10 Years Ago Today: Chemo
There are a lot of things I don’t remember about finding out I had cancer in 2002. But I do remember the day I began treatments: today. That’s right. Two days before Christmas, I had my first round of ABVD (adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine — a.k.a. four ways to poison yourself in order to get healthy). One of these drugs (vinblastine), as it turns out, is a kind of orange-red, which runs through your system and turns your pee, well, orange. The doctors like to tell you this beforehand, because usually orange or red pee means something has gone seriously wrong with your innards. Ironically, peeing orange after a treatment of vinblastine still means something is going on in your innards, but in a kind of good way (good bad? Grey. We’ll go with that). This was one of the few things I laughed about when I went through the chemo process. After all, it is kind of hilarious, no? In any case, I had my first treatment on Dec. 23rd, 2002 and spent Christmas feeling somewhat like garbage. I’m fortunate in that most of the immediate side effects attributed to ABVD were fairly mild. There was no intense vomiting (though I’d get a little nauseous at times). I did feel like I’d gone to a party the night before, drank enough alcohol to kill a horse, and then woke up the following morning feeling pretty much as you’d expect: extremely exhausted with a side of craptacular. Beyond that, I don’t remember much. I remember that the nurse who worked at the oncologist’s office was an incredibly nice lady with a lovely attitude and that my mom sat with me through most of the treatment (I owe a lot to my mom, if I’m being honest — she took the brunt of all the financial stress, scheduling, and so on while I tried to combat my disease; she’s a hero in my book and a testament to how important it is to have family (however you define it) during times like this). And I remember feeling like crap while the drugs were funneling into my veins. You literally feel them eating away at you, like those overnight effects of a nasty cold where you just know that you’re going to wake up feeling awful. The only good thing about chemo, I guess, is that they give you good pain killers and a lot of excuses to sleep and sleep and sleep. I slept a lot… Oh, and you can pretty much eat whatever you want, so long as you get the necessary nutrients. Why? Because chemo ruins your appetite and tends to eat away at your body mass. Anything to keep your weight from crashing and your body from completely eating itself alive is generally OK. I made a lot of fruit smoothies… So there you have it. I’ll blog about how I was diagnosed in the future. But since today is kind of a milestone — ten years, baby — I thought I’d blog about it. Plus, I recently had my ten year “checkup,” in which my oncologist in Florida basically said “well, it ain’t back, so you’re good to go.” I like such appointments! There’s much more to tell, for sure. I’ll do my best to collect my memories. P.S.: Earlier this year, I was inspired by Jay Lake to blog about my experiences with cancer. Jay has shared many of his experiences on his blog and was kind enough to talk about how terminal cancer affects him as a writer on my podcast. He’s an extraordinary human being. I recommend you check out his books.
Cloning Myself?
Would you clone yourself if you have the opportunity to do so? I sometimes think it would be strange to clone myself (the scifi kind of cloning, where clones are literal, full-grown copies). What kind of strange conversations would we have? Would we each develop differently over time so that the only resemblance between us was physical? Science fiction writers have asked these questions for decades. Why? I don’t know. Maybe we’re secretly narcissists? Or maybe there’s just something fascinating about the idea that humanity is duplicable. After all, if science fiction is, as many suggest, a genre deeply concerned with the human condition, then cloning is merely a “new” avenue through which we can interrogate what it is that makes us human. Cloning rests alongside intelligent robots, aliens, androids, and all manner of intelligent non-humans to remind us that whatever it is that makes us human and unique is hard to pinpoint. If our minds and bodies can be duplicated, then what makes you “you” and me “me”? This is why I find narratives about cloning, androids, aliens, and so on compelling. Dawn by Octavia Butler, for example, considers whether humanity still exists when its genetics have been tampered with by an alien race (even for its own good). Butler’s narrative is rife with deep questions about human existence: Is there something inherently wrong with humanity on a genetic level? Do we cease to be human if we fix those genetic errors and mix ourselves with other species? Does humanity deserve to exist if its genetics lead it toward self-destruction? Or there are books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, Marseguro by Edward Willett, or Tobias Buckell’s Xenowealth Saga. Each interrogates the human condition in unique and vibrant ways, from questioning our compulsion towards enslavement and extermination (Dick) to the place of genetic modification in the human spectrum (Willett) to the integration of humans with machines and computers (Buckell). Science fiction loves these sorts of questions. It thrives on them, more so now than ever before — because we’re already asking ourselves these questions in real life. If you clone a person or modify their genetics, are they still human? Why or why not? When we create artificial lifeforms with free will, do we have to rethink our legal framework? If so, how do we change it? If we’re not already asking ourselves these questions today, we will have to sooner or later. Humanity will have to change as we “play God.” And so I have to ask myself what I’d think if I met a clone of myself. Would I react with violence, as so many humans in SF narratives have done, or would I react with philosophical confusion and curiosity? I don’t know. What about you?