Warning: this blog is not going to be uplifting. If you are in the mood for that, go Pinterest puppies in baskets or something.

Within the last 24 hours, I’ve cried at the dinner table, been misty eyed in my recliner, wept in the shower and had a root canal.

This feels real now. I feel different, changed in a non-reversible way. The first month was logistics and tests and organization, all while I was running, boxing and doing hot yoga.

Now I am a cancer patient. I do cancer-y things like check output on my drains, carry around a bag of prescription pills (and a chart of when to take them) and go to sad oncology appointments.

My life is not my own anymore. I have 2 surgeons and an oncologist to ask, in order to clear any little change in the status quo I may be looking to make. I’m talking even taking a Zyrtec for allergies– that has to be run up the flagpole.

And somehow as I am being bombarded by incredible demonstrations of affection by friends and family, I feel polarized. The physical representations of everyone’s love and caring come to me, but I live in a cancer bunker that refuses to let me out, both literally and emotionally.

This blog helps me. It’s like giving confession to your priest (I’d be in some deep Catholic shit). Once I write it here and know that you all read it, I have somehow exonerated myself from carrying 100% of the burden.

I am sad and vengeful that this happened to me. I lost my dad to esophageal cancer almost 3 years ago. He was a healthy, athletic non-smoker and he died 3 months after turning 65, 6 months after diagnosis. I am the only one of my friends to have lost a parent and now I have cancer myself. Who the fuck did I piss off up there? Grandma and grandpa, can you throw me a freaking bone?!

I know it’s not worth my time to try and figure out this unsolvable puzzle, but it does cause you to pause and look at your life and choices. And the hardest part about that is that currently I have no choices. I am a passenger on the cancer train and Sir Topham Hatt is riding us into the ground. Peep peep.

Let me leave you with a joyous story (just kidding it also sucks HARD). Cancer reminded me that I needed to take better care of my overall health, including dental. You may recall an earlier post about me visiting the dentist before surgery. There was nitrous and I still had boobs. Things were good.

Today I had an emergency root canal at 2:30, tooth hurty.  That kind of irony is not lost on me. Someone upstairs is pulling the strings to see how far I can go before I snap. I feel pretty close right now, but with my drains as my witness, I will not.

Not today at least.