Short Introduction From Naquoya

I arrived here at Steemit in August and have published many posts since that time. I have never made a formal introduction post, being more of a private person, but wanted to tell a story from my past. Before I get to the story, I just wanted to give you a very short Bio of who is the person behind the @naquoya mask.

My name is Scott, I'm Australian, and I was born in 1972 (which makes me 31!). And I'm good at maths. For those who follow such things I'm an INFJ on the MBTI personality scale. Personally I feel that this is a reasonably good representation of who I am as a person, but I also feel that these types of things can be fluid and move around a little bit. I don't like to use this as a lock and chain, but as a guide for using within the concept of “Know Thyself”. But then I would say that – I'm an INFJ!

My blog here consists primarily of poetry and fiction. I have written a curation tutorial, and will be looking into more of this on a weekly basis.

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Without further ado:

MY CANCER STORY

The chair was stiff and cold under me. I couldn't get comfortable. Not for want of trying. But my mind was preoccupied. My mind was ruling this ship right now, and I would just have to deal with it. And my mind was focused on one thing, and one thing only. What were the test results?

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EIGHT WEEKS PRIOR

The day had started just like any other. I was at work as a Production Manager in a small factory in an industrial area of Melbourne. Not the most exciting of jobs, but it came with it's fair share of stress. The vast majority of which were caused directly by my boss. The man who promoted me to this new position of Production Manager. Part of my job was to organise production runs and schedules. Part of the production supply came directly from my boss who operated an automatic lathe machine. But my boss resented taking orders from anyone. Especially someone he employed. Even if it meant sabotaging his own company he would supply the parts I needed when he saw fit to do so. It was stressful, but more than that it was absurdly irrational.

With all this on my mind, I never really paid attention to the sick employee in our midst. Coughing away in the background. Non stop. He eventually saw sense and went home for the day. But after only one hour of being near to this fellow worker I had picked up something from him. Now I too was coughing, loudly and incessantly.

I had been a smoker up until this point, so I was aware of smokers cough. I rarely was bothered by that. This was completely different, like something I had never had. I quite literally could not stop coughing.

This went on for the next two weeks, until I started to come down with what felt to me like Pneumonia. It wasn't, just a severe flu, but worse than anything I had had before. I saw my local doctor, who didn't take me very seriously, and I left with his parting words ringing in my ears: “Just get over it and get back to work.”

The next four weeks were very similar. Coughing incessantly everyday. All day. I know it was driving those around me crazy. What I didn't know at the time is a lot of those people believed I was faking the whole thing. And said so to each other.

After six weeks of this without any cessation of coughing I started to come down with the flu again. And again it felt like something as severe as Pneumonia. This time I saw another doctor, who did take me more seriously, but no tests or scans were done. No consideration was shown for the non-stop coughing that had been taking place for six weeks straight.

Instead I was put on anti-biotics and sent on my way. Yet it continued for the next two weeks.

I saw the doctor again and this time demanded he do something to help me. I was sent around to a nearby clinic to get an x-ray. The very next day I was called at work by the doctor's clinic and told I had a double appointment put aside for me that afternoon and that the doctor had something he needed to discuss with me as a matter of urgency.

I can still remember that phone call like it was yesterday. How do you go about your business after that call pretending like all is well? If there was a way then I didn't know it.

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THE DOCTOR'S OFFICE

So there I was sitting on that cold chair, in the doctor's office, looking at the doctor awaiting the news he had to give me.

“I have a report emailed over from the specialists,” he told me. “I haven't received the x-ray yet.”

I continued to look at him blankly. I nodded slightly.

“The scans show a fist sized mass in your right lung. A tumour.”

At that point he kept talking, but I wasn't taking that much of it in. It was like the space around me expanded and everything moved away from me. Or I shrunk, in the middle of everything else, but being swallowed by it all. The sensation could have been either of these.

What does this mean, I wondered? How can I have a tumour at 29 years of age? Is it cancer? Is it malignant? This is not how it was supposed to be. But then, how was it meant to be? Like William Blake said:

“Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.”

