There’s No Crying in Cancer!

Kidding. There’s actually quite a bit of crying in cancer.

This is not a pity post. Please don’t feel the need to reply (and quite the opposite actually, I’m going to ask you right here specifically to not to post or respond with anything like this) “Oh, you cry as often as you want!” or “There’s nothing wrong with crying! Let it out!”

I know that crying is normal and fine. This is really just another “Cancer sucks” post. Get used to it.

But seriously, in my short, yet – in my humble opinion, very credible experience of being a cancer patient, there’s a lot of fucking crying in cancer.

Some examples where crying during cancer may occur:

• Crying from the physical pain of undiagnosed tumors on your liver and in your colon
• Crying in the car as you leave urgent care after being told you might have cancer and need to go to the ER immediately for further testing
• Crying when the ER doctor looks at your CT scan and explains your liver is riddled with cancer and there’s a large tumor in your colon
• Crying as you call your loved ones to tell them the pain the you’ve been having is actually cancer
• Crying as you drink a gallon of colonoscopy prep and shit your brains out so that the doctors can take a biopsy of tumor in your colon
• Crying when you get a call with the results of biopsy on your colon tumor confirming you have cancer
• Crying when your oncologist tells you that you have extremely advanced, inoperable cancer and that he can’t give you a prognosis because your cancer is so fucked
• Crying at the outpouring of love and support you receive each time someone in your vast network of friends and family finds out that you have cancer
• Crying because your future wife and sister-in-law have created a blog for you where you can post random thoughts when you can’t sleep in the middle of the night
• Crying when your future wife’s best friend starts a gofundme for you to help alleviate the financial stress of having and treating cancer in a country with a bullshit healthcare system
• Crying each time someone you know and who loves you donates money to help you in your fight against cancer
• Crying each time someone you don’t know but who loves someone you know donates money to help you in your fight against cancer
• Crying when a group of friends all band together to give you the largest basket of chemo-prep supplies you could ever imagine, right before you start chemo
• Crying after your first day of chemo and feeling terrible
• Crying because your girlfriend uses your dog as a prop to propose to you
• Crying because chemo side effects make you feel awful pretty much all of the time
• Crying because of oxaliplatin-induced peripheral neuropathy
• Crying because you’re losing your hair from chemo even though you already had a little bald patch started
• Crying because cancer is a terrible game where the cards are stacked against you and you have no fucking clue if the pains you’re taking on and experiencing are actually helping you in an eventual overall victory or if you’re just buying a few extra weeks/months/years of uncomfortable existence

News-wise, I don’t have much of anything for you all. I have an appointment with my oncologist on Friday where I assume we’ll go over new cancer protein numbers and how I’m handling my side effects. Next Tuesday will be treatment number four. Halfway through my initially prescribed course of eight treatments. Which seems pretty inconsequential when you don’t have a prognosis for your illness.

Sometime between this and the next infusion, I’ll get a CT scan. This will be my first since the original scan in the ER and will tell us where we’re at as far as the effect of chemo on the tumors on my liver. I’m still hoping for the best, preparing for the worst and realistically expecting something somewhere in the middle.

Much love to you all. Thank you, once again, for all your continued love and support.

Fuck cancer.

-Matt