Mind games

The worst thing about chemotherapy is the side effects.  No one tires of saying this.  You are given toxins at the maximum dose you are thought capable of not just of surviving but also enduring in a halfway decent shape.  After all, there’s more to come.  The hope is that the concentration of toxins is high enough to kill the cancer or, if this proves impossible, delay its advance.

Every patient reacts differently.  During the first chemo session, it’s absolutely unclear what will happen to each one.  Ten per cent of patients experience such and such effect is of no use at all to the individual.  It might even be counterproductive.  Educated as I am now on all possible side effects, I scan my body for every little sign that things are about to hit me in a big way.

There’s a metallic taste in mouth and a curious coolness, as if everything I drink were laced with menthol.  My lips tingle and my fingertips feel as if I were snowriding on a particularly cold day.  I am slightly sluggish.  Walking from the hospital to the bus, I had half convinced myself that I was really sick.  To quote from Chicken Run, “It's all in your head, Mr Tweedy.”

There’s a real danger here, I think.  After chemo, I went home, thinking that it would be a good place to find out how my body reacts.  The drawback is that I quickly got sucked into mindlessness and inactivity, reading things I don’t really care about and watching the other half of the internet.  The empty flat with no one to talk to and no one to guilt-trip me into animation sucked all motivation right out of me.  I could never run a successful home office.  The lack of focus and inspiration is even worse when the task is to survive cancer.  Only active positivity will do.  Optimism drives cures.  Enthusiasm is strength.

Instead, I found myself slipping into the mindset of a sick person, and one thought led to another.  Sick people don’t work.  Sick people are weak.  Sick people are not doing well.  Maybe I’m doing much worse than I think, as poorly as the doctors insist?  I started questioning the therapy.  What good is it really going to do me?  Will it increase my survival, or will it just cause misery?  Soon I was sitting on my sofa in complete pathological apathy.

I don’t want to feel this way.  I don’t want to have my mind let go of the old reality of being healthy, strong and energetic.  Death, as a recent study showed, is something that befalls other people.  For this to remain true, I need energy on every stage of this long and arduous course.  My family and friends have been amazing in their cheering and support.  Beyond that, I get energy from structure, responsibilities and purpose.  Tomorrow, unless I’m too messed up to get out of bed, I’ll take the boy to childcare and be back at work.