Ned Henry April 2, 2021 · nedhenry.medium.com

OK, well I have not written anything here for a while. I wanted to wrap this up in some kind of neat bow but that is not where this narrative is going. I will continue to write here now and then about my progress with cancer. I have continued writing on my own and will continue that but I am getting into some personal areas where I am confronting some of my own behavior patterns especially about relationships and sexuality. And I don’t want to share that with just everyone. So I have been writing for myself. There are some readers who I do not even know who they are and there are others like family members and some friends that I am not ready to open up and share my life unfolding in this forum. I have looked back at my life as a failure because I have not been able to sustain a relationship. I don’t do that anymore but I do know that I’ve had several chances at relationship and always seemed to make bad decisions. It wasn’t until I wrote about Pattie (I have since deleted that graphic paragraph) that I realized how I actively sabotage relationships. I pulled out that book about borderline personality disorder and started to read it again not thinking about Pattie this time but looking at my own behavior patterns and how I unconsciously but intentionally feel that I do not deserve to be in a happy relationship so I take actions to end any chance I’ve had to last in a long term relationship. I found one of the most beautiful love letters I have ever written in that book. It was to Pattie. It made me think. It made me realize that I did truly have deep feelings for her but I was so confused about the difference between sex and love. I thought when 2 people shared that level of sexual intensity that it had to be love. Not so. I still don’t know what real love is. It usually takes me about 3 years or so to complete the cycle of falling in love to creating conditions for the love affair to end. With Pattie, it was accelerated into a couple of months. With Violet it took 5 years. So I have lots of personal work to do on this on my own. I am not full blown borderline but I do exhibit behavior that can be classified as borderline. Combine that with depression both from my past and from this cancer and chemo, and I know I have some psychological issues to confront. My understanding and thus experience of sexuality is screwed up. I know that. And I know that if I am ever going to have another chance at love that I have to do the work on myself to change my understanding and experience of relationships. And that work needs to be done privately. It’s therapeutic work and I have the tools I need to do this work. And I can get the help I need along the way if it gets to be more than I can handle.

The chemo fatigue has really hit hard. So has the chemo brain fog. I forget things I did 2 weeks ago. And I’m tired all the time. Taking a shower or cooking a meal is a big deal and I need to rest during and after that task at hand. The neuropathy in my foot is not getting better but I am continuing with PT and will be researching acupuncture to try to get the nerves in my foot to reactivate so I can feel my foot normally and get back to an active life again. My last chemo is April 16 and after that I can begin the process of getting all these poisonous drugs out of my system. That will take the month of May so the goal is to be over this fatigue and brain fog by June. The neorpathy will likely take more time that. Nerve repair takes up to a year and the doctor tells me if I can’t get feeling back within a year, then I probably will have this neuropathy for the rest of my life. But I know that once I am done with chemo fatigue, I will have more energy and be able to be more deliberate and regular about my PT exercises. Right now, it’s hit and miss. I do think based on the scan after treatment #3, that the cancer will be gone when they do a full PET CT scan after the last treatment. I don’t know this but based on what I can see and feel and what the oncologist says that I should be one of the lucky ones that comes out of this cancer free. No guarantees of that but if I’m not cancer free in late May then I will start a whole new chemo program. I truly hope I do not have to go that route. I can’t tell you unless you’ve been through it just how difficult getting chemo can be for both body and mind. And it does get worse the longer you get it due to the cummulative nature of the process. I’m nowhere near as clear as I was even a month or two ago. They keep hitting you with drugs which trick your body into killing the cancer, but bottom line these drugs are designed for specific results and most of them are all about killing red blood cells (in my case) so the cancer can be stopped from spreading and ultimately to kill it so it is gone hopefully forever. I will be on some kind of monitoring program once this is all over probably for the rest of my life.

I’m not sure what I am going to do with what I have shared here so far. I may cut and paste it into a narrative that can be saved or I may leave it alone. Not sure if this site will let me do that. But as I do more work on my life especially as it relates to relationships and sexuality, I will keep that private. My screwed up past is not that interesting anyway. Not to say my life is a complete failure. I have been able to recognize and acknowledge some truly magnificent moments in my life so far in this writing exercise. It has not been a total failure. I was lucky to run into a school when I was 23 where I could start to look critically at my life, at the behavior patterns I had developed up to that point, at the reasons I was so unhappy after that trip to Mexico. Why didn’t my life work? The formative Catholic upbringing with the guilt that comes with that and the confusion about sex and never having anyone to talk about what was going on with my body at the time are factors for sure. I even thought I could just will sexual feelings away by going to the seminary and committing to a life of celibacy. I did that for the first 2 years of high school. I tried to figure it out on my own and didn’t. But since I found that school at age 23 and learned some techniques for working on myself and my behavior patterns, I began to make some strides over my lifetime to a more healthy perspective. To move fom being a victim of my circumstances to taking some level of responsibility for my behavior. I still have much more work to do and this writing has been most helpful in letting me uncover areas in my unconscious that are still drivers in my life. I don’t know if I’ll have much more to say about that here. I will put a post out now and then about my progress and recovery. I don’t want to leave you hanging. I am still getting used to the idea that I am writing this both for you and me. So for you I want to communicate how I am doing as I get better. I no longer think I am going to die soon. However, I do think I need to change and cancer has brought that into the limelight. It has forced me out of my confort zone into a place where I need to confront some of my self destructive behavior patterns that have been with me since childhood. So that is my next chapter. But it won’t be for general consumption. Hope you all understand that.

I am grateful to those of you who have hung around with me here. I began this when I was in a panic about my cancer and how aggressive it was and I was literally looking at my death as something that could be imminent. I have looked into myself and found some things I like and some things I don’t like. I have been pretty open and honest from the beginning of 2021 until the middle of March. I know I have lost some friends along the way as I got too personal and therefore destroyed some their preconceived ideas about who I am and what I struggle with. So be it. If I have lost you, I’m sorry. I’m just not the person you thought I was or should be. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’ll take my chances to build a more fulfilling life for whatever time I have left. It’s all I can do. I can’t just coast along any more. At least that is my intention. I will acknowledge the fatigue I feel from the chemo and how that affects me. I’ll rest when I need to and do the research and reading and writing I need to as I progress forward. But I won’t share the intimate and convoluted notions I have picked up over the course of my life. I’ll do that work on my own as it should be and as we all should do. So I’ll keep you posted on my progress until My Journey with Cancer is over but I know that my journey to grow and change and recognize the wholeness underneath the flawed exterior that I present to the world will continue after the cancer chapter is closed. I know that if you have been following me that you are truly pulling for me and your support and prayers and mediations have been so important in my healing process. I thought this healing process would be mostly physical but I now see it is much deeper than that. I created the cancer in consciousness and I have to deal with what that means or I will just repeat the pattern over and over. It may take different forms but the pattern will remain unless I break the cycle and create a new one. And one thing I did get from the years of studying Buddhism, is that reincarnation makes sense to me. I will do my best to in this life knowing that what I don’t finish here will be there the next time around. Hope you have enjoyed the music and the links along the way. It has been a delight for me to share some of those with you, to let you know me better. I want you to know me. There are warts and secrets but also kindness and goodness within me. I am seeing a more whole person than I saw when I started this. And that is progress. Like Jane said, “It’s all good.” See you next time.