I miss farting.
I Tweeted those words in the fall of 2013, just a few months after I was declared No Evidence of Disease following 11 months of treatment for stage 3b rectal cancer.
There’s a story there.
I was given the opportunity to share my story as part of a panel discussing academic detailing, the Affordable Care Act and colorectal cancer.
I was the lone patient on a panel of academics and medical personnel.
The event was held at St. Thomas Centennial Hospital in Nashville.
About 15 minutes before the event was to begin I was in the hallway having a conversation with the public relations guy from the Colorectal Cancer Alliance.
In mid-conversation, I felt a wet warmth on my left thigh. My colostomy appliance had failed and I had become a walking biohazard.
I excused myself from the conversation, high-tailed it to the nearest men’s room and called my colleague, Denise, who was in the meeting room. I asked her to come to men’s room to get my car keys. I needed her to retrieve my duffel bag out of the trunk so I could change clothes.
I had a serious code brown on my hands.
After Denise arrived with the bag, I set about cleaning myself up.
The single-ply toilet paper in the stall was of no use so I stood, buck naked, in the middle of the restroom cleaning myself up with the paper hand towels stacked neatly at the sink.
A tech of some nature, maybe radiology, walked in and headed to the urinal to pee. He paid no attention to me, as if naked giants covered in shit appear in this restroom all the time.
As the guy peed, he let fly a loud and long fart.
It had to feel good to relieve that pressure.
“God, I miss farting,” I heard myself say.
I mean, okay, with an ostomy I do fart, technically, but I can’t control it and that feeling of relief doesn’t happen.
If you’ve ever farted, and you have, you know what I’m talking about.
It’s a little thing, but I miss it.
I miss the days when my body dysmorphia was only about being fat.
Being fat and having an ostomy is a whole new hell.
I miss the days when I didn’t have to worry about shitting myself.
I miss not wondering whether I have enough colostomy bags to get through a month.
Every time I change my pouch I do the calculation in my head. How many days worth do I have left? Are there enough until my next order arrives? Will I need to order a box from Amazon?
God forbid I have a bout of diarrhea and fly through my supply faster than normal.
At least I have the means to order above and beyond my prescription. How do people who don’t have insurance do this?
I miss enjoying the feel of carpet, soft sand and grass on the bottoms of my feet.
Because of neuropathy from Oxaliplatin, one of the drugs in the chemo cocktail I took, I can’t feel anything.
It’s like my feet are asleep. All the time.
Unless it’s cold. Then they hurt.
If you see me standing and rocking from one foot to the other, it’s because I’m making sure I’m standing on solid ground.
I miss running, for the same reason.
After falling on my ass and scraping the top layers of skin off my hands attempting to run with neuropathy, I had to give it up.
It sure helped with the weight thing.
I miss thinking clearly.
Chemo brain is real and I still struggle with it all these years after treatment.
I write for a living, and some days it’s a challenge to string two words together. Or to think logically.
I miss not worrying whether every little pain, headache, scrotal cyst, enlarged lymph node, lung nodule, inflamed sweat gland, high blood calcium level or other physical anomaly is the start down the garden path toward a recurrence.
I had 28 radiation blasts to my pelvic region. Burned my crack and my butthole. Sunburned my junk. And who knows what happened on the inside.
Yes, the cancer was killed, thanks be to God, but what damage was done in the process remains unknown.
Secondary cancer is likely at some point, but I’d love to go a year without a cancer scare.
I miss so many people who I’ve known and loved, who died from stupid cancer.
Gary, Bonnie, Belinda, Marie, Chuck, Beth, Michael, John, Marilyn, Mynor, Uncle Bob, Amber, and so many others.
Sounds like I’m wallowing in a post-cancer hellscape, but I’m not.
I do indeed miss all the things and people Ive mentioned, usually in fleeting thought.
I also realize that on balance, I’m incredibly lucky. First line treatment worked for me. We had great insurance so financial toxicity wasn’t an issue. People kept Sarah and me fed and supported through my entire treatment experience.
Despite all of the laments, or maybe in spite of them, life is awfully beautiful. Sometimes awful and beautiful simultaneously.
I love and am well-loved by the lovely Sarah, my best friend, a great circle of close friends and my family.
I have an amazing job at a company where I’m making a difference, and I work with some incredible and brilliant people.
I have purpose in working to change the world, especially for men facing cancer, and also for making policy change to support funding cures and improving the quality of life for cancer patients and survivors. My friends and colleagues in cancerland are legion.
I don’t wallow in the things I miss but I do miss them. It’s part of the whole cancer package.
I’ve been open about every step of my cancer journey since my diagnosis nearly 12 years ago.
People, in general, assume that once cancer treatment is over cancer is over too.
That’s not the case.
New side effects and impacts from treatment seem to crop up all the time.
I’ll roll with the punches to be sure, but I’m sure to miss whatever cancer takes away next.
But, I’m still here.
Not being able to fart is worth it.
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