The Art Of Remembering Yourself

February

February 17th, 2012

So Mom bought me this journal earlier today and said it would be good for me to start writing down everything I can remember that happened during the day, seeing that by the end of the year I might not even remember my own name.

The doctors told me today that I'm lucky. I don't feel lucky though. They say I'm lucky because it looks like I have until the end of the year before complete memory loss when most patients lose their memory within 6 months. I don't know, but to me that just seems like the doctors' way of trying to make something shitty seem positive.

Well anyways, I guess I'm going to start writing down anything I think I'll want to remember in a few months, because this will most likely be my only way of knowing what my life was like before I lost my memory. Maybe I should tell about why this is happening so Future Me can know. I know Future Me could probably ask Mom about it, but she probably won't want to talk about it. So I'll just write it down.

It started about 3 years ago, when I was 12. At first it was just little headaches, but over time it turned into mind-splitting migraines. They got to the point where my vision would blur and I would get really dizzy. My Mom finally took me to the doctor's when I passed out from the pain of the headache. That's when they found the tumor. About the size of a golf ball, it was very close to being too big to operate on. So close that it would be risky to operate on. My options: chemo and a concoction of ever-changing drugs to try and battle the tumor, or try the surgery. I chose the former, because that one didn't guarantee my death, while the latter almost definitely did. So for the last 3 years I've gone through just about every combination of drugs the doctors could come up with. I'm down to the second to last combination, and so far it looks like this one has slowed down but not stopped the growth of the tumor. With the slowed down rate, I have till late December, early January at the latest. At least I'm not going to wake up one day and just not remember anything, its going to be a slow process of losing small details until it all builds up and there's nothing left in my brain to forget. It's already started. I've forgotten all my childhood memories up until the age of 7. 

I don't want to think about what is going to happen after I lose all my memory, even though I already know what is going to happen. Everyone knows. Once I lose my memory, it won't be long before I'm kicking the bucket too. I basically have somewhere around a year to live. Brilliant right? Hopefully when you read this Future Me, they'll have figured out a way to stop the tumor. If not, MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.

Well, I guess that's all for today. Hope everything is good with you, Future Me.

February 18th, 2012

Went to the doctor's again today. Everything is "looking good" according to the doctors. Fucking lies, I say. If I was "looking good", I wouldn't be counting down the days till my death. If I was ''looking good", I would be in school, socializing with my friends and learning things I would need in college. Instead, I'm wasting away my days reading and blaring music through my headphones, trying desperately to drown out the pain and depression seeping out from the darkest parts of my brain. That's one of the brilliant things about having cancer. Your brain suddenly decides "Oh! It's time to make life even MORE of a living hell!" As if knowing that you have about a year left to live isn't enough.

The one good-ish thing that came out of the "looking good" report is that my Mom says I can go out in public again. For the past few months, I've been on house arrest as my immune system was far from top-notch. One little cold and I could've been dead. I think to celebrate the occasion, I'll go to the teen club that's about a mile away from the house tomorrow. Who knows, maybe some of my old friends will be there, and I can finally hang out with them like we used to. Then again, I doubt that they'll recognize me. At 12 years old, I was what you would politely call "chubby". I had long curly hair and a full face. In comparison, I'm now 15 and on the verge of being anorexic. Not by choice of course, its just the meds I take to keep my tumor under control and the chemo make everything I eat taste like cow shit. Let me tell you, once everything tastes that horrible, you never really want to eat. Not only have a lost a TON of weight, but my hair is now very short, and not curly at all. So I'm pretty sure that none of my friends will recognize me. Oh well. Who knows, I might make some new friends.