Warrior Pose (32 page)

With Morgan, Winter 1998.

Despite the radiation treatments, my prognosis is poor. Although I can't nail them down on this, as best as I can tell from pressing my doctors is that I'll be fortunate to live for two years. I can't help but wonder sometimes if it's worth it. If it weren't for this wonderful child, I think I would choose to call it all off and find a way to quickly slip into the darkness forever.

CHAPTER 19

The Journal

S
TILL A JOURNALIST AT HEART, I have to know all the facts. With my life in the balance, I need them more than ever. I've bought a hospital “overbed table” from a medical supply store to use for setting up my computer. It has a strong frame with a serving tray secured to its legs by a single metal shaft on one side. This way, I can lean back on my recliner to ease the tension on my back, then roll the table toward my lap and swivel the tray until my computer is facing me.

The Internet is just beginning to burgeon, and there's a new service called Google that just came out last year. It's a search engine that helps me find online articles and information. I pore through everything I can find on throat cancer and soon begin to learn how much I didn't know. Squamous cell carcinoma comes in various types, from easily treatable skin cancer to aggressive carcinomas that invade various organs. It can show up in the neck, the lungs, the prostate, the bladder. It's either
in situ
, confined to the site of origin, or
invasive
, spreading to other organs. The spreading is called
metastasis
, and this is bad news. My cancer originated in my tonsils and spread into my lymphatic system, creating the tumor in the lymph gland on my neck. It's considered invasive. It's spreading. Metastasizing.

This is what Dr. Chasan meant when she said it was stage IV. In another article, I learn there are four stages of cancer, based on various factors, including tumor size, the depth of its penetration
in the body, whether or not it has spread to other organs, and if it has invaded lymph nodes. Stage I is localized and the easiest to deal with. Stage IV is the worst and indicates the patient has the least chance of survival. It's bad news.

As I read more about radiation, several articles indicate that head and neck cancers such as mine, when metastasized, are very aggressive and generally incurable with radiotherapy since the whole body would need to be treated. The amount of radiation required for this would prove fatal. I can only conclude that my treatments, therefore, were at best just a way to slow things down. But I still can't find specifics about survival rates for stage IV oropharyngeal carcinoma. Many articles contradict one another. There's nothing definitive. No matter how much I search, I can't nail it down with any certainty. I want to discover some new finding that gives me hope or just finally confirms that two years is correct. It's frustrating, and it remains the big unanswered question:
What are my chances of survival?

Despite the fact that the scar has finally healed, my neck is becoming tender again. There are new sore spots and, rubbing them all the time, I think I feel little lumps. All my doctors have acknowledged
is that if the cancer returns, my death is certain. But they never seem alarmed during monthly checkups, so maybe it's just fear. I can't be sure, so I'm trying to keep a journal for Morgan to read when I'm gone, hoping he'll have some memory of his father.

Ever since the surgery and radiation, I've been even more sedentary, but I'm eating as much as or more than ever. I don't need so much food. It's just for comfort. Another way of escaping myself. As a result, I now weigh more than 220 pounds. Morphine has been prescribed on a permanent basis to help with my growing back pain and the residual discomfort from the radiation treatments. It comes in slow-release patches that I stick on my chest and also in stronger pill form for pain emergencies. I still take Vicodin, Valium, Motrin, and Prozac, even though they're hard to swallow down my swollen throat, and have been prescribed Ritalin and Dexedrine to stimulate me since I'm always so lethargic.

I cling to my drugs out of fear and never miss a dose, and although they help manage physical and emotional pain, they've completely masked my Soul. I'm constantly stoned—jacked up on stimulants, numbed by narcotics, dazed by antidepressants, and pickled on alcohol. It's become a weird sort of reality for me, and I'm slowly turning into a person I don't recognize.