Little by little,
My bones are growing thin and brittle.
And this is from the chemical injection,
Whose intended effect is--for an unknown time, but not nearly long enough--
To freeze in place my outburst of cancer;
But it also has many bad side effects--including, in part, my dark dejection.
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My skin elasticity is gone; my skin now sags as sadly as my soul.
Spots and weird growths and pallor now replace my skin's former healthy bloom.
These chemical injections are supposed to slow down death;
But they paint, on my living face, the face of ghastly doom.
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My hair has lost the last trace of its former red; my new I.D. says and shows that I am blond.
I won't look much worse than this, when I'm finally dead: out of this misery, somewhere beyond.
Or maybe--more than maybe, really--I'll be Nowhere; Nobody; Nothing.  Mortality is made of Maybe.
How can I know post-mortem certainty, or even probability, when the world vanishes with a last breath?
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Even my different doctors have told me different things.  For months, they didn't tell me much at all.
The doctors didn't even bother to tell me that the chemical would make me sterile.
I was given no chance clinically to save aside seed that might later have given me a beloved baby.
If I should be lucky to meet a woman who wanted to have a baby with a man so probably near death.
If I should be lucky to meet a woman willing to accept my defects and declines, and my mortal peril.
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I was not told to expect any of the several evil things that these chemical injections have done.
One bad or terrible thing after another, I found out only after it had already happened to me--
Only when the time that something could have been done to make things better had run.
So they deprived me of the last normal time of life that was left to me.
For some things, I even could have taken steps to stop or spare my loss; but now that chance is gone.
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It took three months before I lost my happy power of making love; before losing my loving, I could have
Made many more good memories to comfort my dying time, and to carry with me to my grave--
All they had to do was tell me all I was going to lose; so I could enjoy the last pleasure time left to me.
I'm just another cancer patient to them; not a human being, worthy of happiness, of joy worth it to save.
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Terribly, the chemical treatments intensify my sorrow, sadness, depression, fear, grief, regret, anxiety,
Which I must suffer over having cancer, losing years of life, and facing sudden pain-wracking mortality.
Now my world often shrinks into mad fear; and the model of my world becomes mere mental misery. 
"Prepare for this," they could have said.  Instead, like a spider-web, it all caught me unexpectedly.
I did not know; but all thse things going wrong for me, were somethig medical that they could foresee.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But then, they didn't even tell me what stage of cancer I have; nor that it is likely incurable cancer;
Nor that I was, from the start, known to them to be a terminal cancer victim, with almost no chance.
They left me to find all that out on my own, by reading through thier pamphlets and my books; to see
My future shaping into a death's-head skull, coming surely with a slow torture death, coming for me;
Then--finally finding out the truth on my own--desperately studying and seeking to find a saving answer.
Only the holistic approach even seems possible that it may save me from this dreadful kind of dying.
But my oncologist doesn't believe it: Many people make money from the dying and the crying, by lying.
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So, which way to turn?  Who tells me the truth?  Who knows the truth to tell? 
What did I ever do in my life to deserve this living hell?  This horrible dying hell?
I am not treated like a human being of deep value; I am the walrus now, John;
I'm crying.
And soon, like you, I will be gone.
If someone doesn't save me soon.  These medical treatments make me feel it: I'm dying.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I was a strong man before; now I am weak, and growing weaker.  I have less and less energy;
I have to, by my main strength of sheer will-power, compel myself to stay awake and enforce vitality.
But I can feel that something, from deep within, is missing from me.
I feel inside myself that I am incomplete; I am not whole.
I am missing elements that used to be part of me; I feel I have lost even something from my soul.
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Last of its curses, the chemical reduces my muscle mass; and it also thins my bones of calcium.
I just found out I have lost two inches of my height since I starting dealing with all this scary stuff.
Now, from nowhere, I have an injured shoulder, with a pain-pulsing rotary cuff.
My shoulder-pangs, I strongly feel, are telling me that--for me--there will not likely be Elysium.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
And if there is a hell, why must there be so much pain to torment poor lost souls?
