Really - Why am I still here?

It’s been a very bad week.  Puking, nausea extreme, pain in chest like a fire burning, head dizzy, barely getting out of bed with diarrhea all week, and very, very weak.  I decided, “Enough.”  My body needed to rest from the daily radiation and the week of chemo and the awful white blood cell shot to which I had an allergic reaction.

My doctor said if I had any problems to call him.  Call him anytime.  Let the nurses know and he’d squeeze me in before or after radiation.  Well, that was a bunch of malarkey.  I had the worst week of my life right after he said that, had to call urgent several times as instructed on my sheets for fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and guess what?  This week he was not there.  I won’t bother with the calls anymore.  I get the night service and they just route you to any doctor available.  It’s not even a cancer doctor, just whoever is on this long on-call rotation list of theirs.  One night it was a GP and the next I had a gynecologists.  They called in prescriptions to help with the nausea, but the scripts they called in required prior authorization from the doctors and insurance company, therefore they were not timely at all anyway.  I waited two days for the overly expensive nausea medicine that had to be pre-approved and justified.  Damn it.  I have cancer, I’m in chemo and radiation treatments – how much justification do they need?

So I quit the treatment.  For a few days anyway.  Maybe totally.  Who knows.  I still have the burning in my chest from the radiation laser.  But I ate my first solid food in five days, the nausea has subsided, and I drank some fluids.  I feel 100% better already.  I don’t know if I want to go back for treatments or not.

I’m constantly depressed.  I look over our lack of income and our outgoing bills, and all I can think is, “I’m this huge financial drain on my family, that we simply cannot afford.”  And guess what?  If you collect unemployment, you qualify for absolutely no type of help whatsoever – county, state, federal or otherwise.  I’ve tried SSD, SSI, welfare, social services, etc., etc., etc.  The financial advisor is at a loss as to what to suggest next.  We’re trying some obscure grants.  I swear, she sees the predicament I’m in and is baffled as well, knowing we cannot survive on this little with my medical problems on top of it.  The only thing she can tell me now is they will continue to provide care and treatment for me even when I have no insurance and cannot pay anything anymore – which is August 1^st.  I totally understand why men who are the caregivers of the household commit suicide when their worth becomes more as a dead person than one who is alive.  Why take your family down with you?  If checking out means they will survive better, it seems honorable and practical.

For the next couple days I’m going to sit back and enjoy the Pepsi a friend brought me knowing it was one of my favorite addictions.  And think, “Really, what am I waiting for?”