Cancer is boring. It's also exhausting.

I am simultaneously bored and exhausted.

I'm bored because I have this damned diagnosis, and nobody wants to talk about anything but CANCER, and I can't think about anything but CANCER, even if it's not-that-big-a-deal CANCER that has an almost-guarantee of a complete cure, because it's scary. The thought of having my mouth reroofed is scary. It's scary to the point of being boring, just like contemplating perhaps having to have a PEG tube is terrifying until it becomes another source of ennui.

(That's the weird thing about this diagnosis: You go over and over and over it in your head, trying to file down the edges and fold it until it fits your concept of yourself, but somehow, you can't bring the concept of CANCER to a place where it actually makes sense in your body. It just doesn't fit.

You have something in your body that doesn't fit. It wants to take over, and that's terrifying, and at the same time, it's boring as hell, because you can't think about anything else, and nobody wants to talk about anything else, and, and, and.)

It makes me tired. All I want to do is lie on the couch and go to sleep, and wake up some time after surgery, or maybe after radiation.

Yes, yes, I know this is a symptom of depression. I understand that if it doesn't go away after four hours, I should seek emergency treatment. It's perfectly clear to me, in both a gut sense and an intellectual sense, that this is indeed normal for somebody to experience, especially at a time when they are facing possibly having their face replaced in large part with plastic.

Yet it wears me out and it pisses me off, because I'm used to doing things other than stopping by the Beer Hut once a day and getting a four of Brewdog's Hardcore, then sleeping for twelve or fourteen hours.

I'm working a whole slew of days coming up. If my throat isn't too sore and I'm not too emotional, maybe it'll help to work a whole slew of days.

Being diagnosed with cancer is terrifying. It's emotionally wrenching. It makes you worry about yourself, and about your family. It makes you make grandiose plans and promises for the future, and then take them back hurriedly out of fear that if you can't or don't fulfill the promises, something worse will come. It's boring. It's dull to repeat the same information over and over, and have people look at you the same way.

(So many people asked me yesterday "How do you feeeeeeel?" in that tone of voice that I started to reply, chirpily, "Fine! You don't look so good, though.")

Being diagnosed with cancer makes you feel guilty for all the things you've done, and all the things you've omitted doing. It makes you want to go back and change the past. It makes you sad, and excited, and wish that you could see this all as one great adventure. It makes you feel bad because you feel bad, yet so many other people have it so much worse than you, with much less of a chance for a cure or a happy ending. It makes me want to take a Lortab and drink a beer and sleep for twelve or fourteen hours. It makes me angry that I don't have the energy, thanks to the combination of boredom and exhaustion and terror, to contemplate much else.

Eventually this will wear off. I know that it will; everybody who has ever been diagnosed with cancer can't *stay* in this state, or else the world would quit turning.

It's just exhausting to be here. And boring.