Head-Sized Donuts and Abdominal Pain

So, while in Florida, after we fixed the car, I was ready to get on with my post-cancer life.  We started our Saturday by grabbing the dogs, meeting our friends and heading to the "Farmers' Market".  I think there were five farmers and the rest were just people on the street selling crap and fried food (two of my favorite things).  Maybe I misunderstood the idea and it was just that their last name was "Farmer".  At any rate, the Farmers' Market had Amish selling donuts as big as your head (kind of a Pennsylvania Dutch version of La Bamba's).  One donut was enough to fill you up very quickly, so our one friend bought six of them.  I don't know what he plans on doing with all of them either, maybe float down the Manatee River on a couple (they are that big).  We were all having a good day.  The dogs were having a good day.  Daisy the rescue basenji was still jumping at everything, but she seemed to be having a good time too.  

Later on in the day, before the sun went down, we all decided to take a walk to the dog park.  I was a little sore from the day before rolling around under the Toyota trying to figure out how on God's green Earth that little part is worth $500.  But what's a little pain here or there?  We're enjoying the Florida sun!  We all take off together and the non-abused dogs and their handlers take off at their normal speed- drag.  Me and Daisy sniffed and cowered along behind as I tried to coax her to keep up.  

Then I felt it.  My familiar and unwelcome foe.  I think the best way I can describe what it feels like at this point is to take a Ziploc bag and slowly unzip it.  Imagine feeling that sensation along your waistline.  I find myself not pushing Daisy to keep up.  Then I find myself trying to get her to slow down.  Everyone seems to be having so much fun, I don't want to say anything and ruin it.  But, my wife looks at me and she can tell.  Every step feels like I am going to tear myself wide open again.  The doctor said I should be about healed.  BUT he also said there is no way to speed the healing of the area I keep tearing.  And there is no way to stitch that area.  In other words, I have to keep walking like an 80 year old one-legged man on an icy sidewalk until it heals completely.  The dog park is within sight, but seems like it moves farther and farther away with each step.  The last few steps seem like they take forever, but I can see a picnic table inside the fence like my little oasis in the desert and I push myself to get there to sit down.  

One of our friends very graciously decides to run home quickly and bring a car back for my lame butt (well, technically the other side, but you know what I mean).  Me and scaredy dog, jump in and ride back to the house and wait for the girls and the other dogs.  The horrible thing about rehurting my incision is there isn't a darn thing you can do about it.  Every step you feel it pull a little more and a little more, each movement compounding the damage from the last, but what are you supposed to do?  It's so frustrating.  The only thing to do is to do nothing.  My wife keeps urging me to take painkillers, because she can tell how much it is bothering me, but the last thing I want to do at this point is mask the pain.  If I am tearing it more, I want to know so I can stop doing it!

After everyone arrives back at our friends', I grab our two dogs and take the now working Toyota back to the house we are staying at.  I also beg my wife to stop by a sporting goods store and get me one of those hiking stick thingys, so I may be able to walk upright sometime in the future.  That night, my wife, the two basenjis, and I are all dead tired.  We make our way to the bedroom and collapse.  They all immediately fall asleep, I am dead tired, in excruciating pain, and wide awake.  It could be from the sound of two chainsaws and a lawnmower running in the bedroom (how can two little dogs and my wife snore that loud!?!?), but it's not.  It my frustration with this cancer crap.

Months ago, when I was asked if I would like to go down and use this house, I set a goal in my mind that this would be twelve days that I would be free of cancer's grip.  The first two days I was dealing with a broken car, and now I feel like I am back in the same state of crippled health I was before chemo.  We are supposed to visit Walt Disney World later on in the week, and I know there is no possible way I can wander around in this state.  I walk out on to the screened in porch about 2:30 am.  It's about 65', the stars are out, you can smell the salt in the sea breeze, and I sit on the edge of the pool.  I sit there thinking about everything. I sit there thinking that every time I feel I am done with all of this, something happens that takes me back into recovery.  I think how my plan was to have beaten all of this weeks ago.  I think how none of my plans have really gone the way they were supposed to since my diagnosis and I am tired of not being in control.  I think...I think I'm crying, so now I think I am a big baby crying on the edge of the pool in the middle of the night.  I know I shouldn't be, but this cancer business has had a stranglehold on me since August 31st, telling me what I was going to be able to do, and when, and how, and if, and I am tired of being in its grip.  I thought I was stronger than cancer when all of this started, and although I have beaten the cancer, I am still fighting the  treatments.  Surgery, tests, chemo, injuries from surgery, something is constantly reminding me that cancer may not be in my body, but is still firmly in control and I am getting too weary to fight.

I finally get cold sitting outside in my shorts in 60' degree weather (what I wouldn't give to be sitting in that weather right now!) and go back in.  I sit on the couch for a bit and finally get tired enough to sleep.  In a few hours we need to get up to go to the drive-in church we saw on TV.  I could use a little divine intervention about now, so I am looking forward to it.