no cancer

August 24, 2016

I do not have cancer?
At least, I do not have this cancer anymore.

I have had 3 surgeries - May 20th, June 9th, August 24th - to excise a Dermatofibrosarcoma Protuberans (DFSP) from the left side of my chest. They cut most of it out, determined that it was cancerous; then cut the rest of it out; then cut a margin around the tissue to minimise the chance of recurrence.

My brother affectionately nicknamed the growth(s) Harold and Tumar, though Harold later cannibalised Tumar. Think Larry and Barry from Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).

DFSP is a rare form of cancer, literally one in a million. As far as I can tell, it’s also relatively easy to deal with because it rarely spreads to other parts of the body. You just cut it out.

I always thought of the patch - when I was younger, it was a toughened, purple depression - as a birthmark. My GP told me it was likely fused blood vessels - a tangled vascular mass rather than delimited veins and capillaries. Sometime in the past 2 years - I don’t remember when, and it gnaws at me - it grew to about the size of a golf ball.

I put off surgery because I couldn’t afford it. The last barista job I worked at uni still owes me three grand and I was in a hole at the end of last year. I put it off again because I didn’t want to stop playing Ultimate. These, now, seem incomprehensibly dumb - though I guess I wouldn’t have had to worry about my debts if I’d died.

Cancer is a heavy place of mind. I have a whiteboard with “no cancer” on my to-do list. It’s the first item on the list. It will, I think, always be the first item on the list.

The counterfactuals.

Could this have killed me earlier? Why was I too proud to ask for help? Will it come back?

The hypotheticals.

If I died, what would I regret in my life? Would the people in my life know how much I value them? Am I living consistently with what I value?

Reaching backwards pulls on the stitches in my chest, which run from the top of my shoulder down to the centre of my pec. Reaching forward contracts the muscles underneath the stitches. When I chew, I feel it tug through my armpit. I will sleep fitfully for weeks. I can’t lie comfortably. My shoulder is hunched because the skin is pulled too tight across my chest. These sensations will, I think (hope), fade along with the stitches as I heal. They did for the first two surgeries.

I regret not having it removed sooner. I need to convince myself that anytime before it killed me was soon enough.

I do not have this cancer.
I do not not have cancer, either.