Personal Journal

Unpleasant Futures

Time for another journal entry, I think.
So damn much spinning around my head all the time. Avoiding financial ruin like dodging bullets. Jean possibly degrading. Not pulling my weight at work and feeling bad about it. Jean and I laughing about silly stuff. Beautiful weather. Good music. Wondering what the rest of the year will bring. Hoping, praying, fearing.

Jean’s been having a tough time with double vision, to the point where she can’t do much of anything later in the day. It’s one of the most serious issues impacting her morale. When you feel almost blind, and you become isolated to what you can hear, you get upset, depressed, frustrated. We pursued doctors about it this week. Yesterday they brought her in for a blood test, saying it sounded like classic low hemoglobin symptoms. I thought so too, so I was hopeful that this would reveal what she needed to fix it. The blood tests showed that her hemoglobin is normal, so it’s not that. Jean’s two primary oncologists weren’t around, and the one backup who was, we hate. He’s the one who, the first time he met her, told her to get her affairs in order because most people with this cancer live a year. Regardless of the statistics, you don’t have to tell someone that like you’re telling them where the parking garage is. Anyhow, he was the one that they consulted, and he only offered that he didn’t know what it was.

Naturally, I fear it’s the cancer showing itself, about six weeks after the radiation ended. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s related to her mega-dose of chemo two weeks ago, but you fear what the worst issue is. And I admit that I’m pretty scared about it.

The biggest piece of shit in all of this is that the path before Jean is going to dehumanize her. It’s going to destroy her brain, and nothing else. I can’t imagine how scared she is, and I know how scared I am, but in some ways I’m immunized. At least for now, I am. As the future gets worse, it’ll sink in to me and I’ll be sick inside from it.

Jean asked me two or three days ago, “Would you be mad at me if I killed myself?” It’s a question I knew would come. And I had to tell her the truth. No, I would not. Imagining what terrible destruction cancer is going to do to her brain, her ability to control her body, to relate to the world around her, and even to think within her own mind, I know that I’d rather take my own life before the worst of it took over my life.

I’m not convinced this is going to kill Jean. I still hold out my hope. I pray. But I’ve always found the statistics of science a good comfort regarding the limitations of my universe, and unfortunately, I know the statistics of this cancer. We may live with it for a long long time, if we’re very very lucky. But we’ll never get rid of it. Not unless a miracle cure comes along. I pray for the legalization of fetal stem cell research, and I understand now how the people who believe in the right to assisted suicide feel. I can’t tell Jean any good reason why she should let the demon of cancer eat her from the brain outward, not life insurance, not the afterlife, none of it. I hate those thoughts. I pray to god with all of my might that he instills in me the ability to be a comfort like none on earth have known. I must be the reason for her to have faith, and I must be enough of a soul to bring peace to hers, and I don’t know if I can.


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn