So Far Away (Part II of III)

So Far Away (Part I of III)

I was superior to others at handling my first cancer. I looked down on them, either thinking they were inferior humans or I was superhuman. For self-serving reasons I normally chose the latter. Now for the first time, five months after my transplant, 16-year-old Ben could look down on 19-year-old Ben with contempt. I was fucking pathetic, barely able to eat and even drink, which is why I was continuously hooked up to IV hydration.

It was difficult to look in the mirror after taking a shower. The people I most looked up to were professional athletes, often with large, well-defined muscles, like 6-4, 250-pound Redskins defensive end Andre Carter who supposedly has 4% body fat. I looked more like a prepubescent girl.

Weird shit was happening to me almost worthy of being in Fringe. My salivary glands stopped working. I was a slow eater before, but now I broke records. I had to chew each bite until the food was mush in order to swallow. Even then I had to gulp water, as if I was taking a pill. I tried dry-mouth gum, mouthwash, and spray, but none of it helped. I should’ve gargled with triamcinolone.

I went to my hospital’s dental clinic to determine the cause. The dentist didn’t perform a single diagnostic test, but observationally concluded I had oral damage due to chemotherapy that “may go away.” I expected to receive a lip biopsy. My doctor later told me I didn’t get one because I “refused for fear of too much pain.” Hey Doc: How about I saw off your left hip, poison your body with chemo and radiation, make you vomit over 100 times, give you 13 bone marrow biopsies, and then see if you’re too much of a pussy to handle a cut lip, you motherfucking liar. He must’ve misheard me.

If I swallowed food or a pill incorrectly, I puked. I knew I fucked up as soon as it went down and rushed to grab one of the buckets distributed throughout my house. I was too weak and the nausea came on too fast to reach the toilet.

I had the joy of receiving a brain MRI, a procedure where you lie motionless with your head secured, trapped in a loud, tight cylinder for 45 minutes. So you don’t lose your mind, there’s a tiny mirror that allows you to see outside the cylinder. If it had been an fMRI, then the radiologist would’ve seen significant left-brained activity in the form of “get me the fucking shit out of here!”

I developed the shingles for the second time in my life. At least this time the rash wasn’t down south. I saved the body cavity searches for later.

My brain turned to “mush” as Arrogance called it. Concentrating on mental tasks was difficult for me. I’m just glad the one online class I was taking was from community college and not from my alma mater, the University of Virginia. I had a difficult enough time at UVA with a working brain.

My eyes watered all day long, pooling in the bottom of my eyelids until overflowing, first saturating my unnaturally long eyelashes until finally streaming down my cheeks. You’d think I was weeping uncontrollably like Jason Segel from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. As a non-crier I felt the need to prove the salty discharge was not on my accord, like I was guilty until proven innocent.

I saw an ophthalmologist at the hospital’s eye clinic. After JD and I waited three hours to see him, the doctor said I had pink eye, a copout answer. It also turned out to be untrue. Days later, Arrogance called me and said I needed to come back and see the ophthalmologist again. Instead I chose to see a local ophthalmologist, who gave the same bullshit answer, but saved over four hours of my and JD’s time.

Arrogance lectured me on how big a mistake it was, that my health was not something to screw around with. Well, I was tired of screwing around with her and her colleagues, and left that hospital for a closer cancer clinic.

So Far Away (Part III of III)