One year, One month and One day

I just noticed on my pink ticker at the bottom of my blog that I have been "beating breast cancer for one year, one month and one day." It is so strange that everything about cancer is about fighting, and beating, and battling and killing. So very warlike, very offensive (the double entendre here.) They do say the best offense is a good defense.

I don't feel like I am FIGHTING. I mean it's not like I go into the ring and give the old cancer a left jab and a right hook to the chin and then a sucker punch to the kidney. Yes, this would cause a person that you were FIGHTING to pee blood for a few days but so can snowmobiling or going 4byin' in an old Willy's jeep. I don't really get an opportunity to FIGHT in that sense. I don't stay up at night because me and my cancer had some nasty words and it really hurt my feelings or was unfair. I don't get the fight thing. Maybe it is that "Fight Club" concept where foxy Edward Norton is constantly FIGHTING the evil and elusive Brad Pitt. Sadly, though that would make me the Ed Norton character (crazy & delusional) and the cancer would get to be Brad Pitt's character who is such a snazzy dresser and has a hell of a lot more fun in the movie.

BEATING now there is something I can relate to. Not that I have been BEATEN or have I ever BEATEN anyone else but I do feel like if my kids were at risk I could and would BEAT the living shit out of someone. One time I BEAT an alarm clock. Then I threw it out of my third floor apartment to a lonely death on the pavement. I have BEAT many people at Scrabble and have been BEATEN too. But again cancer is not a game and there is nothing and no one you get to BEAT. No checkered flag, no "uncle" and no trophy.

Am I BATTLING? Am I really BATTLING in the true sense of the word? Do I get up out of my bunker and BATTLE? Is it like what the soldiers are experiencing in Iraq-istan? Am I leading someone or something into BATTLE? I certainly don't sit up and yell, "Charge!" then point my sword at the enemy and proceed to lop their heads off. No 'Braveheart' action here. I basically stumble out of bed, trying to get the 5 feet to the bathroom to pop pain pills without falling. Nothing glorious there. Pathetic actually.

KILLING now that is where it gets weird. Am I KILLING cancer? Do I actually have anything at all to do with KILLING cancer? I don't know. I take a whole host of cancer KILLING drugs. My pee and my blood and my bones are constantly being tested for cancer death. But is it me that is doing the KILLING or am I just the host? And in being the hostess with the mostest do I not only accomodate the evil cancer but the evil cancer KILLING drugs, and the uncomfortable cancer death measuring tests and the indignities of all the side effects of the drugs that KILL the cancer. I mean really is it natural or normal to have to mark time out of one's calendar to take a shit? What do the real soldiers do? My husband, a soldier in another era, says that the MREs make the soldiers really constipated so it doesn't become an issue.

Can you imagine:
"One Delta One are you ready to drop the bomb?"
"Uh hold up One Delta One we got one that needs to take a shit."
"One Delta One let us know when you are ready."

Absurd.

I digress. I guess I am not a fighter or a batterer or a battle savvy warrior or a killer. I am just a chick with cancer and a pacifist's heart.