Paralyzed By Fear for Months, I Begin to Claw My Way Back to a Rational Life

-A Limited Series with New Entries Published Each Sunday and Wednesday until No Longer Necessary

Prepare for my most personal and vulnerable entries to date.

Stepping away from the embarrassment and humiliation of recent events, I will attempt to step out of the shadows that have been engulfing me in fear and identify a path back into my life in this new series on Pinky Penmark Blogs.

Welcome to My Fear

Until today when this entry is published, no one knows the full extent of what has been happening to me in recent months. I've kept the secrets in order to avoid confirmation of what I had already convinced myself--that I have experienced some kind of mental lapse, a nervous breakdown, or late-stage schizophrenia. 



Whatever a doctor might call it, I have been convinced that a padded room was in my near future.  I am entirely convinced that some period and type of institutionalization may still be looming on my horizon.

I hear voices at times, see shadows and/or spirits spiraling around me when I lay my head down to sleep at night, words and phrases and series' of numbers regularly appear on my walls when the lights are turned out.  Pictures on the walls have rearranged themselves and even ended up hanging in different rooms on their own. And this was just the beginning.

This is not a Halloween story. It is merely a coincidence that on October 31, 2018, I packed everything I owned, placed it into a storage unit and fled my home of 11 years in fear. 

What was happening to me was real. Yes, I have been operating for two years at a very high level of stress due to cancer and chemotherapy and everything that entails.  My family doctor advised me recently that high-stress levels can cause the mind to "fill in the blanks in an attempt to make sense of traumatic events and even induce paranoia at times." 

"I have no doubt that my state of high alert has given more weight to some simple coincidences, but the vast majority of the happenings I will detail were as real as the ground beneath my trembling feet."

Making end of life choices is no joy and neither is being offered sudden life when you feel like you have nothing for which to live. All I had been planning for was a death with dignity after cancer finally left me feeling lifeless. No one had thought to remind me to plan for what I might do should I outlive cancer. My Google calendar was blank.

Then there's also been an onslaught of paperwork and court filings and appearances due to a lawsuit by a supposed friend who regularly claims "we are family." She, although clearly capable of causing me a great deal of stress,  is sadly, probably crazier and more afflicted than I, in fact. 

No amount of stressors that I have been navigating for the past few years, however, could justify to me my mind's manifestation of the seemingly unrelated and "unreal" events that have been occurring around me.

My mantra until today has been:

"You have gone crazy, Robert, but it's okay as long as you don't tell anyone about it. If you talk about it, that's when it will become real."

I first acknowledged that something wasn't right in my world in August when the occurrences around me became too numerous to ignore. In this series, I risk breathing life into what's been happening to me, but my hope is to take its power over me away as I write about it.

With your help, I hope this series of blog entries will be a useful tool for me in the process of reclaiming my life, my physical health, and my sanity. 

I know that the circumstances that brought me here today do not define me, but I am convinced that the process by which I recover and identify a path out of the darkness is going to define the rest of my life. I hope you will join me in this process, share any similar experiences with me or advice you may have for me and help me illuminate my way out of the darkness and back into my life.

So, please, comment with your advice, encouragement, disbelief, or what have you. I believe that writing this series in real time as I recover, along with your feedback, will end up being my saving grace.

Coming Wednesday, November 14 on Pinky Penmark Blogs

Remaining Rational Amid Irrational Occurrences Became Impossible,...

and then I Discovered I  had a Stalker.

Life, Interrupted: Another Medical Curveball Teeters Me Over the Batshit Crazy Cliff

Last I posted my phone was ringing with my doctor on the other end presumably waiting to tell me that my cancer had returned followed by how long I may have to live because she knows that I made the decision some time ago that another round of chemotherapy was not an option with which I was willing to live.

Much to my surprise, those were not the words she delivered to me, and today's post, which I had promised to post a week ago, was going to focus on the short-lived excitement and relief I experienced followed by dismay, confusion and near depression I found myself immersed in after her phone call. But once again, nothing in my life can go as planned these days as one crisis merely wraps up just in time for the next one to reveal itself.

