The Work of the Body: A Post-Surgery Journal

Man Up to Cancer

A solo show with your host Trevor Maxwell

The stress of cancer accumulates, a thick and heavy covering that I can't shake.

It builds with each scan, each blood draw, each surgery.

It builds in the days between.

Nearly six years in the world of never knowing.

For 2,130 days the stress builds and my body and soul labor under the weight of it.

What are my cancer cells doing today? Where are they misbehaving? Where is my immune system keeping them in check? Where might my immune system be overwhelmed? How long can I go managing my cancer as a chronic illness? Will I make it to Elsie's high school graduation? Will I make it to Sage's college graduation? Will I slide through the eye of the needle and reach longterm survival, against all odds of science and every friend that I have lost to this same disease?

The people who have never had cancer in their bodies tell people like me to stop thinking about it. After the scans, the blood draws, the surgeries, they send me out into the sunshine and tell me not to think about it, as if my world looks anything like theirs.

I realized a while ago that I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop those questions from repeating in my head.

So I lean the fuck into it.

I say bring it on, let me ask the question, how long can I do this? So many times that it becomes a mantra, and I tell myself that this would make those cancer muggles insane, and only I'm strong enough to keep asking the question and to turn it into a raging inferno of motivation.

But yeah, the stress doesn't go away. It's rust. You can cover it up, bondo that shit, but you know it's under there, you know the frame is still compromised. And after 2,130 days of stress, this frame is compromised. The scars and adhered tissues and severed muscles and nerves of 10 surgeries.

After 2,130 days of stress, this brain is compromised. There are some moments, beautiful moments in which I'm right here right now, grounded in the present, aware of my living breath and the sensation of my feet on the wood floor, the sensation of the heat from the wood stove.

Other times though, I'm like Billy Pilgrim and I've come unstuck in time.

Sometimes in a dream, sometimes even when I'm awake I find myself back on that first surgical table, staring up into a cluster of the brightest lights I've ever seen, mask over my face and breathing in the sweet anesthetic while surgical techs inspect my IV lines and double count the instruments that will cut me open.

Big breaths Trevor, we're gonna take good care of you. 10-9-8

Other times, I'm back on my most recent surgical table, just a few months ago, The same buzz of activity. Are these the same techs? Are they even real at all? Or is this the 3rd surgery, the 5th, they all swirl and mesh together with an antiseptic smell, muffled voices and the constant beeps of the heart and respiratory monitors, the same voice in my head telling me - you're going to see Sarah, Sage, and Elsie on the other side of this.. This team knows what they're doing.. They do this all the time.. You're not dying today.. My body is strong, my body is strong, my body is strong.

And each time after the blackness I am born again to the waiting world, disoriented, in pain, and with a shock of recognition that I didn't die.

I cannot put the exhaustion of this into words.

But I can tell you about the hospital after my last surgery.

I guess I need to write about that.