Category Archives: Eye Cancer
So You’re Done, Right?
Next week is my last chemo infusion. It will be one year and thirteen days after my very first poison drip. Everybody keeps smiling at me and exclaiming that I must be really excited. Excited is not a word that has populated my vocabulary for quite a while now. I am glad I will not have …
I Don’t Want To Try
During a checkout, a clerk in a shoe store glanced at my driver’s license issued pre-chemo and said with a crooked smile: “Oh…it is you…just your hair is different.” He didn’t hide his disapproval with the change of my look. His voice was screechy, like a goat. I bit the inside of my cheek and …
Neither Here Nor There
As I near the completion of my active treatment for cancer, I often think of what others call the landmarks and milestones I reached and passed. The biopsies, surgeries, the chemotherapy, the hair loss, the reconstruction, the PET scans, the follow ups, the blood work, the hair re-growth. It sounds as if I walked around …
Treasure in the Murky Pond?
I strolled with my dog on a winding sidewalk that lead around a pond. It was warm and windy thanks to the distant hurricane. Suddenly, as I walked by one of the trees, its little branch smacked me on top of my head. I could almost hear it say: “Stop stressing out! Stop thinking about …
At Grandma’s, Time Stood Still
As I recovered from each chemo, I often wondered what it would be like if my Grandma was still alive. I imagined myself staying at her house or, rather, a one bedroom apartment in the city. A fifth floor walk up, I used to run up the stairs, sometimes taking two at a time. Breathless, …
For God’s Sake: STOP Tanning!
Exactly two years ago today, July 3, 2012, I was told I have two cancer tumors on the conjuctiva of my eye. They both turned out to be melanoma. The causes of these eye tumors are not 100% known. However; my doctor, a top notch specialist, did mention the sun and the thinning ozone layer …
A Model for a Day
The girls wear tight blue jeans and black tank tops. Their feet take careful steps on their four inch heeled shoes. The one and only guy swaggers in. We each have our own make up artist as we perch on the bar stools. Our front is covered with a black plastic bib and we look …
“I Would Rather Have AIDS than Leukemia”
I creep quietly in the cancer support group room because I am almost 15 minutes late. This is a new set of people for me. A fourth different group so far. I have been trying to find one that would actually live up to its name. I sit down in the last empty chair and …
Hey, God: Fuck Your Plan
I saw a phrase recently that said something like God won’t give you what you can’t carry. To me it is just another one of the platitudes that religious people use to make themselves or someone else feel better about their shitty lives. After what has happened to me in the past couple years (and …
“You Have Giraffe Eyelashes”
I hate the smell of acacia in the morning. Or it may be a different tree, different flower. But its smell causes pangs in my stomach because it blooms in late May and early June and reminds me of when I was a kid and used to walk to school terrified of the final exams. …
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