Briefly, here is the good news my doctor delivered that oddly enough left me feeling lost and nearly depressed about my future. I have explained previously that my doctors and myself had feared the worst: that my cancer had returned.
To the thrill of my doctors and myself, the round of tests they subjected me to revealed the opposite was true. My doctor, the radiologist and my oncologist after reviewing my test results were unable to find any sign of cancer in my entire abdomen. Miraculously, the chemotherapy had done its job and, for now, I was awarded my temporary cancer free card. I would not be eligible for a permanent cancer free card until several years of clear scans could be accumulated.  But what about the return of my symptoms you are probably wondering? That is going to have to wait for another trip to the gastroenterologist and a different round of tests to determine the cause of the "extreme swelling of the colon, unrelated to cancer" as mentioned in my CT Scan synopsis.

This is exciting as hell, no? You bet your ass it was. I was thrilled and excited, not to mention surprised, beyond belief until I wasn't. You see I had only really planned my life up until that day, June 13th, that I was to receive my test results. My Google calendar from June 14th forward was a blank slate; a barren vast expanse of nothingness. Never before had my future been so empty. My calendar was typically full of upcoming events, celebrations, commitments and obligations, but I had purposefully made no entry beyond June 13th because I didn't think that I needed to litter my calendar with tasks associated with end of life planning. That's when my excitement turned to what was anticipated to be the title of this post, "WTF? What Do I Do Now?"

I had halfway analyzed and halfway processed the feelings associated with that spiralling down into the unknown and was prepared to write about it, but I am going to have to return to that analysis and that halfway written post because just when I should be accustomed to this onslaught of curveballs that are my life recently, I have been thrown a slider that I never saw coming.

Tonight, I'm laying in bed with a pick line in my arm that's attached to a portable pump supported by a lovely 1980s style fanny pack that every four hours delivers me an intravenous dose of antivirals to combat my latest interruption. That interruption being that I have shingles.

Note those corduroy OP Shorts. They're coming back!

Yes, God, Mother Nature or Satan, depending on when you ask me has decided that I am strong enough to overcome at least one more medical hurdle before I just say fuck it and go batshit crazy in some sort of scorched earth scenario. Please, please join me in hoping I that am indeed strong enough to overcome this latest obstacle because I have gone batshit crazy a few times in my life and none of us want to witness that hot mess again if it can be avoided.

You would think that this latest downtime would afford me plenty of opportunities to solve the problem of my barren Google calendar, but instead the pain and burning of these shingles has me considering ordering a BB gun from Amazon Prime so the next time I hear children laughing and playing outside my bedroom window I can pick them off one by one with BBs as we did those little ducklings moving from left to right across a fake river in the carnival games of our youth.  Oops, pull the brakes, Robert. See what I mean? I am teetering right on the brink of batshit crazy. Had I felt like this in the late 80s I could have easily been the one framing my husband for murder by killing myself in the trunk of his car instead of that batshit crazy Jill, ("Oh, poor Jill" as Valene would say) from that delicious television show Knots Landing. Her husband, Gary, drove a Jaguar nonetheless. How delicious (and batshit crazy) is that? Seriously, catch the episode if you can from Knots Landing Season 10, Episode 16 titled "Poor Jill", of course.


This is probably the point where I should take a break in order to try yet another worthless pain relieving gel, but one more of those might just push me over that batshit crazy cliff that all of us are hoping I can avoid. So, instead, I am going to pop three 600mg Ibuprofen, a 10MG Ambien and an anti-depressant, call it a night and check back in with you tomorrow.

Coming this Week--Epiloque to a Phone Call: WTF Do I Do Now?

In order to keep our readers up to speed, coming in short order this week will be "Epilogue to a Phone Call: WTF Do I Do Now?" Watch for it by Wednesday, July 4, 20018.

