The Disease, the Treatment: The Side Effects,

The knowns and the unknowns and the unknowable

I haven’t written on Medium for a while. I’ve been busy. I’ve been distracted, and I’m still sick. They are all the reasons, and it’s difficult to tell when one ends and another takes over.

I got sick, went to the doctor, and got examined by many fancy machines. I took the results to other doctors and they all agreed I should go on medicine. I went on medicine and went away. Now that I’m back I went back to the doctors.

First, I got my genes examined. My genes are part, only part, of the reason I got sick. They could be a big part, or just a little part. When I get the result of what they read on those strands of Cs, Ts, As and Gs, they will know more about how I got sick. It will make a bit of difference for the way they treat me, but it will make a bigger difference for my kids, and their kids. My son isn’t eager to know. My daughter is nervous.

Then I went back to the oncologist. She checked me out, asked many questions, and poked and prodded again. She said that the medicine seems to be doing it’s job. The tumors are getting smaller and softer. I asked her if I was all better, and if I could just go home now. She smiled and told me that if this continues I should expect to have the tumors cut out sometime in the summer, maybe July. I don’t know if I want to spend my summer healing so I might wait longer. I will have many pictures and scans done before we all decide what’s best.

The medicine is helping that’s good. But nothing comes for free — not that the medicine is expensive, with my insurance the medicine is about $8 a month, without insurance it would be $32. But there are side effects.

The medicine stops the my receptors from absorbing a the hormone that my cancer needs to grow. That is why the tumors are shrinking. But life without a hormone is different than life with this hormone. Any woman who has gone through menopause knows that. I don’t have hot flashes, so that’s good. I can’t get pregnant, but I was never worried about that. The other possible side-effects are things that seemed to be happening to me anyway, so it’s difficult to know if it’s me or the medicine, but it’s probably both.

My joints are stiff and if I sit too long it’s difficult to get up and get moving. Yeah, so, I’m seventy three. My knees are gone from basketball and my back went with them. My neck is gone from sitting in a chair for ten hours a day, nodding, and mumbling things like “ that’s just crazy.” They hurt before I was taking this medicine. Do they hurt more now? Seems like it.

I have more indigestion now. Sometimes. Or maybe it’s just we are eating out more and some of that cheap spicy shit bothers me. And if I take a good, stiff drink, it works better and faster. If I have a second, I get useless. So I don’t have a second anymore, and I hesitate before I even have a first. Is that because of the medicine? Seems like it.

Moody. That’s another possible side-effect. Moody and lethargic. Why haven’t I written on Medium? Part of it is I’ve been with my grandchildren, but part of it is that I don’t feel like it. I don’t have much energy or drive to tell people that I don’t have much energy or drive. Maybe thats because I know that between six and a thousand people will read this; much more like six. Who gives a shit? Or maybe it’s the medicine.

Moody? I got all choked-up when I took my four and six year-old grandchildren to go and see the people who were marching on Saturday. They were impressed by the signs and balloons, and how many excited, spirited people, especially kids, that were lining up to go to the city.

I got even more emotional watching a video of Jennifer Hudson singing The Times They are -A-Changin’. But that’s just me or maybe there is some hope for the country. Maybe more people will care about something other than guns and money. Maybe it’s a generational thing. that skipped two whole generations. It’s time to change some laws, but mostly it’s time to change the culture. The Second Amendment doesn’t mean anyone has the right to shoot another person just because they got scared. We have to remember how to be a country. We have to re-learn how to be part of the world.

If I stretch, exercise, talk to my friends, get involved in pushing things along, most of the stiffness and lethargy goes away. I know I still want to stay alive. It means a lot to me. I can see that these kids not only want to stay alive themselves, but they want other people to be able to live also. Maybe more people will begin to care about that too.

That’s the best medicine. The side-effects are very beneficial.