Control...

Ah Janet Jackson I know of what you speak...
And this is a real hard one for me to write.

In this multi chunked journey that is rectal cancer, I have done my best to deal with life and this situation one day, one chunk, sometimes one minute at a time...

So I dealt with chunk one...(rather extraordinarily if you ask me!! I mean Tumor GONE people!!) I took my meds on time...showed up for radiation, didn't eat or drink things they said I shouldn't and did everything, absolutely everything I could.

Now on to chunk two.
Surgery.

As many of you know although multi talented, a surgery degree is something that I do not have. Which means that someone other than myself is going to be doing this chunk for me...which SCARES the living bejeesuscrap out of me, but which my friend Lucia beautifully and helpfully pointed out the flipside...this time I don't have to do anything. Which for about 20 minutes made me feel better...until "Con-trooool!!!", (Janet's singing really loud right now can you hear her???) rears it's ugly head.

I have to tell you I don't much like my surgeon.
And that worries me...don't get me wrong she has impeccable credentials...too impeccable if you ask me, because if they were any less I'd have no problem ditching her and finding a new surgeon that didn't want to take quite so much out of my body and had a damn better bedside manner..

Everyone and I do mean EVERYONE lists her as the best...even other Dr's I've asked, websites I have feverishly researched and even my "Second opinion" benefit through P&G lists her as number one...(traitors!!!)

Although I know ironically when I pull through I will want to thank her(i typed "feverishly" but decided to delete it, not calling that energy down!)...but it's tough for me because I don't like her...she is condescending, won't give me the information I seek and quite frankly is kind of a bitch...she's very dry and couldn't see why I was upset when I found out at my last visit that instead of the 2-5 inches I thought they'd be taking from what I understood to be my "rectum' (and I got this understanding from watching NUMEROUS people go through cancer surgery...they take the tumor (which in my case is gone) take an additional inch or two extra margins for safety's sake and you're done...) they'll be taking about 10 inches all the way to my large intestine..I essentially won't have a rectum any more...


This made me very upset. She used the same damn cartoon picture of your digestive insides to draw it out for me...where the hell were her drawing skills at my last visit Hmmm???

And seriously instead of saying in essence " well YOU misunderstood what part of the body is actually your rectum" and "Well rectal cancer is different" couldn't she have just given me a hug or something and told me everything was gonna be OK and that she was sorry it was scaring me...?

Plus I got ZERO info from her when asking how my life was going to be changed after surgery...do I have to be 2 ft from a bathroom from the rest of my life?...will I just have to forget about eating meat or skyline?? The only thing she could say was "it depends on the person" which somehow puts the onus back on me, as if the outcome is mine instead of hers...Which really at the end of the day I'm OK with but I want to KNOW NOW! The only thing she would say is there's a 20% chance I won't have any control over my bowels...fun huh? But I plan NOT to be in that percentage.

I will tell you it did not make me feel any better (and if one more person out there tells me to stop doing research on the net I am going to scream...) that out of the folks who had had this surgery about 85% wish they hadn't done it...they had things to say like "I just wish I had a colostomy bag" or "wish I'd never had the surgery done"...this does not instill confidence. Also I had a discussion with a nursing student last night that was telling me all about the class she takes to master saying nothing at all to the patient...when asked why this was necessary...she replied "because they don't want to scare the patient".

Ah news flash people...it isn't working!
I'm not a child and I deserve to know EXACTLY what all this means to me and my body as well as my emotional life.

At least than I can come to grips with it, or decide not to have the surgery or something...right now I am just left with having to deal with whatever the outcome is after surgery.

With the Dr. I don't like.
Having her slit me from navel to pubic bone, cutting out a large chunk of my body, taking the cautious side of removing more instead of less...in essence to cover her ass....leaving me with a life I don't know right now will be worth living. Which I KNOW in my heart of hearts will be considered barbaric in just 10-20 years...and I will be dealing with the aftermath for the REST OF MY LIFE.

Yeah, I'm crying right now people.

Not too mention surgery is risky. It's never 100%...and how many people die from an oops?? An oops done by a "brilliant surgeon with impeccable credentials" I have never wanted to die stupid...you know choking on a burger in Burger King restroom...or falling off of my high heels and cracking my head open on a street curb. OR being a damn "oops" statistic, that would just really piss me off...a comical end to an earnestly determined well lived life. Nobody wants their punctuation mark to their life be a joke...or a question mark. Or a laugh track or clown horn.

I just have to say this..if I do end up an oops...please sue the shit out of HER(yeah how does it feel not to have YOUR ass??) and give the money to Emma for college. It will make me feel infinitely better that some good will come from it.

Because in the world of control the bottom line is I don't want to die. I'm not ready, I haven't done enough. I haven't been to SXSW, or learned how to make stained glass, or made a souffle...or retired to a little village in Italy where Anne and I will live making dinner from the basil and tomatoes in our garden and drinking lot and lots of really good wine.

I am guessing unless you are dying from a terminal illness or are over the age of 100 you are not being brickwalled by your mortality at the moment like I am.

It does not feel good people :-(

I don't gamble...and what I am facing right now is a crapshoot..nothing more or less.

So please people, send me some positive energy, I think I need to be in a better frame of mind before I head into this surgery, because that's all I can do, that's all I can control.

Shut up Janet.