Dying in 14 Days
Small cups empty of pudding fill my kitchen trash.
A big change from the fresh fruit & vegetable peels, yogurt and other healthy foods.
I’m fixated on dying in 14 days
Problems have come up so quickly.
I don’t like the Doctor who “installed” my stent.
First, I thought he was being very mindful going over a variety of scenarios with me.
Now I see it as kind of odd rambling, nervous, not confident, mumbling, talking out loud in front of me, but not really talking to me.
After recovery, I ask him, what can I eat and when?
Liquids.
He said, be careful, don’t eat mashed potatoes.
I don’t want mashed potatoes.
I don’t want you to eat anything too thick. I don’t want you to swallow the stent I don’t want you to push the stent down.
Swallow the stent????????????
When can I have soup?
Thin soup he said.
Gina asks, can she have chicken broth or potato leek purée or butternut squash soup?
The last three days I’ve had hydration. An IV with saline slowing dripping in to keep me hydrated. Alive.
Hydration is not soup.
He looks at her blankly and says “I’m not good with soups”.
They don’t have a hand-out sheet on what foods I can eat when. I’m getting conflicting information.
And the pain in my chest feels like sharp burning swords. My pain level is about an 11. Maybe even a 15.
I try counting the burning spasms of pain. Thinking if I count, I can focus on the count and not the pain. It hurts so bad that my ears hurt. Stabbing, burning. Knives In.
In recovery the first thing to hurt were my eyelids! Burning burning!They apparently put tape on my eyelids during surgery and then ripped the tape off.
I wake up complaining about my eyelids, feeling raw, burning. I can’t blink it hurts so much.
Gina has some Aquaphor to put on for me.
Then I realize I have a fat lip, and big bruises on my cheek. What the fuck? What the fuck happened in that OR? How could they be so rough with me? I am a human person. This is Cedars-Sinai.
Jimmy Fallon is so cute. He’s on mute, in the background doing his usual lighthearted comedy. He understands the assignment. And he’s great company tonight. While I write. Trying to sort and make sense.
10 more days left to live. I am fixated on that number.
I don’t know how this is going to be OK. Incredible pain from the stent.
I imagine a thin silky tube, maybe a pretty color, going into my esophagus. Holding it open against the stricture and patching the hole into my trachea.
Something body friendly. Feminine. Purple.
But then I looked it up online and almost died right then and there.
it looks like an 8 inch piece of garden hose. Its thick and ugly and worse—it’s lined in metal mesh. Braces for my esophagus. No wonder it hurts like hell. Burning burning stabbing. The pain is atrocious. I can’t manage it. It’s metal scaffolding inside a garden hose. Why didn’t I ask to see it beforehand?
I text my oncologist and tell her my pain is not managed. Help help help.
Palliative medicine calls me back quickly, thankfully, and says I need liquid morphine. Just for this acute phase.
I never take narcotics. He said I really need to take some morphine it will help me. I said I’m too scared. I don’t like how these medicines make me feel.
He said I could drink more viscose lidocaine — every three hours if I want. OK I say I’ll try that and I’ll try adding Advil to the Tylenol.
And my son runs around and fills the morphine, but I don’t think I’m gonna take it.
And my daughter says, mom you might need to take some morphine, it could help you. And I said OK I’ll try.
But I knew I wouldn’t open the box. I can deal with the pain. I can’t deal with feeling out of my mind, or feeling nauseous, or feeling dizzy. Or SWALLOWING the stent. Because what the actual fuck??
And this is how my ending seems to be going. Even though in 26 years, I’ve never known another person living with metastatic breast cancer, who suddenly couldn’t swallow or eat.
And this is how my ending seems to be going. Triple negative breast cancer, spreading like wildfire.
And this is how my ending seems to be going. Even with my mom’s sage advice. “Don’t write the ending”, I can read it.
And with all these crises, I haven’t been able to get enough Chemo and I’m not sure that the chemo I have had and the chemo I’m going to have will be enough In the 10 days that I have left.
I am in dire circumstances. Mostly it’s the pain right now. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. I just don’t know. I can’t really deal with any of this. Too much pain. Too much grief.
And I hate goodbyes.