I need your forgiveness when the outbursts and anger overwhelm,
my emotions have been in a rage ever since cancer came calling.
Years ago, and in another life, I had the undeniable pleasure of working as a veterinarian technician for a rural vet practice.
One of the most common surgeries we performed in the clinic were spays and neuters. A walk in the park, most of the time. But occasionally, the routine became more of an adventure than we expected... like the time we agreed to neuter Mr. Jones barn cat, Muffin (as in Stud-Muffin, but without the Stud...)
Sweetest tom-cat this side of the Mississippi. He was purring up a storm as the vet got ready to give him the pre-anesthetic injection in his back leg. I scruffed him by the neck, gently scratching his ears as the needle penetrated his muscle... and suddenly I was trying to contain the Tasmanian Devil.
His scream sent the hairs on my neck straight up and he shot out of my grip like a mad thing. With no where to go in the small surgery room, he went for the cabinets and climbed nearly to the ceiling before we could blink.
His eyes were wide in shock and his tail puffed out twice its normal size. As he scrambled for purchase, hanging on the old wooden cabinet door, we leapt into action and tried to grab him, which only served to enrage him all the more.
His ears flattened, the tail whipped and a demonic growl grew into something that would have done the Exorcist proud...
With a heroic leap, he managed to clear the surgical table, scattering sterile instruments to the four corners as he dove for the window, which happened to be open... it was spring, ya'll, like beautiful weather in Texas... Who doesn't have their window wide open??? But with a screen, of course, we wouldn't be that stupid!
We were just not as mad as that cat... He plowed through the screen like it was nothing more than a flimsy window dressing. I learned that's what mad can do to you...
And, heart be still, the story has a happy ending. Enough sedative was injected into the Devil-Cat that he passed out in the bushes behind the clinic... We collected said sleepy cat and performed a quick - and painless- neuter and delivered him back to a happy Mr. Jones...
I think Muffin forgave us... but I'm not 100% sure :-)
And I wish that was how the "mad" in our cancer journey turned out. As in, happily-ever-after. Back to normal, looking handsome, lounging out on the farm kind of happy...
But Cancer Anger is a whole different breed of animal. It's not funny, nor over by the end of a 30-minute sit-com kind of mad. It's more like the demonic-growl kind of mad that makes you plow through windows or climb the walls hysterical... it can turn us into creatures we don't recognize, make us spit hate at the hands that only want to help and leave us spent and crushed when we can't outrun it.
Jay Lake shares his perspective on Cancer Anger like this:
"I’ve written before about hope, despair and the cult of optimism in the realm of cancer care. There’s a cultural expectation that we who are in such dire medical straits are to be positive and noble. ...
You can also make a quite reasonable philosophical argument about acceptance. But let me tell you, as a terminal cancer patient, my entire life is Kübler-Ross on fast spin. Acceptance doesn’t come naturally, and for some of us, is closely akin to surrender.
There’s a great deal of cultural pressure to accept the inevitable. To be optimistic and graceful. To suffer in quiet and noble silence.
Tell that to the cancer.
Cancer and its treatments are messy. They are painful. They are humiliating. Cancer undermines everything a patient knows about their life, their love, their place in the world. And for far too many of us, cancer steals away everything in end, ushering us into death years, decades, even generations before our time.
Why the h*** shouldn’t we be angry? Why the h*** shouldn’t I be angry? I am losing my life. I am losing my place in my daughter’s childhood and young adulthood and her future. I am losing my family, my friends and lovers, my writing. I am losing myself.
And when I say angry, I’m not talking about Dylan Thomas’ almost genteel rage against the dying of the light. I’m talking about a good, old-fashioned, trash can-kicking, screaming sh*tfit.
D*** it, of course I’m angry. Anger has kept me alive, kept me going, kept me dedicated to everything I can do to survive a little longer. I live angry, and I will die angry. Being me, I generally channel that anger constructively. I don’t actually kick trashcans or yell at people or throw tantrums.
But it keeps me going, and I cannot pretend it isn’t real, dark and fiery down to the core of my soul."
That's a look into the very real world of Jay's cancer journey. And it resonates with countless cancer so-journers. We can't pretend it is easy, nor that acceptance is the only answer.
Muffin would understand. His angry reaction to that anesthetic injection was primal and real. And that mad became his survival mechanism as he coped with the scary unknown of a life-altering journey.
Might we always, always remember the power of such anger. It does not have to be negative, nor is it a positive, it just is... it is part of the journey, and no one should ever, ever feel they must "suffer in quiet and noble silence."
"Bitterness is like cancer.
It eats upon the host.
But anger is like fire.
It burns it all clean"
~ Maya Angelou
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