My IV came out of my right arm, so my nurse put a new one in my left arm. Its been poked so many times in the last few weeks that the best vein was on my wrist, just behind my thumb. So I can’t really use my wrist very well. And I am typing this all with my right hand.
It is interesting that this is the first post I have tagged “pain.”
I was talking with my naturopath today, and right after he told me how well he thought I was doing, he reminded me how difficult what I have been through was. reiterating that no one knows how hard it has been but me; not him (who had cancer at 31), not my mother, who has had to watch, etc.
A year ago my ex girlfriend went from kinda-sad to severely-clinically-depressed overnight. I’ll skip the dramatic in-the-middle-of-the-night catalyst event, as that was too big and messy for this analogy. The point is I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand what she was going through. I had never been clinically depressed. I did not know her experience.
The breaking point with my ex was when she called me in the middle of the afternoon when I was at the studio, demanding (there really isn’t any other word) that I come home and make her some chicken.
This i understand now: when you are sick, and have no appetite, and all of the sudden you want something, that thing becomes the most important thing in the world.
This I understand now: when you are sick, and you cannot get something for yourself you feel helpless, When that illness is psychological, you feel doubly helpless. When someone does not attend to you, you feel triply bad.
The argument unfolded without these two kernels of knowledge that my cancer has given me. The highly condensed version of argument went something like this:
me: Can’t you just order some chicken from the place on the corner.
her: If you can’t come take care of me, I will find someone or go somewhere where people will take care of me.
me: (silence) (sigh) okay, I need you to do one thing
her: (some shouting about how she is sick, and she can’t do anything)
me: Take the chicken out of the freezer.
Then I took off on my bike, leaving my assistants at the studio. That bike ride was the one where I intentionally hit the guy in the suit on the Brooklyn Bridge. This is the only time I’ve intentionally hit a pedestrian. He was in the bike lane, walking towards me. He looked up at me, made eye contact, then went back to using his Blackberry. It all happened at the threshold of conscious decisions: I took two hard pulls on my pedals, and subtly dropped my right shoulder and clocked him.  Hard. I heard his blackberry smack to the deck and skittered off in a freefall into the East River (Its okay, the company probably paid for it.) I didn’t look back to see if he was on the ground. I wasn’t. And I had chicken to cook.
The bridge shouldering is both one of my favorite stories to tell, and one of the lowest things I have done. Funny that.
But the real point of this whole story is the the other thing I understand now that I did not then: no one person can take care of someone who is sick. It is just not possible. It is too much work. It is too emotionally tiring. It takes a team. It takes a family, and I mean that in the biggest sense of the word.