    Please note going forward that if life were to take another turn as it did recently for me and you desire faster updates than this blog may be able to provide, you may subscribe to Pinky Penmark Speaks newsletter at pinkypenmark.com and facebook.com/pinkypenmarkFL. Both of these places allow for brief and more timely updates that do not require a lengthy editing process. Do keep in mind, although, that the focus of Pinky Penmark Blogs is not expected to focus on my life, yet, as it did recently, my life may present a personal topic on occasion upon which I may blog.

Other posts on this subject may also be found on Pinky Penmark Blogs by entering keyword/label Cancer into the search field atop the blog's header.

Tomorrow is the First Day of the Final Chapter of My Life

(written 22 hours before a scheduled life-changing doctor appoint)

"is she really going to tell me how long I have left to live over the freaking phone?"

At least destiny has a high Scrabble score...

Tomorrow at 10am everything I have felt for the past few months will be confirmed. Tick tock, tick tock.

I should be outside enjoying nature, relaxing at the beach, doing something daredevil-ish, something, anything to soak in life, to absorb the feeling of what I anticipate to be the last day of freedom and frolicking without the weight of my mortality forcing me to acknowledge what my conscience has been whispering to me for quite some time.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 13, 2018, at 10am I will learn the results of a battery of tests I had last week to determine what cancer has in store for me next. 

You would think I would be worried, scared, reaching out to anyone I could for comfort. But, instead, I sit here alone, and in silence contemplating what I should do with the final days and weeks of my life. Only two other people by design know about my appointment tomorrow. And only I (and my doctors) know the extent to which my symptoms have returned, the same debilitating symptoms that first lead to my cancer diagnosis 18 months ago. 

I already know what I am going to be told tomorrow. It's the end of the line. Time to get my affairs in order. Update my legal documents so that it is explicitly clear to all of my doctors what life-sustaining measures I am willing, and more importantly, not willing to tolerate. Plan what I want to do for the final few months of my life.

Does it sound like I have a death wish? I honestly don't, but I have been preparing for my death for 30 years, and on some odd level it is comforting and a relief to know that the time is finally coming. Since I converted to being HIV+ in the late 80s when AIDS was a death sentence, I have been "Counting Christmases", and it's tiring. I'm exhausted, and I am at peace knowing that this cliffhanger of a life of mine will be coming to its ultimate resolution.

Fate, the God of my understanding, or my Higher Power, whichever I am comfortable with at the current moment, has intervened and revealed to me the results I will have confirmed at tomorrow morning's appointment.

First, I cannot come up with any viable reason why the symptoms of my cancer have returned other than that my cancer has returned to claim the prize it has been after all along, my life.  I swear I could feel it inside of me pissed off, pacing and plotting a new course of action as I started feeling better months ago. I know that cancer wants nothing more and nothing less than to devour its host.  I watched it devour my father and others. I know it doesn't play fair, and it doesn't like to lose. I don't have much if any, experience in my life with cancer losing. It would always be the little guy sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear, and it will be a relief to finally shut him up, even if my death is the only way to do it. He has been whispering to me for far too many years.

Second, in the past ten days, I have had four nearly out of body experiences. Four random experiences that I cannot understand in any other way except to believe that my life has been sped up in order to squeeze any good remaining from it out before there is no time left. In the past ten days, I have met four absolute strangers in random places from coming out of the grocery store to pumping gas at 7-11. Somehow these four strangers end up telling me their story, their shortcomings, their troubles, their current predicament.  Suddenly I wonder what time it is and I reach for my phone and discover that in each instance with each random stranger more than four hours have passed in what seemed like an instant. And in those more than four hours, I, who understands very little about life, I found myself counseling these strangers about their lives.  This had to be some shit from some weird Hallie Berry and Tom Hanks movie flashback, but it was really happening to me.

