Stealing My Time

I think we have established how much cancer sucks, it most definitely does. I feel like it just sucks more everyday. It is not just stealing the length of my life, it is stealing the time I have left.

Because everyday I spend time doing something related in some way to cancer, is time I am not living my life. It may seem like small things but they add up to a lot of time.

• Various appointments - with drive time, and depending on the appointment this can eat up 2-4 hours of a day, I usually have 3-4 appointments a week. And the doctor is running a hour behind to add to the time (looking at you urology doctor).

• 20-30 minutes setting up my TPN, and undoing it, plus being tethered to it for 16 hours.

• Iv fluids, this takes about 2-2.5 hours, so I often just skip this until I am so dehydrated I have to do it.

• Changing my ileostomy set up every 3-4 days takes about 30 minutes. That is if I am not changing it because of a leak, add more time if it is a leak related change.

• Time spent on phone calls or online trying to order supplies, it's never quick or easy. I love being on hold or navigating a poorly designed website.

• Driving all the way to UCHealth for meds because they are specialized enough that our nearby pharmacies don’t have them. Getting there and then waiting for the prescription to be filled. This is easily another wasted hour.

• I don’t count naps but they take about an hour a day and I wouldn’t need them that often if not for cancer.

So that is a lot of the day. I assume it is similar for other people with cancer. My time is precious now and that is how I spend it. It is frustrating and right now I am just incredibly angry about it. I am finally bouncing back from surgery and getting used to my ileostomy and have energy to do things, but it all has to fit in around the list of stupid shit I have to do to stay alive.

I try to put a positive spin on the shit show that is cancer and end my posts with hope but not today.. This wasting my finite time on cancer adjacent activities sucks. I can’t spin it to the positive - fuck you cancer.