The Symptoms Showdown

In which my body tries to play its own Pain Olympics

Friends, strangers, Compassion Brigaders from far-flung corners of the globe, I am at your service. And I respond to your Instagram polls:

Lest my sainted spouse be the only one who gets to hear scintillating updates about Daily Life With Cancer™ I thought it would be fun (for me, if no one else) to attempt a ranking of my current cancer treatment symptoms, since deciding which one is worse is where I spend 80-90% of my mental energy these days.

But to make today’s offering to the Compassion Brigade more applicable to our ongoing enlightenment, I decided this ranking would be based not on which symptom is bothering me the most but on a new and hopefully helpful Bright-Side-Ability Scale. Allow me to explain!

I am not an optimist by nature.¹ I am a dogged believer in hope and resurrection, but these are not the same as sheer optimism, which my sainted spouse radiates. Vacillating between realism and cynicism is my sweet spot (I mean, have you read the news?). Thus there are few things that annoy me more—as a human and as a theologian—as when people try to bright-side suffering.

What I prefer to “at least!” statements or “look on the bright side!” false positivity is simple sympathy or compassion. I welcome your “this sucks” or “I’m so sorry” any day of the week. But because I don’t want to be a sociopath, I try to grit my teeth and bear it when a kind stranger or a well-meaning friend goes Pollyanna on my current suffering. So I’ve got a pretty good handle on how to assess and rank most any pitfall within the Pain Olympics of Life (which we have all played, if we’re honest).²

Clearly I did not embark on this cAncEr jOuRnEy with rose-colored glasses since I don’t own them. But I am also cursed with an honor roll student’s sneaky suspicion that she can beat the system if she tries hard enough, so maybe it won’t be that bad.

Reader, it is that bad. If you’ve got such powerful drugs coursing through your body that every nurse has to don a haz-mat suit to hang the bag on the IV pole? You're not going to have the Hot Girl Summer of your dreams.

As a participant in a clinical trial, I receive regular emails from the study officials, euphemistically called a “quality of life survey.” It asks such delightful questions as “How many FINGERNAILS or TOENAILS did you lose during THE PAST WEEK” and honestly, I love the creative use of caps more than the average person but that is excessive.³ Anyway, it lists all the possible symptoms from my current course of treatment and asks you to rank how much they are disrupting your normal life. I got smug taking the first few surveys. Nope, no, none, not at all, I clicked with a smile. Now I glare at the screen and veer toward the other side of the scale. YES, YES, ALL, A LOT, EVERY DAY.

So without further ado, here’s my real answer to how I’m doing lately, thank you for asking. (Ranking based upon what percentage of people would bright-side this pitfall.)

Top 7 List of Symptoms Based on Bright-Side-Ability (At Least There Aren’t 10!)

7. Fatigue

You would think I’d qualify for the Olympic trials in napping or sleeping or general lethargy, the way my bed has become my natural habitat. Forever tired.

Bright-Side-Ability: 82%. It’s annoying not to have my usual energy levels, but who doesn’t love sleeping? I’m sort of ok with this side effect.

6. Dry eyes/blurry vision

One fun part of my treatment is that I have to take eye drops every 2 hours. I say “fun” mostly for my family because they will confirm that I have gotten WORSE at administering eye drops over the past 5 weeks. It’s astonishing how bad I am at this: fake tears streaming down my face at all hours of the day. But it’s always good to deconstruct false myths of progress. As a writer and reader, I gasped when the research nurse told me that blurry vision was a common side effect because what could be worse than losing my sight?⁴ Now I shrug and squint and rarely write anything because who can look at a laptop for hours?

Bright-Side-Ability: 77%. I can still see. And drive. Mostly. Wanna ride?

5. Constipation

I might be your favorite writer-of-vulnerability on the Internet, but I’m not writing about this.

Bright-Side-Ability: 50%. This, too, shall pass.

4. Nausea & Vomiting

(rubs hands and cackles with delight) Now we’re getting to the terrible stuff. Having spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 entire years of my life throwing up from pregnancy, this is not new terrain. But it’s still no fun to keep nothing down, which is what I spent last weekend doing.

