I Survived Cancer (And All I Got Was This Cheesy T-Shirt)

By TJ Seitz

Essay about being diagnosed with colon cancer and what happened afterward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TJ Seitz
• Release date: Jan 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463173183

TJ Seitz

On the surface Mr. Seitz appears to be a quintessential middle aged male. TJ is married to his HS sweetheart and lives with his family in a suburban split level house located on the outskirts of Rochester, NY. Seitz has spend the majority of his professional career working as an information technology specialist in the fields of education, criminal justice/law enforcement and procurement. While working full time, TJ also attended college part time (and sometimes full time). To keep himself (relatively speaking) sane he majored and minored in non-technology subjects, earning a BA in English with a writing concentration from Saint John Fisher College and a MA in Social Policy from Empire State College. As an undergraduate student TJ attended writing classes taught by George Saunders and Judith Kitchen (though neither teacher would probably remember him). Distractions like kicking virtual wasp’s nests on BITNET Listservs (predecessors to social networking sites like Facebook), soliciting donations for a Panty Alter fund and hanging out with a heavily medicated professional drummer named Dirtbag interfered with TJ’s ability to write anything particularly noteworthy for either class. He also attended a workshop at the Omega Institute mentored by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood. In reality the stable full time jobs have been serving as functional fronts for TJ’s secret life as a writer. They provided him with money to pay his bills and experiential material to write about. The down side of working and going to college was that he did not have a lot of time to devote to writing and publishing. Adding a problematic first marriage, babies, a divorce, a few bouts with unemployment and colon cancer to the mix did not help much either. TJ is currently working on several writing projects/ideas and recently took a graduate writing class proctored by James Whorton. Mr. Seitz's essays and letters have been printed in both local and national publications. His poetry has been published both in the United States and England.

Book preview

I Survived Cancer (and all I got was this cheesy t-shirt

T.J. Seitz

Copyright 2020 by T.J. Seitz

Smashwords Edition

Introduction

Several months ago, while reading the obituary section of a local newspaper, I came across the name of a former student of mine. The tribute stated that he predeceased his father.

It was obviously not the same person. I saw Andrew yesterday, horsing around in the halls at school with several of his buddies. The remembrance still made me wonder.

A few weeks later I read an essay by Rick Moody on the topic of Lazarus. The piece mentioned Cotard’s Syndrome. It’s the belief that you and everyone around you are dead.

I’ve considered the legitimacy of that idea multiple times throughout the past year and a half.

Random moments when it feels as though I died and woke up in a parallel universe. A surreal place, somewhere between the island on the TV show Lost and a misplaced chapter of Borges’ Ficciones, where I’m surrounded by other people, like me, who faded away but didn’t notice.

Welcome to the Club

I was told that I had stage III colon cancer in February of 2018.

Colon cancer spreads slowly. Doctors estimated that the tumor started growing sometime during my mid to late thirties, possibly earlier.

Since I was predominantly asymptomatic and young, neither my primary care physician nor I suspected anything serious was going on inside my body during the few occasions I went in for a checkup. However, as the illness progressed it began to subtly affect my behavior, stamina and memory.

I started waking up abruptly during the middle of the night from unsetting dreams. I felt claustrophobic and believed that I was suffocating. My heart would race as I gasped for air.

To alleviate those symptoms, I’d get up and pace around the house, yard or neighborhood. After a half hour or so my mind and body would calm, allowing me to go back to bed and fall asleep.

I also began associating the mild aching in my side, moodiness, lethargy, weight loss and anxieties with common maladies for someone my age such as job stress, lack of sleep, divorce or hip arthritis, not the symptoms of cancer.

I never saw any blood in my stool when going to the bathroom.

As my sickness advanced, it became difficult for me to concentrate and I lost interest in activities that I liked to do. I always felt tired and spent a lot of time lounging or napping on the couch when I was not at work.

By the end of 2017 I couldn’t read or write for more than a few minutes at a time. I also had a hard time staying alert and remembering, but wouldn’t admit it.

A midnight trip to the emergency room on Valentine’s Day changed everything. What I thought might be a heart attack turned out to be a severe case of anemia.

Several doctors informed me that they were surprised I was able to stand upright and stay conscious. There was a strong possibility I’d need a blood transfusion if my test results didn’t improve quickly with iron supplements.

I felt like a deer in headlights while my family members shuttled me between all the resulting medical appointments.

A ruptured tumor was located in my ascending colon. The doctors were confident that it was cancerous.

The news did not completely register with my mind for a number of reasons.

I watched my mother and grandfather wrestle with the disease when I was a child. It was not something that I was completely unfamiliar with.

There was no point in me getting too bent out of shape until I knew more of the details.

I already understood that the ailment was not necessary a death sentence. Dealing with the condition was a lot more convoluted than just knowing I had cancer.

The diagnosis was a pivotal moment. I could choose to learn from the experience or host a pity party.

Death is inevitable, it’s not prejudice, happens to everyone and isn’t always predictable or convenient.

It occurs mid-sentence, during a run-of-the-mill late-afternoon conversation between spouses about the TV remote needing new batteries; as Joan Didion could attest.

Sometimes it’s very slow. I watched my mother transform into a withered husk over the course of three years. Her bedroom became a temporary charnel ground where she commenced the process of turning into dust and