Hard to believe

I’ve lived the last few days in a bit of a daze.  The meaning of the PET-CT result is sinking in.  My flight has been called.  The final departure is not far off.  My defenses are wearing thin.  I don’t exactly know where I will find additional strength for another fight.  Surgery is not an option, said the oncologist.  Chemotherapy doesn’t seem to cut it.  My cancer is stronger than what they injected in me, and all they can think of is doing it again.  It’s a terrifying prospect.

I try to keep up appearances.  During the day, I try to go about my normal business, which works better when I go to the office.  At home, motivation for work or anything else is hard to come by.  At night, it gets worse.  I’ve not ridden the trainer in a while.  I sit in front of various screens not doing anything.  The papers I’ve talked about in the previous post remain unread.  This is not the post about KRAS^G13D.  Time passes.  My mind wanders, but it never gets anywhere comfortable.

The whole story from its beginning with a bang in September until its most recent reversal of fortune is hard to believe.  I was a healthy man with few bad habits.  Up until the fatal diagnosis, I had no inkling that anything was seriously wrong.  No way that I could have caught this earlier to fight with better odds.

I’m still in good shape.  Today I rode my bicycle up the hill between home and work, temporarily getting lost on the ridge when the only trails I could find were steep chutes that my bike was entirely unsuited for.  I attempted one but had to turn around when my skinny tires, despite drawing deep cuts into the mud, just started sliding.  I look like I always do, even though I’m ravaged inside.  I haven’t lost any weight.  For someone who doesn’t know, it would be hard to believe how rotten I am.

It’s funny, in a morbid way, how hard to believe this year has been so far.  Who would have thought that we’d be suffering under a virus, with social life and city life suspended, shops, restaurants and parks closed, old folks locked up like lepers, and people dying by the thousands from an illness no one had heard of half a year ago.

Banned from work because of corona, Flucha has used the last few weeks to declutter our house.  Everything that didn’t have an immediate use was put on an auction site.  I expected most things to sit there idly, but lots of people must feel a deprivation from shopping that they’re trying to overwhelm in the strangest ways.  Hoarding loo roll is one example.  Another is madness in auctions.

Last year, I bought speakers off a colleague of mine.  My old ones remained in the basement, a fate they know from when I lived in the US.  They never left Europe, preferring to hibernate at my mom’s.  Flucha put the speakers online with no description beyond “speakers”.  Hours later, someone had chosen not to bid but buy them now, and transferred 50 francs.  I had paid around 300 francs a quarter century ago.  When the guy picked up the speakers, he lifted them, said, “They’re solid.”, smiled, and walked off a happy man.

When I finally decided on a new CD player and amp, my old set, purchased together with the recently sold speakers, went up for auction.  I had no say and nothing to do.  Flucha culled a description from the internet, and a few days later, the CD player was replaced by a crisp green 50-franc-note.  Again, who buys 25-year-old kit for such prices?  It’s not that we’re selling vintage.  This was entry-level stuff back then.  The amp is still mine but someone has bid on it.  The buy-it-now can’t be far off, though it’s hard to believe.

Today I got a call from the University Hospital in Zurich.  I’m having a consultation with the doctor who gave me a second opinion before the first chemotherapy program started.  He agreed with everything the doctors in Baden had done and said.  HIPEC would not have been sensible, he said.  Would it have made a difference?  No one will ever know.  I’m not sure what to expect from him.

He will surely agree that another chemo is the way forward, suck it up and suffer through it.  With some luck, you’ll still be alive when it ends.  But will he have any unexpected insights?  Will he recommend experimental therapies that might help?  Will he know of clinical trials I could enlist in?  It’s hard to believe, but a lot of hard-to-believe things have happened this year.  Hope dies last.