Someone once told me stress was bad for cancer; I told them to “fix my life, then.”

I have four thousand more pressing things I could be doing than this, but I’m exhausted and writing here feels relatively “low stakes,” though it’s public.

Today’s visit at NAH, I must admit, was not unpleasant. In fact, it was better than previous visits. Still —

— I carry medical trauma from my youth. I mean when I was 13/14 something really fucked up happened to me in a medical setting, and I’ve never really processed it in a healthy way, but now that I’m a Professional Patient, I am trying to process it so I don’t have a heart attack every time I walk into a doctor’s office (I am often in doctor’s offices — feels like 45% of my life lately is consumed by managing my medical care). Seriously,
my pulse was 120 bpm
RESTING
ahead of my injections.

At the nurses suggestion,
I breathed myself down to 110.

Got my Lupron and the other one I can’t spell.
I had my little panic attack.
Life went on.
Looks like I’ll live another day.
Probably.

I once asked
my Uncle Al how he was doing
and he replied,
“They ain’t throwin’ dirt on me
yet.”

I think about this a lot. Some days,
as we migrate our life down to Tucson
at the end of this True Shit Show chapter in life,
the best I can do is remain above ground.

Today, I did therapy from my car in the parking lot of the hospital.
I mean, I got on FaceTime in the Honda Fit and cried my eyes out
in the parking lot like a weirdo, but I suppose with my shaved head
people probably thought I was just another “cancer person”
with bad news. I kind of was, but not bad news about cancer,
not today. Today, I feel fairly hopeful, still.
Today was just run-of-the-mill, fortysomething-in-America, bullshit.
Often, I am most grateful for “normal bullshit,” and when I left
the infusion center today, I held the peace sign above my head
and thanked God.
Really, I did.

This character is permanently the voice in my head.

When I am anxious, I don’t eat.
I have been holding excess anxiety
for roughly 15 months
(arguably for the past 44 years),
and I could probably stand
to eat a bit more.
I have taken the “starve cancer” diet
to a new level. Unlocked a new level?
Is that -how you say it, kids?
People in Flagstaff, who saw me,
may have assumed “Gruber has gotten thin from cancer,”
but this tiny person before you is NOT the result of breast cancer or Crohn’s,
per se; I am sick on anxiety, and yesterday’s energy rattled me so that I’m really struggling to calm myself down.

“Self soothe,” my therapist calls it.
I am learning how to “self soothe” without many of my old coping
mechanisms. I am learning how to “let go” and acknowledge
the present without leaping into the future.
This is very hard for me.
And when I do peer into the future, given the wiring of my brain, 90% of the time, I see fire, chattering skulls, and ash. Not that bad, but generally,
a hospice bed in like Yuma for some reason. I mean, that’s the kind of shittery
I’ve come to expect from my anxious-brain: Dying of cancer in Yuma.
I’ve never even been to Yuma.
Why would I ever be in Yuma?

I have no idea who that woman is. This is just a picture I found on the internet after Googling “Yuma, AZ.” Careful what you put on the interwebs, kids. An employer might Google you and find out you visited Yuma.

Sidebar: I am in a hotel (hence the title) before I head back to Tucson.
I am watching cable television and am positively astonished to learn
that people still care about Pamela Anderson. No shade, but I seriously
looked up and thought I was watching repeat news from the 1990s.

Today, when asked for my birthday (fellow Professional Patients will know that “What’s your birthdate?” is the most common question asked in oncology offices), I replied, “Nineteen-seventy-six.” Then I paused and said to the woman at the desk, “Why did I say that? Like were you going to think I was born in 1876?” We both laughed. “I look good for being born in 1876,” I said.
Some days, these days, are so rough that this is going to be a new benchmark: I do feel tired, but do I feel 1876 tired?

I don’t feel 1876 tired, in large part because today’s oncology visit was NOT an absolute horror show. And outside of the rude patient who cut in front of me in line, I can’t think of a complaint about how I was treated today. This is encouraging, though I will be moving my care to Phoenix because, well,
I live in Tucson now and I do not have an airplane.

I can’t wait to be home, in my own bed, with my wife and my dog.
Isn’t that the first line of an Elton John song?

Do his glasses really say Zoom? Is Elton John a prophet, an oracle? I wouldn’t doubt it.

When I was in Flagstaff with My Kids (students), I started referring to the people online as “Zoomers” and the students in-person as “Roomers.”
Anyone who has taken a class with me knows that I have a rather. . . well, frenetic, I suppose, teaching style. I gesticulate. I trip over shit. I write on the board. I pace. So as I was blurring past the kids on Zoom while trying to cram some mad ELA knowledge into the heads of my students before I returned to Tucson, I would say “I’m still with you Zoomers.” And then at the end of the class, I would say, “Okay, Roomers. Let’s clean this place up.”
Seriously, being in the classroom was surreal. Like how do I process that?
How? Seriously. I would like to know. Where will be the therapy for the
students and teachers of America who are really fucked up over this situation? I mean, first we have to care for our nurses (there is some true “shell shock” kind of thing going on for nurses in this country — keep an eye on your nurse friends).

The hotel I’m staying in is nice, but it is no Holiday Inn Express, Scottsdale or wherever I used to stay during my early months of being a Perma-patient.

I’m in a hotel room after getting injections whose names I can’t spell. I have, this week, as a metastatic breast cancer patient:
driven several hundred miles in a Honda Fit.
taught a week of classes online and in-person during a pandemic.
got “fired” (not really) from “an alcohol recovery program” for mentioning my cannabis use in these posts. Seriously. That’s the story. I assumed my sponsor was cool with cannabis use in sponsees. They were not. End of the story. Life goes on. I do like saying I was “fired from AA” because it sounds dramatic and I should probably add “drama queen” to my list of negative characteristics because I have been known . . . But actually, I’m getting better at the latter. I’m really pretty level headed these days — much more than I ever was before, and whether or not I stay with “the program,” I will have learned this in my last 74 days of alcohol recovery: I am strong. I am kind. I am an alcoholic.
You are strong, too.
Maybe not kind.
Maybe not alcoholic.
I don’t know your life.
Maybe you’re a total wimp.
If you don’t work in the service of patients or students,
you can be as wimpy as you like. I will not judge. I feel
like being wimpy more often than not.

Did people really enjoy Popeye and its character subsidiaries like Wimpy? I don’t get why a sad man begging for gross hamburgers is funny/amusing . . . Maybe it had something to do with the 1930s?

Well, readers, I’m off to the Honda Fit to rifle around and find my Nintendo Switch. (Seriously the Honda Fit looks like I live in it which I guess I have been doing to some degree since about 10 days ago).
My “self soothe” tonight will be video games, and an understanding that
altitude and incessant drama is no good for me. I don’t have to go into altitude unless I want, too, and I have absolutely no control whatsoever over “incessant drama,” but I can put in my earbuds, stretch out, and be away for the night.
Tomorrow, a long drive back down to Tucson,
to Sarah,
to Abe,
to The Spaceship.