It's not all that bad, dude.

It isn't really all that bad. There is more stress in the unknown than there is in the doing. As we are now in the dead center of the treatment it is obvious now that all the sleepless nights, all of the fights, all of the loss of appetite and certainly all of the looking over the finances to hope to pay for all of the treatment was in vain.
The drama that was inflicted was purely artificial. Knowing now what we have seen and more importantly what we understand we could have avoided much stupidity. Ignorance is not bliss, it causes an abnormal amount of heart ache. Walking around without the knowledge of the world around you is not the happiest way to live. You get conned, taken advantage of and normally become friends with other idiots who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground and alienate everybody around them.
With gusto, an example of such. Years ago Vickie and I were going to Costco, which is a harrowing endeavor in it's own right, but we were confronted with such idiocy I couldn't hardly believe it. It was during the time that Warren Jeffs the polygamist leader was arrested but before he went to trial. Now around the area where I live there are many large groups of polygamists that are about a 40 minute drive from my home. If you'v never been up there you absolutely should. I spent one Sunday at their church service and it was pretty cool, I must admit. Anyway, we were in the parking lot of Costco and there was a huge couple in front of us, I mean it looked like there were two large king penguins waddling towards the feed hole of Costco and to the left of the both of us where a group of polygamists. When the first large hippo saw the group he started to throw insults at them. "HEY! How's about your leader in jail?!" bellowed Shamu. Then his lady next to him, a woman I can only describe as bulbous, also screeched, "Yeah, I hope he's having a great time with the other inmates!" Now look, I don't care if you want to rub it in some polyg's faces that the man who married 13 year old's to their uncles is a bad thing, but these two fleshy white blobs of meat weren't abusing a group of polygamist adults, oh no. They were yelling at a group of children. A group of polygamist children, or polyglets if you will. I mean they were just at their truck playing and these two large buffet destroyers came and started to verbally bash in their skulls.
I wasn't having it. My wife knowing the look on my face took action first. She knew the world of hurt I was capable of and it could have got us in a bind, so she took lead so I didn't get too nasty, too quickly. "Hey, why don't you make fun of them next." She said to the two piles of man flesh as two large muscle bound polygamist men came walking out of the wholesaler. Immediately they desperately justified their mostly hot pocket existence. "They rape kids!" To which my wife retorted "If they sexually abuse kids, why did you think it was okay to verbally abuse them as well?" The wife/girlfriend/growth that the man was with spoke up with a voice that sounded like it was clogged with cream cheese, "You agree with what they do then? when they rape kids?" Even I didn't know what to say to that level of idiocy. I felt like I was arguing with two people with a form of high functioning Down syndrome of some sort when my wife went on. "What I don't agree with is you yelling at children like cowards." "Whatever," the woman gurgled at us. When my wife had got them in her web of logic I just sort of threw in "Is there an asshole convention in town, or is it just you two?" Which isn't very clever, I admit, but I wanted to call these mutated sea slugs assholes. So I did.
That is true ignorance. They were not ignorant about issues, but ignorance about acting like a human being and how to treat your fellow human beings. Even if they yelled at some adult polygamists, what was accomplished? They wouldn't have won any argument, they wouldn't have made any point, they would have just been what I thought of them, two fat, ugly, semi-retarded, walking butt logs.
I have been thinking a lot about that sort of thing lately. Not being a total butt log, but treatment of others and it's effects. Obviously I'm treating my wife correctly. At least I hope (Guilt!). I remember sitting at church and a man came up to us to say how well Vickie looked even during the treatment "Well, you look great!" to which I sarcastically added, "Yet, she's slowly dying inside." with a wry smile. By making the cancer a joke, I take it's power, as I've said before. But this guy had a look on his face like I had just bitten into a kitten. You can't win them all I guess. That's the thing though, I do that with everybody, because that's how I treat my friends and I firmly believe that no matter how long I've known you, unless there has been some sort of altercation between us, we are automatically friends and I start to joke like that. I don't know if it's wires crossed in my brains from when my sisters cracked my skull open when I was six. I'm not sure if it's just my ego speaking to me saying, "Who wouldn't love you, baby?!" I'm not sure, but I do know that my jokes do not come from a malicious place and for the most part I treat people quite well or at least try.
At work I have a lot of conversations with other construction guys about religion. Never fails that it will always come up, but I like that because you don't have to beat around the bush with these guys, they are very salt of the Earth. I dig that about them. In a heavy Mormon populated area, they tell me that they have been told that they need to become Mormons because "Only mormons go to heaven." Pure BS that is. Anyone who tell you that is full of it. Heaven, if you choose to believe in it, if achieved, is by how you treated your neighbors. I don't care what you have done in your religion to get in God's good graces, if you treated the waiter at the restaurant like he was less of a human being because he's "lower" than you in society, you don't get in. If you are in good standings on Sunday at church with the people who witness you worshiping for a short time in the day and at home your family is scared of what you're capable of and they hate everything you are, you're not getting in. It doesn't matter. If you treat a gay guy differently because you are so uncomfortable with your own self that seeing someone embrace what they are makes you disgusted or angry, that's on you, man.
I don't really want to get religious with anyone, like ever, but Jesus said there were only two commandments, love God and love your neighbor. That is it. You want in heaven, start treating the people around you like you are brothers and sisters, because you are. I understand there's a lot of people angry with God out there (which is absurd, all he'll do is forgive you) but how can they be happy with Him when the people around them treat them so badly. You cannot have respect for any sort of deity when the people who claim to be created by them are treating anyone who doesn't think or believe like they do, like self-righteous zealots who have a huge capacity for alienating. It seems ridiculously simple but it's an enormous problem.
Also as I see it, the treatment of your fellow man reflects on the treatment of yourself. You can toss any sort of theological argument out there if you like, but you can't argue that if you are cool with yourself you'll be cool with everyone else. Don't ever forget how entwined we are. As family, as neighbors, as a community, as a nation and as a world. I don't really mean to get all Polyanna on everybody, but I know that the good feelings and attitudes that my wife and I have projected has a huge effect on how well she's healing. Our bodies are amazing things and have a huge capacity for healing itself and with the correct medicine it can heal even faster. For now it's Vickie 1, Cancer 0. Remember, it's not all that bad, dude.

