Toward Nightfall, the Cancer Comes

The day is filled with chores – finding health insurance, making doctor appointments, paying hospital bills, ordering meds. A whole day spent on the bureaucracy of medicine. By early sunset I’m beat. Sitting in my recliner, as the room grows dark, watching some B-grade movie, the cancer comes.

It always hurts more in the evenings, creeping in with little twinges and then large jolts of pain, stretching the skin on my face until I think it will pop. Tonight it’s the worst it’s been in months. I debate ‘upgrading’ from ibuprofen to some more powerful, mind-numbing pain killer. I opt instead for another mind numbing movie, and some inhaled “medication” from the local dispensary.

Toward nightfall, the cancer comes, pushing out other thoughts, other feelings. I spent all day on Cancer’s administrivia. I want to be done with it, take a break, find some joy. But it’s evening, I’m exhausted from coping.

And then the cancer comes.