deaths. What we refer to as death is perspective shift, when our narrative becomes a part of something larger and more vast than ourselves. Last January 2024 began a large perspective shift in my life, the beginning of a pilgrimage that I am still on, one that has lead down a path to a self I no longer recognize for better or worse.
Symptoms that I had ignored for a long period of time had become impossible to live with. After definitively listing off what I had been experiencing, a brief exam confirmed that it was very likely some form of colorectal cancer, and an emergency colonoscopy was scheduled. The colonoscopy confirmed the worst and just like in a movie, my wife was pulled aside and told that her partner, (who was very high at the time) likely had stage four cancer. This was confirmed a week or so later with a follow up sigmoidoscopy; I was diagnosed with Adenocarcinoma, or stage four rectal cancer with liver and lymph node metastases. Further testing and a liver biopsy happened, followed by a port surgically placed in my upper chest for chemotherapy. Shortly thereafter, a career as an art teacher ended and a cancer treatment experience began; which has included twelve cycles of chemotherapy, (I’m currently going into cycle ten), RBST targeted therapy, and 28 cycle of radiation.
It took some time, but I eventually accepted my predicament; that it was late stage cancer, that it would not be curable at that point. The idea was to live with it for as long possible, while simultaneously undergoing these aggressive, and yet palliative treatments. This past December, after completing radiation, re-staging scans and another sigmoidoscopy took place. These confirmed that my cancer had been significantly contained, and that a complete response in my liver and lymph nodes had taken place, changing my treatment plan and subsequent prognoses.
I am now a candidate for a surgical resection, or LAR, which is the absolute best possible situation to be in at this juncture. There are still another three cycles, or a month and a half of chemotherapy treatments, followed by more “re-staging” scans before a potential surgery could happen. If the surgery goes well, I could find myself in remission at some point. There are a lot of “ifs” “and “could Be’s” here, and I am mindful of the fact that at stage four remission is often a brief interval, before a reoccurrence of the cancer takes place. Being diagnosed with cancer and living with it has changed me on a psychological, physical, and behavior level to the point where I often don’t recognize the person in the mirror anymore. I’m not the same individual who started off this journey and am certain of further transformation as things progress, because the nature of everything is to change and transform.