Pity Eyes

I woke up this morning after an incredibly deep sleep (thank you Katherine for the lavender!), feeling almost normal.  Until...duh duh duh....the abdominal cramping started.  Oh crap.  It's 8am, I'm alone with Gwen, she's needing food, the dog needs outside, and I'm having troubles moving.  The waves of pain and discomfort keep coming, getting worse as the time slowly moves by.  I can tell that I've got some sort of partial blockage happening.  I can feel a hard lump on my right side and some other areas that are distended from the gas in my intestines.  I was in the ER a few weeks ago because of a complete blockage (graphic content alert!) where my stool was not passing through the area of my bowel that has the cancer mass.  I ended up having an enema done so that I could get everything through and continue on with my life.  (It was kind of funny.  The nurse doing my enema walked through the curtain and started giggling.  I'm all like, "What's up?  What's so funny?".  She looked at me and laughed some more.  She said, "I'm sorry.  I really shouldn't be laughing.  I just thought you'd be 80.  I'm not used to doing this to young people."  I found that particularly amusing.)  At any rate, the enema made me feel quite a bit better, so I hopped into my vehicle and headed to the pharmacy in hopes of doing a home enema, thus avoiding the whole ER ordeal.  I've seen WAY too much of that place lately.  I get to the store, grab the box and read the directions.  Do not use if experiencing abdominal pain, bowel blockage, etc...   Oh, bother!  I wait for the pharmacist to finish with a client so that I can ask him about my particular case.  I explain to him that I have a partial blockage because of colon cancer and that I am experiencing abdominal cramping, probably because of the gas trying to get through the partial blockage.  Can I use this product?

That's when it happened... Pity Eyes.

This is a new phrase I've coined for my journey.  It's that look of complete  dread and sorrow and pity in someone's eyes when they are looking at someone who is terminally ill.  I found it almost insulting.  He looked at me as though I was already gone.  Then he said in a sombre tone, "I'm sorry.  I don't know.  There's no way to tell, "... more pity eyes..."I'm sorry."  I wanted to shake him and say, "I'M NOT DEAD!  Not even close!  I am a fighter and I have so many people and resources available to me.  I'm in an age where cancer doesn't kill everyone.  I am young and otherwise very healthy.  I am going to BEAT THIS!"  Instead, I turned and said, "Ok.  I'll just call my doctor."

I guess my lesson from this is that I need to impart to people that I don't want a pity party.  I appreciate sympathy and empathy, but pity isn't necessary.  I've been so fortunate in that everyone I know has been responding to me with love and encouragement.  I haven't had to deal with pity until today.  I didn't like it.

The enema did make me feel better, by the way.  Everything is working itself out, if you catch my drift. ;)   (Haha, I just put two puns into one sentence.  OH, clever me.)

And for those of you praying for specific things, please pray that the mass will shrink before my surgery.  It's looking like there are some lymph nodes that have been affected, which may mean chemo, but we won't know for certain until the surgery.  Let's pray that those nodes are CLEAN AND CLEAR of all cancer by the time the surgery happens.  YEAH!