Last year, about this time, I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. After months of stomach problems, I had a CT scan, which revealed a small tumor on my left kidney. I wrote about it last June, just before my biopsy:
I had surgery in September to remove the tumor, along with about 1/3 of my kidney. The recovery process was long and painful and I wrote about it here:
Thursday, three days ago, I went in for my 6-month follow-up, where the CT scan showed another tumor, this time on my right kidney. It’s not large but it’s growing aggressively, that term doctors use to personify cancer, as if cancer can be angry, and out for revenge.
This morning I read the post above, Fell on Black Days. I wanted to remember how painful the recovery process was. To remind myself what I have to go through again. I am trying to prepare myself.
I also wonder if this is the beginning of a 10 year battle with cancer. A 15 or 20 year battle of the kind we often hear about after someone has succumbed—that they had been quietly fighting this whole time, while the rest of us were posting on the socials media and living our lives unencumbered by wild cancers, taking everything under the sun for granted.
I am further afraid of treating the people around me like shit, because the one everlasting truth I have found in this life is that people, when hurt, have the tendency to hurt others. That all our anger and wild insecurities stem from the deep unrooted pain swirling around inside us that we don’t always know how to deal with.
What I do know is that most of us are destined to watch our bodies die. To see them fail, either from old age or some aggressive affliction, and the only control we have over it is how we walk toward the end.
But I am not walking toward the end today. This morning I am writing, and even if I am writing about what could be the end of everything I know, I am still writing. We all just want our story to mean something. To know we’ve helped someone else through the pain of being alive.
Writing is an act of hope. I have said this before and I will say it again and again, until the last trumpet sounds and the curtain falls on Earth’s final scene and all the words we’ve ever offered one another are lost in the infinity of space—writing is an act of hope.
So is fighting, and I’m gearing up.
Such a damned hard season, Paul. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.
Im so sorry to hear this. Keep writing keep hoping. Will be praying for your fight. 💪