Lately I’ve been singing this old Soundgarden song about falling on black days. The main lyrics I repeat are these:
Just when everyday seemed to greet me with a smile
Sunspots have faded, now I'm doing time
Now I'm doing time
'Cause I fell on black days
I fell on black days
Add in some distorted guitar and Chris Cornell’s soaring, hurting and hurtful voice (may he rest in peace) and you’ve got a dark song. Black days indeed.
I’ve been singing this song because in the spring I was diagnosed with cancer, a small tumor on my kidney, and last Friday I had surgery to cut it out.
The procedure, my doctor tells me, was successful. Because of the position of the tumor he wasn’t sure he would be able to get it without taking the entire kidney. He was also concerned, because it was situated near an artery, that the cancer would spread through my bloodstream, and while I am no oncologist, I am pretty certain that once cancer begins to spread inside your body, it’s game over. Get your suit ready for the funeral, as my father would say.
But it was successful. Pathology reports show the cancer was becoming more aggressive. That it was—and maybe this is my fanciful imagination and not actually what the pathology report said—getting ready to jump into my bloodstream and sweep along destroying my organs one by one.
Which means, hopefully, we got it in time. Which means everything may have turned out well. Which means there’s a good chance I don’t need to get my suit ready just quite yet.
But the song stuck in my head, mainly because of recovery. During the operation the doctors opened six incisions. Using robotics and computers and maybe some medical magic, they went in and cut.
When I woke up, my insides felt rearranged. Apparently during the procedure the medical team blasted air inside me so they would have more room, and everything felt wrong. My stomach felt like it was over to one side. The first round of post-surgery meds had kept me asleep for a couple of hours, but by the time they transferred me out of intensive care I was awake and the pain was coming back in waves. I didn’t sleep until around 3 in the morning—surgery had been at 7:15 the morning before. I hadn’t eaten in two days.
Most of the day is a blur. I was in a lot of pain. I vomited for days afterward, a thin yellow bile that made me think of pus. I couldn’t get comfortable. I knew exactly when I was allowed to take more pain meds and if the nurses were late even by a little I would bang on the call button. The meds they gave me for nausea weren’t working, and I remember, when the pain meds were late or hadn’t yet kicked in, trying to train myself to think of nothing at all. Not pain, not pleasure. Not anything in the world that wanted.
I had to quit taking the “good” pain meds the next morning or they wouldn’t release me, and while there’s another essay in here about opioids, and how the opioid crisis has made it much harder for pain sufferers to get the meds they need, I’ll save that for another time. They gave me a prescription and sent me home.
At home I leaned back on the couch. I’ve been here most of the week. For a couple of days it was hard to get up. My stomach had shifted, but it still wasn’t in the correct spot. The nausea came and went, like the pain, in waves.
On day two my supposedly ten-day supply of pain meds ran out, so I had to fight for more (I wasn’t overtaking them). I had to call my doctor twice, the surgeon once, and talk to my brother-trucking insurance, as if insurance should ever have a say in my pain. I’ve vomited every day. I’ve cried several times.
Mostly, I’ve been black. The pain. The fact I need pain meds just to get through a day. The long slow process of recovery, of getting back to who I was, without pain pills and anxiety running through me. I’ve been in a foul mood. I’ve snapped at those I love the most, at those who most love me, who put up with my black mood for no other reason than they like having me still upright, still walking around under the sunshine on this good earth.
I’ve also had so little hope. In the face of such pain and discomfort nothing seems important, even writing, and if you know anything about me in this world, know that I place the value of writing above everything except love. I’ve struggled doing interviews for my forthcoming book. I’ve struggled putting words on the page, not because it’s hard to sit in the chair when recovering from such a thing, but because it’s hard to care. About writing. About words. About how we have to feel to create them.
It’s hard to write without hope, because writing is an act of hope. I am hoping the words I put on this page touch someone. Help someone in some small way. I am hoping people will read this and realize how many other people are suffering—from surgery, from recovery, from pain or depression. From addiction or anxiety. From the general exhaustion of living in a world where so many awful things occur every day.
But I’ll end with this—I am getting better. I am smiling more today. I have apologized to those around me for my behavior and they have told me there is nothing to apologize for because our jobs are to help one another through this thing, until the very end, when we limp on toward Babylon, or wherever we go from here. I wanted you to know this. Why? Because you give me hope. You’re reading this, aren’t you?
"It’s hard to write without hope, because writing is an act of hope." Indeed. Glad the surgery was successful, but I know well the feelings you've expressed so eloquently here, Paul. It is a rough, rough road back. Sending you strength in the days ahead.
Thank you for sharing--grateful today might be a tad better than yesterday. I’m the one in the family who gets snapped at and apologized to. Some days are black for both of us. And sometimes I’m snapping back even though it would be the very last thing I’d want to do (in my rational brain). My husband’s cancer is stable today but not before 3 compression fractures and a new misshapen spine...and we fight for pain meds every month. The same ordeal. Every month. I’ve learned a lot about making room for grace because no one wants to be here. Wishing you compassion and healing at every turn.