'Til it's gone

So, my toes are the ten latest casualties in my private little war on cancer. They're only the most recent converts to a growing list of body parts declaring anarchy from the autocratic rule of my central nervous system. Like early-stage frostbite, or the initial lack of sensation when standing up after sitting way too long in contorted positions, my feet still respond when called, but my toes aren't rogering up. You don't realize how prehensile your toes are until they don't grip the ground anymore.

One of the initial-surge casualties was my stomach - in fact, my whole digestive system. Healthy-eating gurus are always telling people to "listen to their stomach talking". I doubt they'd want to put up with the noise of mine lately. Its speech has been reduced to a single, low grumble, which generally can be translated into one of the following mutually exclusive ideas: (a) "Feed me, I'm starving!"; (b) "What the hell were you thinking, putting food in me?!"; or (c) "I'm angry at the whole world! GRRRRR!!!"

It is a war of attrition: other casualties have included, intermittently, my skin (unexplained rashes and bruises), my jaw (seizing up), the inside of my mouth and throat (symptoms of painful mouth sores without any actual lesions), my internal temperature control (a private Arctic under the beating sun), and with enduring unsettlement, my sense of taste. It is not just that the messages from my taste buds wax and wane in their intensity, or that certain types of taste (sweet, salty, bitter) trip on and off line. Instead, the communiques from my mouth are simply randomly garbled. A bottle of Evian slips past like the foulest tap water. Marinara sauce tastes of Italian dressing. Broccoli like carrots. It is indescribably disturbing to realize, halfway through a delicious and pleasantly sweet-tart apple, that your mouth isn't actually tasting anything like an apple at all. Your brain is just remembering what a good apple tasted like and silently editing the gaps between crispiness and yumminess.

I tell myself my fingertips only ache because of the hours pounding and plucking stringed instruments. But the truth is, they're losing accurate sensation too, placing everything from rapid-fire typing to bike-riding in peril. And one of the last outposts of resistance to the relentless siege, my hair, is gradually losing its tenuous hold on my body.

It is strange to watch your body disintegrate beneath you. To watch as unconsciously, your heart and lungs and brain and muscles summon up their reserves, substituting one sensation for another, altering your gait, your posture, your habits. To sit idly by as the one bedrock set of resources you thought you could always count on - your body - can't, or won't, respond to your commands.

I am war-weary. I can't wait to start rebuilding my forces.