“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
~ The Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll*
The first couple of weeks of getting used to being irradiated five times a week, you think to yourself, “This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I can do this!” and congratulate yourself for your fortitude, assuming you must be special. But as the days wear on, you become weary of things like time on the road to appointments, and the symptoms of radiation exposure mount, things like fatigue, no interest in food that now tastes weird, worry, poor communication with medical personnel, anger that you’re in this ridiculous situation to begin with, etc.
Two and a half weeks into radiation treatments, and my emotional floodgates opened. Having gone through other depressive times in my life, I recognized the coming wave, steeled myself for it, and sure enough, tears soon started to flow in a grieving, salty stream. Most of this comes from anger, a “why me?” kind of anger that has no answer. And my ingrained pattern is to feel guilty for feelings of anger, as in, “who am I to be angry about the privileged and blessed life I’ve been given”, even with cancer?
How am I angry - let me count the ways.
I’m angry because I’m the only one in my circle of first party relationships (that I know of) dealing with cancer
I’m angry because I always took good care of my health, but now it doesn’t seem to matter and I’ve lost all the frequent flier miles I built up
I’m angry because everyone around me is seemingly living their tranquil and fun-filled lives without the threat and treachery of cancer
I’m angry at cancer for the people it has taken from us
I’m angry that we live in a world that allows levels of environmental pollution that have been shown to lead to cancer
I’m angry at health care workers who don’t bother to acknowledge that you’re going through a difficult time
I’m angry because I’m the only one grieving my loss of health - sure, people around me are worried, but they’re not sitting around grieving - ding ding ding! I believe we have an infinite loop double whammy: angry at self for such self-indulgence, and angry at those I care about for being normal
Believe me - I could go on for another couple of eons on this particular subject. But where will that get me? Not out of anger, guaranteed.
The people around me, those who support me, don't have to deal with this daily nonsense other than however they’re thinking about my future, if they think about it at all. Even my husband, who has always stuck with me through any trauma, has his own life to live, and living it without me would be, while not what he would prefer, still something he could figure out.
So in an alien way, your relevance to this life is being tested daily, and it’s exhausting and lonely.
It doesn’t help when, going for treatments every day, you notice other people dealing with some kind of serious illness that outflanks your own. There was a man the other day who must have lost the use of his vocal chords, and was reduced to communicating to his wife by clicking noises he made with what I’m assuming were his tongue and cheeks. Whatever he was saying, his wife understood, although all I heard were random percussive sounds. I shared some of my anger with him, hoping he could use it to get a sense of justice. Or add it to his own arsenal of anger for an extra strong zap later.
Because in situations like these, anger becomes a drug, one to rely on when all else fails. And, having no other recourse, it eventually spreads itself thin and settles into depression, making itself right at home.
My radiologist and I will put our heads together this week, and our sketched out plan (so far) is to wrassle this anger to the ground using antidepressants, disabling it and its pardners, fear and despair, gloom and doom once and for all.
I guess a little cowboy humor can't hurt. Fingers crossed.
* The story recounted in “Jabberwocky” is, at its heart, a very traditional heroic narrative in which an unassuming hero sets out to defeat an improbably dangerous enemy. For this reason, the boy's success in slaying the Jabberwock evokes the most classic theme of heroic narrative: the triumph of good over evil.
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