get worse before it gets better after radiation. Of course, no one told me this. I thought many times that if I couldn’t manage the pain, I would have to go to the ER—that’s how bad it was. Fortunately, the pain did get better after almost a week and is now nearly entirely gone.
But now I have pain elsewhere. Pain in my left butt and leg that has steadily worsened over the last few weeks. I’m convinced I have a new met in my lumbar spine.
I’ve been experiencing random vaginal bleeding as well—sorry if that’s too much information, but why should I hide that since I talk about everything else? Of course, I’m worried it is a second primary cancer. It took weeks to get an appointment with a gynecological oncologist at MSK, who took some Pap smears and did a uterine biopsy. While she couldn’t say for sure until the results were back, she thought my bleeding issues were more likely caused by the location of metastases from the colon cancer. I don’t know what would happen if I had a second primary cancer. The idea of it seems unbearable to contemplate, but in truth, everything I’ve endured during these past four years at one point seemed unbearable to contemplate.
Finally, the tumor next to my belly button has been bothering me a lot again. I can literally feel it now, probably because of my drastic weight loss. The current study drugs robbed me of the ability to taste for many weeks, which caused me to lose a lot of weight, since I lost interest in food and ate solely to not be hungry. I can taste now, although nothing tastes right, so my appetite is still not where it once was. Additionally, the vomiting from the opiates hasn’t helped.
Back to the tumor. I play with it, rubbing it, imagining it, measuring it. I use my thumb and forefinger to determine its length and then hold those fingers up against a ruler—roughly two centimeters, just as the last scan report said. I touch it, caress it, worship it, almost as if it were a rabbit’s foot, a manifestation of God, to whom I can pray for salvation. Sometimes it feels like it’s answering my prayers, like it’s calmed down, shrinking even. Sometimes it feels enraged, big and furious at me for trying to sway its will. In the end, it controls my mood. When it is calm, I am calm (optimistic even). When it’s angry, I am angry (and scared and sad). But more important, I know it controls me and whether and when I live and die.
I scheduled another round of scans for the middle of June. The scans will likely be very bad if pain and just my general physical well-being are gauges. I’m trying to prepare myself for the worst. But I don’t know how to. I don’t know what the next steps would be, if there would be next steps for me. Instead, I struggle with being okay with dying. I tell myself that I’ve lived a good life. I tell myself that I am not afraid of dying, that I am so tired and in so much pain, I want to die at this point. Most of the time this is true, but I am not fully there yet. I haven’t found the peace I so desperately want, the kind of peace in which I would be okay with a bad scan, knowing that death is coming that much sooner. Peace is all I really want. The question is, How do I find it?
41
Death, Part Two
I was Daddy’s little girl, his favorite, his precious one, his gold nugget. He would tell anyone and everyone exactly that, in Vietnamese or Chinese. It was embarrassing, especially in those teenage years, but I loved him, too, even if he was often too nosy and annoying in so many other ways. Perhaps it was because I was the child most like him, inquisitive and interested in the world and its people. Perhaps in me he saw all his own potential and dreams never realized—the intellectual, the fearless world traveler, the moneymaking professional. In him, I saw a man who loved me beyond measure, who would spend hours in traffic driving me to and from the airport, high school competitions, study group sessions, and the orthodontist, who believed that I could walk on the moon if I so chose. Sometimes, I felt somewhat bad for my older brother and