Love and Unholy Fire (Weirdly, a Health Update) (Patreon)

So, it's February 14th. Valentine's Day, for most Americans. But for me, it's the 1 year anniversary of being carried by burly firefighters out to an ambulance, hauled off to the hospital, treated at the ER, and given room and board at medical rates for nearly a week.

Yep, the fight for my life began a year ago. Apparently I have a LOT of life to fight for, because we're still doing it!

(Also, I have GOT to get my wife a better Valentine's Day gift next year, because *I* was in the hospital last year on the 14th, and she is in the hospital this year on the 14th [for a scheduled, outpatient procedure in her case, but still... ], and none of this has involved flowers or boxes of chocolates, and I'm not saying we don't like to spice up our love lives, but "playing doctor" is supposed to be a euphemism.)

While the first few weeks of my medical emergency focused on the pulmonary embolism that got me hospitalized, that turned out to have been provoked by cancer we found soon thereafter.

Cancer I'd had for close to a decade before we found it.

I've spent most of the past year preparing to kill my cancer with the blade, which is the norm for conflict with this kind of monster. But, given its strength, we opted to poison it first, with only the finest curated poison, thoughtfully paid for by my own personal medicinal-supple-assassin. We did that for... eight months.

I honestly do not have clear memories of all that time. Cancer and chemo does a number on my brain. Also, my skin. Also, my immune system.

Now, poisoning the horror that lives in my gut without paying rent did a good job shrinking it, so I expected to get to the "blades" part soon. I had HOPED to do it last year, so it'd be covered under that year's deductible for medical insurance. (Well... the second medical insurance deductible for last year, but that's -- literally -- a different story). But, alas, the conflict dragged on too long, and we didn't get to it.

Which is a bummer.

It's kinda like when you're playing an RPG, and there's a big fight, and you can SEE the GM has a giant boss monster miniature sitting by him, CLEARLY for use in the end of the battle, and 45 minutes AFTER your game session is supposed to have ended he STILL hasn't put it on the map, and the GM is like, "Whelp... everyone note where you are on the map, and keep track of your character's condition for the next session..."

(My assumption is MOST of the people reading this will get that reference. If not, I'll explain it further when I eventually write my book "Everything I Needed To Know to Beat Cancer I Learned From Games," which will build and expand from these blog posts. But I'm not going to start the writing the book proper until I *have* completely beaten this cancer, because why invite too much irony into your life?)

It's pretty common in adventure games for damage to be categorized, such as slashing, poison, psychic, fire, unholy, and so on. When facing a monster, if one damage type doesn't seem effective, smart players try somethin else.

Turns out, it's sort of the same with cancer... though instead of earning piles of treasure while you do it, you have to spend piles of treasure.

I mention this because, after more than two full seasons of poisoning the horror that lurks within me, it's been decided slashing damage it not the way to go. We are, instead, going to use unholy fire.

(Okay, it'll actually be radiation treatment, but I have to get my fun where I can these days, so I'm calling it unholy fire for this entire blog post.)

Now, this is what my medical team calls "going off the Standard of Care," by which they mean because I am a "special unicorn" (literally what my first colorectal surgeon called me, just before declining to treat me after going over my case and then referring me to a cancer-specializing major hospital with whole teams of people and the shadowy Tumor Board) we're not doing things the way the medical profession recommends they normally be done to slay this specific kind of beast.

There are a lot of reasons for that, ranging from blood thinners to prevent future pulmonary embolisms, my history of severe infections, to some of my internal organs not targets directly by the surgery... but the end result is that the Tumor Board, in it's ineffable wisdom, has decided to do things differently with my tumor.

So, the plan is to combine a big dose of unholy fire at the tumor itself, and a "prophylactic" dose as the related lymph nodes, 5 times a week for 6 to 7 weeks, up in Oklahoma City (45-minutes to an hour each way). This will be combined with chemo at the same time, so I can expect to take all the suck of poison, and combine it with the extra suck of unholy fire.

To make sure they can hit exactly the spots they want, I went in for a test-positioning last week. Basically I was stripped from the waist down (except my flexible metal-free socks with outdoor soles, which the nurses all adored and plan to get themselves some of), laid out on a CAT scan slap (much more Catty the CAT-scan than Frank the MRI -- see previous health updates if those names don't make sense), and had the Catty 2 look through me and take pictures to ensure that the position i was in would work.

And it would be best, they carefully warned me in advance, if my bladder was full. Not just this time, but every time I was exposed to unholy fire. Full, by the way, an hour from my house, 5 days a week, for 30-minute medical procedures which may have as one of their side-effects reduced bladder control.

It seemed only fair I warn my bladder. It went something like this:

Me: Hey, bladder. We need to talk.

Bladder: This is never good. Whatever it is, I didn't do it. 

Me: No, you literally didn't. It's not you, it's me.

Bladder: Does ANYONE ever buy that?

Me: Er... Okay, it's more my intestine than me, as long as we're anthropomorphizing my internal organs.

Bladder: Yeah, and if we ARE anthropomorphizing your internal organs, why don't I get my own name? In these stories even Frank the MRI gets a name.

Me: None of my internal organs have individual names.

Bladder: Maybe, but some of your external organs do. I've heard your wife call...

Me: SO ABOUT MY GUTS!!

Bladder: Whatever. If the issue is your guts, then I don't want to talk about it. The "Once Per Night" Treaty specifies I'm only accountable for myself and, for some reason, your kidneys.

Me: Yeah, I know. And I'm not talking about revising the treaty. We just need to talk about firing beams of unholy fire through my body.

Bladder: Woah! That escalated quickly.

Me: I know how you feel.

Bladder: You better. I work very hard to make sure you do.

Me: I know that you do. Look, I'm going to be doing 6 or 7 weeks of unholy fire therapy, in Oklahoma City, 5 days a week.

Bladder: Well, just be sure to relieve me before you go each day. ... What? Why are you looking at me that way?

Okay, not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

I'm not expected to lose any hair I care about, or have skin burns. I AM expected to have fatigue, nausea, and sleep problems. But issues... sorry, I typed that wrong. 

"Butt issues" may occur, and the possibilities are long and frightening, but none of them are particularly likely. There are a LOT of possibilities, though, and it's not like I've had the best luck since 2018.

After the 6-7 weeks of unholy fire, recovery is expected to take between 2 weeks and 6 months. And, no, no one has a real good idea which end of that I'm going to fall at. We'll check to make sure the monster has been killed, and then begin a "Wait and Watch" program of probing me every few months. Eventually that'll likely extend out to once per year... because about the time we can stop worrying about THIS cancer returning, we'd need to check that the unholy fire hasn't caused a DIFFERENT cancer in the same region.

Which, come to think of it, is a great plot point for a game adventure, since it lends itself well to follow-up campaigns. "Though the unholy fire destroyed the Scourge of Buttopia, it also planted the seeds for the rise of Intestinax the Destroyer!"

On a related note, I'm likely going to have to launch a medical GoFundMe soon. Not only are we looking at our third insurance deductible in 14 months, but even when insurance pays its share, the costs can be extremely high. I'm regularly getting $25,000 procedures, and unholy fire ain't cheep either. I've been doing everything I can to keep our head above water--from itemized medical bills to contacting financial aid departments and charities and cancer support groups to running sales to sell my possessions -- but the bills keep coming due, and we're at our capacity for juggling payments.

People who want to help now, rather than wait, can join this Patreon, or make a donation directly to my ko-fi(https://ko-fi.com/owenkcstephens)(which I get 100% of). And I sincerely thank everyone who has supported me so far -- I would not still be here without your help.