Startled, I just realized my phone is ringing, and it's 9:15 am, forty-five minutes before my doctor appoint. Where the hell has the night gone? I reach for the phone, but it has already gone to voice mail. I look at the caller ID. WTF? It was my doctor calling, is she really going to tell me how long I have left to live over the freaking phone?

My TV Remote - the Only Thing Left in My Life That I Can Control (and I'm pissed off about it)

Human beings seek control--control of their fate; control of their careers and finances, and many times control of their peers or family. We crave it. Instinctually, we seek as much control of everything that we can. Actually, more precisely, we seek the maximum amount of control that society deems acceptable without being considered controlling.

There’s a point at which we seek too little control and society deems us weak. We grab too much control and we are deemed manipulative in our personal lives, and micro-managers in our work life. There’s a sliding scale that somehow determines acceptable control, weakness and being controlling. It’s a game we all play and want to win, and a dance we all learn and try to master, but none of us really have any idea what the rules of the game are or if we should follow, lead, or God forbid, correct our dance partner.

Collectively, society determines what is to be the appropriate amount of control in our lives, and society’s viewpoint is fluid, ever changing with the times. As individuals, we have no clue. We never really know what the acceptable levels should be. We never know exactly when its necessary for us to make a stand, draw a line in the sand and declare we are tired of lacking control in our lives. Nor do we know exactly when we need to pull back and rely on fate, God, astrology or whatever, if anything, we believe may guide us. We never know until after we take a position when society tells us if it is acceptable or not. It’s comical at times, but it’s such an unfair game we have to play. 

When we are dealt a series of bad cards in life and feel control start to slip, we maintain our poker face for the next hand. And, then one day we might wake up and decide we have had enough of being nice, your poker face has caused wrinkles and the only thing you can do to stop your death spiral is stand up for yourself and declare, “Not fucking today, Satan!” and you plot a course to control your circumstances and shed yourself of the dreaded poker face because you’re not going to take it anymore. But, were you talking to Satan when you ask that question or was it Satan driving the question all along?

Recently, I reached a breaking point in having a lack of control of my life, and as I do, of course, with many things I took it to the extreme. Rectifying the final bad hand that I was dealt became my singular, laser-focused objective and if I didn’t succeed then I would be doomed to perfecting my fucking poker face for eternity.

2018 was having the nerve to treat me worse than 2017, and I was going to prove to myself that I was a man by changing my fate. As it turned out, whoever you believe in, because I don’t believe in much along these lines, was laughing at me. I was desperate to grab back the control of my life, but along the way, fate was still fucking with me at every turn until it nearly broke me.

This ridiculous game we play with control sent me on an obstacle course through hell this past Wednesday morning until yesterday. At times, I put myself, I am quite sure, on a path that I could have easily not survived. The catalyst for this seemingly, maniacal quest to gain control of my life was when I realized Wednesday morning that someone to whom I was loyal and had helped without question in the past, had stolen my cell phone and lied to my face about it We searched at home for it forever it seemed and then he volunteered to go retrace the path we walked to breakfast earlier in the morning to make sure it wasn’t dropped on the ground as we walked. I continued to look all over the house for the phone while he went to check the road.

He never returned.

From Cancer to c-a-n-c-e-r, but back, again?

Beauty or the Beast?

C-a-n-c-e-r.

A short, simple word at first glance.

It’s a mere word representing my astrological sign. It’s the astrological sign that gives me carte blanche to be somewhat (or 'morewhat') of a moody bitch. The moody bitch routine in my case, and in most cases I believe, was my best attempt to cover up my bleeding heart. To many, it’s common knowledge that we Cancers have a big heart.  Yes, we are over the top hopeless romantics with bulging hearts disguised in people that have no problem one day looking you in the eye after knowing you for twenty years and saying "For that, you are dead to me" and never look back. For yes, we have big hearts, but in order for us to access and display true compassion and empathy, there is normally a cost to everyone involved before we will publicly do something nice(and pathetic) like jump out of a cake or something sweet (and lame) like offering a toast and making a speech about a deserving person.