This pain I am suffering right now, would be quite enough--
More than enough--for the ghouls of hate and all their evil goals.
Still my grieving heart calls out to God to show me love; silence is my answer.
I weep for myself, and for all my life-lighted, self-filled, suffering fellow people--
Uncomforted by crosses, David's star, the crescent, nor by spire nor steeple.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But I am trapped inside this me, with my cancer, and my treatment's side effects.
The side effects include increased risk of infection,
Because my immune system is compromised.
Declining bone density is accompanied by declining muscle mass;
So that I lose more and more of me, as my pained days pass.
I endure the loss of skin elasticity and tone;
I'll never find another girl friend, let alone another wife, I'm sure--
With what I have become, and what I must endure.
I shall not likely taste again the honey of love, nor the sweet sugar of sex.
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So, additionally, I must endure my suffering, lonely and alone;
Though, yes, of course, I have friends.
But all the friends in the world,
Do not replace the joy of love with one sweet special girl.
But even if I found one, I could not have her, because--
And here is where the demons in the gallery can clap applause--
The chemical injections emasculate me;
I am chemically castrated now; no longer the amorous male
I used to be; this is my greatest misery:
To suffer tthe loss of all my lady-loving style.
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And I've lost much more than that, and I'm still losing more, in an ongoing going away:
Till like the Chesire cat, I shall have lost it all, except for a disembodied fate-facing smile.
Every golden attribute of me has been either destroyed or down-sized.
I have lost almost all pleasure and nearly every precious thing I prized.
Why, then, must I walk this long last mile?
There ought to be a different kind of injection available for me.
For at some point this cancer will be distantly metastasized.
This particular kind of cancer likes to eat the bones--the whole skeleton, including the skull;
Like ravenous wolves unsheathing teeth to gnash and gnaw.
Soon the cancer goes to infiltrate and feast on the spine, with all its delicate nerves.
Such a death, I think, is a horror that not even the worst of us deserves.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But I am stopped from final help in my State, by the law;
Which is coldly deaf to the terminally ill, dying and crying groans and moans.
My doctor will not help me find another State.
Of the fifty, one or a few could ameliorate my fate.
Since PARP-1 inhibitors, which could save me, are denied to me--
I'm not in the arbitrarily selected cancer stage or type limited for this cliniacl trial--
At least let me die, as peacefully and painlessly, as may be possible for me; 
Not in a mass of chewed-up breaking bones, in disintegrating agony.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
How far down the road was that supposed to be?
No matter now; the dreadful date for which I am fated,
Has, it seems, probably been greatly accelerated.
Sooner, now, I am likely to fall into that dying suffering that is beyond endurance--
Except that I have no choice, no voice; but I am condemned to endure.
For I have a high-grade, high-stage cancer, that no modality is likely to cure.
And now--it looks likely that I am about to lose my medical insurance;
Which means that those who would not help me die in peace, will leave me to die in pain,
With no medical treatments at all.  They'll  just unleash the cancer and let it run free,
All over me. 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
They will help and save only those who keep their insurance and still can pay.
But lose insurance, and cannot pay--then--just like my so-called patient counselor--
In cold cruelty the whole lot of my so-called medical team will prove to be.
She betrayed her trust, which is to help people--above all, to help people like me--
We, who need help so desperately,
Not only life-and-death, medically;
But also life-and-death, spiritually and psychologically.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
As she has done, so the rest of them will do;
They too will kick me out, and bar my return, when my insurance is through.
Then I will be forced to turn the knob, and open the blind unknown of death's door. 
Well, all is unwell that ends unwell.
I can hear the loud iron clanging of my own death-bell.
But first there is going to be hell to pay. 
It will be a long slow painful dying before I finally slip away.
I fear I am about to enter hell.

=======================


--Written by Michael LP
aka MLP, aka Mr. Poet, aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC
(I'm just me)
Copyright © 2010 by M.L.P.   All rights reserved