Guilt. Your new best friend.

There's nothing you can do and nowhere you can go, the guilt will swallow you whole.

When your loved one is in the throng of a cancer war you can do everything they ask. Go out and get some food from the restaurant in the middle of town because that's what they feel like. Take on every parenting duty that you can while at home, including feeding, washing and putting to bed children. Lay down in your bed after an exhausting day and listen, at length, of your loved ones day, in real time. However, even if you do all those things (which I have), if you take even one second for yourself you feel like you've just mashed a sack full of potatoes with a baseball bat with a nail through it, only to find out the sack of potatoes was actually a sack full of puppies. The guilt is outrageous. It's the same kind of guilt that Chris Brown didn't have after he beat Rhianna and then got her beaten face tattoo'd on his slimy neck. You know, a lot.
I normally do a podcast with my brothers just shooting the bull, talk about news and whatnot. It's not a huge deal but it really helps to let out the creative energy in a conversation where I get to tell stories about my brothers and make them out to be huge morons in the process. Last week as I was recording I had the pains of guilt. Did I do enough before I started recording? Did the wife need anything right now? Why aren't you doing things RIGHT NOW YOU FOOL!?
Sure it's an overreaction. A very huge overreaction, but fitting in a way. Luckily my wife only has Lymphoma. Which sounds worse than it actually is. In the cancer world it's taking a knife to a gun fight. Imagine bald Sean Connery in a track suit and a knitted cap walking slowly to a mafioso henchman towards an open balcony.
I know it sounds paranoid and stupid, but there's not enough you can do. There will never be enough you will do. You push though all that though, because if you didn't you could stress yourself into being incapable of doing anything. Throwing yourself into a depression at the situation.
But that's an absurd reaction. Shutting down is not an option because there's just too much to do. There's children to take care of, a job to go to and a wife to comfort. You shutting down will crumble the building that is your entire life. Your job is to cheer up. It's to keep spirits up and make cancer look like an idiot. Make it your bitch. I actively don't refer to the cancer in conversation. It's just an inconvenience that has happened. To name it would give it too much respect. I don't respect cancer, I don't even know it's last name. Long story short (too late), I feel guilty for not doing some, but not enough.
This week Vickie got her first taste of the side effects from her treatment. I use the word "taste" ironically as she has lost her sense of it in the last few days. How awful would that be? It's a well known fact that tasty things taste good. Top scientists have proven that. To lose such a fantastic part of your life would be horrifying. Plus, tasting things is one of the only things I'm really really good at. I couldn't imagine not tasting a well cooked steak, cheesy nachos or spicy chicken. If I had to give up one sense, it wouldn't be taste. I'd rather be blind or deaf than not being able to taste. That being said, I feel guilty that I can taste and my wife can't.
Also this week Vickie's hair started to come out. It's really slowly being lost, but those first strands were painful to witness. Talk about crap. I mean, the only good thing about losing hair is Curly impressions and I hate the Three Stooges. Also, I feel guilty that my hair is fine and seriously looks great.
I don't really feel guilty though. That's a lie I tell myself because it's an easy excuse. Like all those times I blame the smell of my living space on my children, when it was the crispy tacos I had for lunch. What I'm feeling right now is horrible for my wife. Pure and simple. I feel horrible for her place in life at this moment, being faced with this disease. I feel horrible for my children who are getting a little more discipline from us that isn't needed. They are just acting like a 3 and 5 year old, not acting bad. It's our stress that is being projected onto them. Hopefully they aren't really getting the business that badly, it's just my warped sense of direction right now. And I guess I'm feeling a little horrible for myself only because I feel so much older than I did a few months ago. Older in age and much more in becoming that thing people get when they do good in bad situations. What is it? Oh yeah, more grown up. It feels like being sentenced time at San Quentin for a crime I didn't commit. With a little bit of luck I'll be able to shake it off in a few more months.
The great thing is, as I've said before, we live in 2013. Today, cancer is a total pain in the rear end, but it's not a death sentence. It is some hair loss, some weakness and sickness. It is not a full body poison cure that does more damage than good. Times may be tough, but they are certainly are not bruising us that badly.