The Longest Drive Ever

"The long Drive home" by johnsdigitaldreams.com is licensed under Creative Commons

You know when you’re driving, and it’s a trip you’ve made dozens, even hundreds of times before? You’re heading home from college, or to see a relative, or a girlfriend. You know the drive so well, that you can kind of turn off and only use about 65% of your brain. You’re making great time. It’s a 5 ½ hour trip and the first 4 hours fly by. Then, for no reason other than the vagaries of the lonesome road, a switch flips, time comes to a halt, and the last 90 minutes of that all-too familiar drive become interminable. You know you’re still driving, and your brain tells you that you’re still making forward progress, but there is no discernible evidence to confirm it despite the filmstrip continuing to disappear behind you. That last bit of the drive to get you home takes for-fucking-ever. The destination is just ahead of you, but has never been further away. That’s the part of Cancer I’m in. That’s why I’m up at 1:00am writing at the end of a long day that started by waking up at 4:00am for absolutely no reason. That’s why the Ambien I took 45 minutes ago is having about as much effect as a Tic Tac.

I got great news from my PET scan last week, and I’m over halfway through Chemo. (Just two treatments to go!) Yet despite those clearly celebratory milestones, I’m in the foulest of moods.  The incessant beat of the cancerous war drum is steady, and right now, at this time, over these past few days, I’m fucking over it. I want that last bit of road between Greensboro and Charlotte to pass under my car until I catch a glimpse of a familiar skyline.

I miss sunny-side up eggs. I’ve never understood the point of a cooked yolk. That golden embryonic goodness oozing on to my plate is the breakfast that warms me: a breakfast sandwich where the yolk is cooked enough to still have viscosity, but seeps its way to the outer edges of your bread like lava; egg-in-the-hole, where you fry the egg in the center of a piece of good bread that simultaneously soaks up and supports the trickling ova innards; or the simple one-eyed chicken bullet staring up at you from a plate.

I miss sitting in a theatre. I derive from the theatre that which I assume the faithful derive from religion: community, ritual, better living through story-telling, a secret language, gathering together to bear witness as the physical becomes meta-physical. It’s not just what I do for a living, it’s where I find any semblance of spiritual fulfillment that exists in my cynical worldview. 

I miss whiskey, and the chiropractor, and the kind of dusty smell only found in a used bookstore. 

I’m so sick of my house I would cut another lymph node out of my neck myself with a rusty paper clip and a ball peen hammer just to spend a couple of hours with a grocery cart in the aisles of Harris Teeter.

I’m sick of these dogs who sit under my desk every day as I work, loudly protecting me from the falling leaves, UPS delivery guys, and the hordes of toddlers that walk by our house.

I’m sick of the shitty little symptoms. Not the big ones that you see coming and can take meds for, but the annoyances like tingly fingers and confused taste buds and the general feeling of low-grade crappy that, unrelenting as it may be, I can ignore if I try hard enough, but I’m tired of trying hard enough.

I’m sick of vegetarian lasagna, and I feel shitty for saying that because so many lovely people are bringing us food, and it’s generous and helpful and incredibly appreciated, and who doesn’t love a good lasagna?

There is more to say. I’ve already deleted an entire paragraph about how Chemo isn’t the end of Cancer, which suggests that I’m in the self-pitying phase of disease maintenance. I guess that was evident over the weekend when I sent Shawnna and N’shama out for cheesecake. (I’m not gonna lie. It helped.) So, even though I’ve been acting like a horse’s ass for the past several days, I’m going to allow myself this weekend of whining without judgement. It’s been hard on my family, but I think they’ll forgive me… eventually. I may even reserve the right to whine and whinge again before all of this is over. If/When I do, please invite Shawnna out for a glass of wine, or a really good Old Fashioned, preferably to an establishment with cheesecake to-go. And, if my whimpering becomes too self-indulgent, I know there are those of you reading this, and you know who you are, as well, who will jump in a car and drive from your destination to mine simply to punch me in the throat and tell me to get over myself. I’ll be waiting for you when you get here, but be forewarned, those last 90 minutes of driving time are kind of a bitch.