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Journal Entry Three

It wasn’t any of our choices at this point, it was die in agony or just remove it. You could only guess on what I went with... especially with mom’s persuasion skills.

I remember the doc said to one of the nurses, “Give him general! He needs to be out cold.” This man was a bit different, he wasn’t like my oncologist who had been so direct and nearly blunt about everything- he appeared friendly and stable and it made my nerves, in a sense, gitter. He was the one- he was the protheist who would remove my arm in the matter of hours.

Nearly three weeks before, we took the measurements for the prosthetic I needed and where the location of the amputation would be. But it all appeared so surreal; just months ago, this wasn’t real- this wasn’t happening. And my eyes closed within minutes of the anesthetics shooting into my arm, forbidding to stay awake at all.

He cut through the skin down to the muscles that had once formed my bicep. Some of the nurses came and told me he was like “an artist; so delicate as if the body was art- only just being reformed for better purpose”. But even then, the nerves were cut as well. Still waves of pain are profound from the procedure, they still had the ability to bring forth the pain even though my arm was now forming into a stump or in their case, art.

Even after he appeared, saying in a joke matter: “As a kid, you must of had a lot of milk. Cause wow, I gotta say... you have pretty strong bones.” In a way, it was a compliment and that’s how mom told me to take it. But it was hard, he was the man that sawed off my arm and the first thing that comes to mind is a dang scary movie and the idea like hey, he was the one that took something from me.

Would I say it was traumatic? Yeah, I suppose so. I lost something I needed- or so to say, used more and took for granted.

Now, a week later- I could say that in some form, I feel better. Though I’m taking antibiotics like mints and still have what they call phantom limb pain, the cancer is gone.

I’m free, and it feels good to be back.

Not my photos

#MI #medicalinterventions #osteosarcoma #cancer

Journal Entry Two

I got used to it; the chemo, I mean. The consistent feelings of exhaustion and the deprived energy my body lacks. And maybe that’s when the depression kicks in- never the “poor me”, just the question “how”? How did this even happen and sometimes, why did it have to happen so fast when I already had so much in front of me?

In all honesty, self-pity is overrated. Authors romanticize the struggles, but even without the chemo, I could vomit in disgust. Like now as I further write, my trash can is filling with my own reeking scent of bile that is resulting from today’s treatment. And I wish it would stop, I wish my body could take it and furthermore, become healthy again.

They said it would. They said my hair will possibly grow back in three months time, but that’s not what I care about truly. Hair is hair, I don’t really need it to be frank. But the risk is sickness, the ability to become ill so quickly- be hospitalized from just a mere flu, twists my stomach in a knot. I used to take a flu like it was nothing- because then it was nothing. And that effect could last forever just like bone problems, which is so humerus from the fact that osteosarcoma is a bone problem.

And the emotions. God- the emotions, they swerve and turn all over but they said that might go. Hopefully, it does; how I hope it does. I can’t take the mixture- the ever changing feelings that the storm in me presents. But still, my feelings of the treatment stands in distaste; I even still have to continue with my MRI scans to check the growth of the tumor within my arm, and sometimes if I’m so lucky, I have the biopsy done to sample it for the cancer production.

And if it goes the way it is, I’ll have an amputation in no time.

Not my photos

#osteosarcoma #MI #medicalinterventions #cancer #chemotherapy #tumors

Journal Entry One

I would be a liar if I said I wasn’t scared, even if Charlie could have a potentially harsher treatment than I am. But still, my stomach flipped upside down when the doc- the oncologist walked in and I remembered Charlie’s words like they were a verse from a bible- They could be actors. So nice and motherly, but remember you’re sick and they aren’t. This is their job.

When she walked in I stared at her face; she was sorta old, the best guess-amite would be in the mid 40’s. Her grey speckled hair was pulled straight back in a tight ponytail as her white lab coat was ironed to perfection with my medical history, charts and x-rays in her left hand. It was all nerve wrecking; mom said this is what I needed to get better. She said they would be here to help, to make me better and I’m being a five-year old kid about it in the fear of doubt.

Her voice was sorta husky, but that didn’t matter. She said the cold truth: I needed the chemo. There was no denying it, no way passed it. The tumor in my arm was still growing, I was technically dying as it is.

Doxorubicin and Methotrexate. The two drugs that are furthermore injected into the tree branching like veins beneath my skin. Where the IV had stung into, but the meds kicked in and I don’t know what to do anymore. She said the drugs would stop or slow it down, halting it’s unstable cancer cell division altogether if possible; she said there was even hope in apoptosis- cell suicide by the over production. But if anything, they all worked the same and there was only hope in it.

The oncologist watched me with her hawk like eyes, and I could feel it slithering inside me as i bit the inside of my cheek, tasting the metallic taste of my own dying blood. My body was already becoming exhausted- the fatigue was hitting hard that all I wanted in the world was to sleep. And even then, the bile that rose into my esophagus wanted to purge out of my mouth, but I forbade it, too hard headed to allow it- maybe too prideful in a sense like Sue had once said when we had fought- before she left for college.

But this was for the better, this is what I need. This would be the new routine.

(Not my photos)

#osteosarcoma #cancer #radiation #tumors #medicalinterventions #MI