By Karl Bremer
The words still stare back at me from the yellow legal pad
on my desk: pancreatic cancer. I scrawled them out as I was talking to my
personal physician about the results of a CT scan earlier that day, December 1.
You kind of know something is up when you go from a stomach scan to an
ultrasound to a CT scan within the course of three days. Still, nothing ever
quite prepares you for the actual diagnosis of cancer.
This is the second visit this pox has made on our household.
My wife, Chris, took the first call six years ago and beat it. But there are no family memberships in this
club, so despite the seemingly long and cruel odds of it striking twice, it’s
my turn now.
There’s a creature
in my body
There’s a creature
in my blood
Don’t know how long
he’s been there
Or why he’s after
us.
--Alejandro
Escovedo, “Golden Bear”
Once you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, it’s like looking at
life through a new camera lens. Some things come sharply into focus that were
barely visible before, while others just as quickly dissolve into a blur in the
background.
What mattered yesterday may mean little today and even less
tomorrow. The daily sunrise gains relevance in the grand scheme of things as
opposed to the small-minded political candidates flaming out like so many pieces
of space junk re-entering the atmosphere. You begin to have a personal
relationship with Orion every time he appears overhead in the night sky. A
brand new Terrapin Station crescent moon melts away any remaining doubts about
whether this is all worth it.
To be sure, you’ll get countless pieces of advice—all of it
well-intentioned—about how to beat this creature. When it comes right down to
it, though, you have to pick your own weapons of mass destruction and hope for
the best. For my severe condition—Stage 4
pancreatic cancer—nothing short of heavy guns will do. That means three
different chemo drugs pumped into me over a three-day period every other week,
and a battery of pills in between to counter the cancer pain and side effects
of the chemo poison.
To try to bring some equilibrium to this cyborg-like life of
getting hammered by cancer from one side and enough chemo drugs and pharmaceuticals
to choke a horse from the other, I’ve added weekly acupuncture to the mix. I’m
a firm believer in it now for both pain relief and just evening the keel of a
listing ship. I don’t have to understand how it works any more than I have to
understand how this other Western medicine stuff works. It just does.
A variety of herbal medications are in the bullet box as
well—Chaga mushroom tea from Siberia, Humboldt County’s finest, and ginger is
my new best friend.
Music is a healing salve on many levels, like the touch of a
dog or cat.
The greatest cure of all, however, comes from the family and
friends who walk this sometimes dark journey with you. That healing power is at
least equal to the healing powers of modern medicine. I can’t imagine walking
it alone, as some must.
One of these days, I hope to be able to scrawl “in remission”
on that yellow legal pad. Meanwhile, I don’t plan to disappear. There are boondoggle
bridges to monkeywrench and fraudsters to lock up. In between the sunrise and
Orion, don’t count me out yet.