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ENDLESS TESTING

I went through four more weeks of testing as they tried to determine exactly what it was I had. The first specialist thought it may have been Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but eventually was diagnosed as Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma – a saliva gland had become cancerous and made its way to my right lung. Turns out that this is a very slow growing form of cancer and this could have been developing for a long time.

The diagnosis had come back, it was cancer, and an operation was required, and most likely a bout of Radiation Therapy after that. They didn't know how much of the lung would have to be removed, not until the surgery itself. I went into the operation not knowing just how much of my right lung would still be there when I awoke.

Prior to the surgery, whilst still working, obviously I had taken many days off from work, much more than I normally would. Mostly for the many tests I needed to have done. Rarely just because of the coughing.

I received x-rays, CT Scans, PET Scans, blood tests, lung function tests. And that was prior to the diagnosis. Also a biopsy to remove some tissue for testing (small operation in itself, now done with laser surgery).

Whilst sitting around the desk with the boss and another executive, having just told them that the diagnosis was “Cancer”, and what that would entail, he turned to me and said “you're nothing but a part-time factory manager” (referring to the time I had needed to take off work for the tests), and demoted me. I never saw either of these men again after the operation. I had worked for the man for almost 7 years.

All of the above took place between June 2002 and October 2002. On October the 10th I had my surgery. They removed ALL of the right lung. It's been almost 15 years since then. To look at me you wouldn't notice anything untoward, except that I'm overly skinny. Not all disabilities are easy to spot.

I went through 6 weeks of Radiation Therapy in the new year (2003), which wasn't overly harrowing. What I did notice was my energy levels subside considerably towards the end of it. This didn't last long afterwards though.

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AFTERMATH

Needless to say there was a lot of psychological scarring from the experience. I wandered aimlessly for many years, and made some poor choices (mainly with who I associated with), and struggled to make sense of it all. However life threw me another extreme experience, but in her wisdom it seemed this was what I needed as it seemed to shock me back out of the shock I had been in all those years.

It seems the Radiation Therapy had weakened my heart (being targeted in that direct area). In August 2007 I had started to suffer from chest pains. Pains that I got looked at, but both myself and my doctor assumed it related to the lung issue. Turns out it wasn't my lung, it was my heart. Over the course of a week I was looked at several times, but no one twigged to do a heart check. Several days later I had a heart attack. And I remember it well. I wouldn't wish the pain on my worst enemy (if I had any!). I was rushed to the hospital and operated on immediately. I ended up having a double bypass operation as two of my hearts veins were almost 100% occluded. Fortunately no long term damage was done to the heart itself.

I remember waking up from the operation, feeling like a complete failure. It's hard to explain why, but moments like that really mess with you emotionally. But I think for the first time in 5 years I stopped running and faced reality. My life, my experience, my emotions, my lack of comprehension and understanding of what any of it meant. And I cried. Not like a man that has been told he is going to die, but like a man that was just told by life that he matters. It just took a heart attack on top of cancer, for that message to penetrate through all the childhood conditioning about sin, a vengeful God, and the worthlessness of humanity (thanks Fundamentalist Christianity!).

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FAST FORWARD TO 2017

So here I am almost 15 years later. Still alive. Still with only one lung. A body covered in some serious scars. But they are healing. Somewhere along the line my sense of humour returned to me. I don't take things too seriously, although I try to give important matters their dues.

I went into this experience a boy. Okay I was 29 years of age. But emotionally I lagged. Somewhere through all of this I grew up. For those who have followed my blog you will know that I write a lot of poetry. In those poems I try to express emotions honestly, rawly, unpretentiously. If I have succeeded in this endeavour it is only because I have lived those emotions.

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THANK YOU

Thank you for reading. I offer this story as one of hope, and not from a dark or depressing place. I sincerely hope you were able to get something beneficial from it. It happened. It changed me, and slowly I have come to terms with its reality and welcomed it into my life.

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This is my own work, written for Steemit
Image Credit: Photo of me is my own, the rest are from Unsplash.com

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