Train thoughts

you'd rather not think

You are sitting on a train. It is a train you take frequently. Indeed, you’ve taken this train almost weekly for 15 years. It is the day before the long Easter weekend, celebrating the 1,993rd anniversary of when baby Jesus finally put on his big boy pants and rose from the dead, shoving it right in the face of all of those goddamn haters.

So you’re on the train and it’s the weekend before Easter but also the weekend before another CT scan that will tell you whether 1. you don’t have pancreatic cancer again, in which case, my friend, you’re good to go, or 2. you have pancreatic cancer again, in which case you’ll probably be dead pretty soon and this time ain’t no Jesus in his big boy pants going to help you.

You settle into your seat and reach for your backpack, where you’ve stashed a can of Stella Artois pilfered from the lounge (again, you take this train A LOT). For some reason, your mind jumps to the upcoming scan, just a few days away. Of course, it’s not just some random reason: you already had stage IV pancreatic cancer, a mean bastard of a cancer with a 97% chance of killing you within five years. But somehow it didn’t kill you and surviving it this long feels a bit like being the newest Spinal Tap drummer a few days into the tour.

Either way, here you are sitting in your seat with your can of beer and reminding yourself you’ve been cancer-free for over 2 years. Almost 3. You’ve been cancer-free and off treatment for almost 3 years. “You’re a miracle” is what people keep telling you, although that doesn’t make you feel as good as people think it might because it’s not great, relying on miracles to remain alive. Miracles don’t happen every day and you already got one, right?

But you deal with all of this fairly well. You remain mostly calm. You’ve been doing it for a while now, for almost 3 years. Sometimes the terror doesn’t feel too heavy, honestly. But then you allow yourself to think about what would happen if there’s a smudge on the CT scan and you are told that you do, in fact, have pancreatic cancer again and are almost certainly going to die soon.

And if you think about it in detail, you figure you’ll start screaming in that room with the doctor, screaming in a way you didn’t the first time, because now you know what that fucking diagnosis means. It means not only are you probably going to be dead soon, or at least a lot sooner than you had planned, but it also means the time between now and your final moments will be filled with way too much bullshit and, frankly, horror. You’ll scream at the doctor because you know you’re going to have to tell your young children you have cancer again and you’re going to go through some terrible treatment and, because they won’t stop asking you, yes you might die.

So you’re obviously going to lose your mind in the meeting with the doctor, when it happens, and now it feels inevitable, which makes you want to scream as loud as you can right now. On this train. Because what the fuck are all these people doing, just sitting here quietly on the way to Paris from London, pretending like they all aren’t going to die soon, or at least a lot sooner than they had planned? Fuck me, wake up people.

But you don’t scream. You can’t scream. People would not like that. People would not like you screaming in the middle of a quiet train and they really would not like you screaming about how everyone is going to die sooner than they expect.

So you don’t scream in the middle of the train but you reserve the right to scream in that doctor’s office. You remind yourself again that you may not have pancreatic cancer again. And maybe, if you do, those honest-to-god miracle workers in the laboratories and hospitals might have one or two left in the bag for you.

No, none of this really makes you feel any better because rational thought overlaid with wish casting is no match for abject terror, but then again, you’re nearly home to your wife and it’s nearly Easter and your kids are looking forward to an Easter egg hunt this weekend. So, you know, on you go, right?