01 - Pushing off from the shores

So... yeah. Hi there.

It's nice to make your acquaintance, if we haven't met, and it's equally great to see you here visiting if we have. My name is Gabriel Joseph Flood, 29 years of age. I'm a writer by trade, or at least by desired trade. I love stories of any and every kind, though my favorites are video games. I'm currently single, largely due to being very stereotypically penniless for just long enough to have slipped off of the radar of the majority of women globally speaking, but not quite so long as to have accrued any actual, you know, street cred or anything. ...What? Writers can have street cred. It's more West Side Story than Bloods and Crips, admittedly, but it's possible.

Oh yeah, and I also found out five days ago that I have cancer.

This first post isn't going to be all that long... I really just want to get my feet on the ground, metaphorically speaking, and start testing out what kind of pace I'll be able to run as time goes on. As I sit here, propped up in my hospital bed, munching on fruit from the breakfast I just ordered, I'm staring down the barrel of my very first chemotherapy treatment within the next couple of hours. It's a singularly strange sensation, I have to tell you... like signing up to get punched in the face, if you've never been punched in the face but lots of people have told you how painful and life-altering face punching can be. Actually, it's more like all that plus being told that your only two real choices are said face-punching, or just flat-out getting shot in the chest. So enjoy your thirty-thousand dollar shiner. I have some idea of what I can expect. Pain. Discomfort. Nausea, to the point of vomiting. By many accounts, it's just going to be a sort of intangible cocktail of all the shittiest ways I'll ever imagine feeling at once, all rolled into one. And I've got seven straight days of it to look forward to.

It's difficult to talk from total ignorance this way about something that's about to become completely and totally real within a matter of minutes. Chemo's such a funny thing... we all hear about it, but like most medical things I've heard of but never seen firsthand my level of actual knowledge about it was minimal to the point of being nil. My general understanding of it was that it was a medical process whereupon the body is bombarded with random radiation, which is something I don't think anyone has done in about eighty years outside of Chernobyl. By the sum of my knowledge, I wouldn't have been terribly surprised to have Lou Ferrigno come into the room in a lab coat and explain to me that I was going to need to control my emotions from now on, and then some guy with tongs walks in and sets a glowing green reactor rod in my lap, instructing me to turn it over one per hour on the hour to ensure an even radioactive cooking. Then they shake a little oregano over me, and I'm good to go for three weeks.

I don't know much about chemotherapy, is what I mean to say.

Or at least, I didn't until one of oncology doctors visited today with an excellent folder full of "Cancer 101" documents in it. I got an excellent overview of just about every possible effect and side effect of the coming treatment regimen, which is called R-CHOP. He was great, talked with me at length, and really went out of his way to make sure I felt comfortable and okay with what was coming, or at the least that I was offered every opportunity to feel that way. It's not really his fault that he had to keep saying things like "Well, yes. Your hair is all going to go."

"Yes, nausea is likely going to become a problem."

"Permanent sterility is a possibility." That one worries me some, I'll admit. But hey, if I want to raise a child there are plenty out there to adopt who could use a good home, by which I mean one populated by an often-irritable loner writer weirdo who will wean them on video game music. But hey, at least they'll grow up knowing not just how to think, but that they must.

I've decided that I am going to buzz cut my hair really, really short. I don't want to shave it, since I am on blood thinners and would be one clumsy stroke away from nicking myself and bleeding forever. If that happened in a closed room or something, it would just fill up forever and I'd drown, and then whoever found me would have to endure a moment like the blood-filled elevator doors from The Shining. I can't in good conscience do that to anyone, so we'll just buzz it short and let the chemo do the rest; I'm told it'll be falling out fairly soon.

Things to look forward to: finding out just how white a white scalp can be. Perhaps it will be one of those odd other colors that are white without being called white, like "eggshell" or "ivory." Or maybe I should just change my name to Powder and call it a day.

When I started writing this post I was not on chemotherapy. Now I am; the very first dose of the very first chemo drug pumps through my veins as I type this. I am starting to feel different, but only just. I can feel my insides shift slightly, like a coiled snake in the dark, aware that something alien has come inside and is near. My mind is calm, but my body is ready and waiting for something. I'm not feeling anything too odd, just a sort of sleepiness, but that could just be because I didn't sleep so well last night. Lot on my mind, you know. I actually asked my parents to take the night off and head home to be with just each other, and leave me to my thoughts. I wanted to give a fair chance for the whole thing to "hit me", if that was indeed on the docket, so I could let some of it out and have an overall net gain, but... it didn't turn out to be necessary. Again, I think I'm just not afraid yet, really. I'm just waiting to learn how bad this is going to be. Fear is a choice at such times. It may come later, and if it does it will have ample space to play out, I'll make sure of that.

I'll leave off here for now. Stay tuned here if you'd like to keep abreast of my ongoing battle with cancer, and subscribe to the blog if you'd like to receive updates via email whenever I post again. Your comments below will all reach me, and I appreciate every single ounce of support and positive energy you've already been sending my way. Thank you all for everything, sincerely.

- Gabriel, the Barely Glowing Man