Bright-Side-Ability: 37%. It’s real hard to bright-side vomit, but I still receive the “at least it shows the drugs are working!” rainbows and butterflies. On the other hand, I have honed a prayer practice while puking of offering-it-up for people I know who would do anything to be pregnant and sick. So I’ll admit to mild bright-siding of this myself because I never mind praying about infertility AND after years of sick I do know what not to eat when it will be revisited.

3. Hair loss

Thought this one would top the list, didn’t you? Me, too. I do hate it, now bearing a generous estimate of 50% of the hair on my head that I did a month ago. But I didn’t go instantly bald as per my fear, and I’m hanging around with a hack job bob that my 11- and 9-year-olds cut. Might make it one more infusion.

Bright-Side-Ability: 13%. At least I still have eyelashes. At least I found cool hats. Also I don’t need to shave anymore which is cool!

2. Rash

I’ve had poison ivy, chicken pox, and shingles, but this one is giving them all a run for their money: a widespread outbreak of red bumps that itch like hell and travel round my whole body. Right now it’s my legs that look like I’m still in the “base burns lead to sweet tans” stage of stupidity in which I spent my teens. The blasted rash occupies about 68% of my thoughts currently, and nothing helps though I regularly embark on my rotation of oatmeal bathes and vats of hydrocortisone.

Bright-Side-Ability: 6%. Tough to bright-side a rash, but I bet someone could try.

1. Mouth sores

Hoo boy. I tried so hard to avoid this one, brushing my teeth and swishing with that stupid prescription mouthwash a zillion times a day. BUT turns out a solid week of puking will vanquish even the most valiant efforts. Feels like strep throat plus ear infection plus canker sores plus scalding your mouth on hot chocolate.⁵ Thanks for all your advice on socials last week about foods to eat whilst nauseous, but now I’m basically down to what I can sip through a straw anyway.⁶ Also can’t yell at my kids because it hurts to talk so summer parenting is going great, thanks for asking.

Bright-Side-Ability: 0%. I triple-dog-dare you.

BUT

57% tumor shrinkage!! Likely in the 60-70% range now!! I regularly miss the forest for the trees because (gestures to everything above) but the undeniable, overarching bright side of efficacious drugs and modern medicine and the Divine Physician is that these whopper drugs are working. So like any determined Pain Olympian, I have to keep my eyes on the prize: the utter death and demise of this cancer. To borrow a zinger that my 5-year-old launched at his 3-year-old brother in the car last night, I WILL DESTROY YOU.

Prayers from The Pit

Resurrecting this collective intercession effort this week to beg your prayers for my friend Rachael who is entering hospice care for her cancer. If you read Mothering Spirit, you might remember Rachael’s gorgeous essay on love’s mystery deeper than memory. Her blog is full of incredible writing on faith, motherhood, and suffering. Rachael and I got the grace of meeting in person twice over the past year, and she is such an amazing human that I am begging the Lord on her behalf for more time. Would you please pray for Rachael, her husband, her four kids, and all who love her, that the next months would be full of peace and joy and even unexpected hope?

Rachel and I, one year ago. You should have seen the barista’s reaction when we told her we were online friends meeting for the first time.

1. See also: the cumulative suffering of my life to date, HAHAHA.

2. My husband and I coined this term for ourselves during a decade plus of enduring newborn sleep in which we would casually but passive-aggressively engage in daily competitions over Who Slept Worse Last Night And Thus Wins.

3. My answer to both continues to be zero, thank God. But one oncologist did warm me early on that if I went the chemo route first, I should stop washing dishes to help prevent fingernail loss. Mama don’t raise no fool, so I announced my early retirement from dishwashing to my children that same afternoon.

4. Turns out a lot of things.

5. Aren’t you glad you opened this email today?

6. Many thanks to those of you who suggested “magic mouthwash” as well, but apparently there’s a lidocaine shortage so it’s currently unavailable. I could not be more annoyed at the supply chain right now. The DIY salt & baking soda alternative is a joke; if you have an unopened bottle of the magic variety, holler my way.