I have cancer.
Stage 3, possibly stage 4. I had the MRI to determine that this morning.
On February 28th I had a laparoscopic right radical nephrectomy. That means some awesome folx poked some holes in me, disconnected my right kidney and the cancer inside of it from the rest of my body, then sliced a small hole in me and slid the infected kidney and surrounding fat tissue out.
Stage 3 cancer means that the cancer has taken over the entire organ it started in, but hasn’t yet spread anywhere else. Stage 4 is when the cancer has left it’s original location and has spread elsewhere. I presume Stages 1 and 2 are varying levels of “very small” and “not yet the whole organ”.
So, I’m told I have a 60% chance of being alive in 10 years, assuming this is stage 3.
But stage 3 or 4 or whatever, it tends to focus the mind on how one wants to leave the world.
I spent the first 30 years of my life being unaware and selfish. Floating on top of things, never caring to go deeper and look into the “why”s. I know sometimes others around me did recognize, cause they’d complain about details about things that I hadn’t heard on the “evening newz”, my only real doorway into any sort of informational media.
I had friends and even closer who were directly affected by, well, everything. We all always do. But my only real focus was on myself. Like, I said the right things and ‘believed’ the right things, but wasn’t actually proactive nor even particularly invested, it wasn’t a “me” problem, and I had my own things to do.
I was a typical centrist, obviously we shouldn’t go too far right cause that’s just fascism, but also obviously we don’t want to go too far left, cause look at how bad those “leftists” run countries, after all. “If both sides are mad at you…” nonsense. And I wasn’t willing to do the work to correct that, as I didn’t realise it was wrong. No matter how much happened to me and around me.
Drug policy was my first personal introduction to “shit being wrong”. It should have been the Invasion of Kanesatake and Kahnawà:ke (colonizer media calls it “The Oka Crisis”). This took place in 1990. A friend of mine was very upset on the Mohawk side, pointing out it was an invasion and theft of land over a damned golf course. But I was meh. That wasn’t me.
But Not Letting Me Consume Cannabis? The Nerve! …
And, I mean, I wasn’t wrong. But those other things weren’t wrong either, but they didn’t make it through the shield.
And, it’s not like I chose to do things on purpose. When I found out how growing up I had had such a negative effect on my younger sibling, and that when I moved out their grades got better…. that still hurts to think about 30+ years later.
But also, like, being an asshole big brother, which I was, maybe yeah that’ll have effects? Wow. Shit we do Has Consequences To The People We Do It To.
Insert mind blown meme here.
But once I was able to accept that so-called Canadian/Western society can be wrong, I did slowly find my way to what is now hopefully a less shitty direction. What really helped was podcasts, and the ability to be a fly-on-the-wall for conversations between folx so much differently than me.
Some of the early ones were actually Harry Potter podcasts: Which Please, The Gayly Prophet and others. And also First Nation’s podcasts: Ryan McMahon’s Red Man Laughing. Native Opinion. Media Indigenia. Podcasts done by Black folx, like While Black and Woke Doctor Who.
It doesn’t happen right away. You just need to listen. But over the weeks, and months, it becomes inevitable that you will recognize patterns. Patterns of treatment, of behavior, of forced choices. And you can’t help but compare those stories to your own.
I once rode my bike through downtown Toronto. Dundas street I think, east of Parliament street. I was late-teens, maybe early 20’s. It was 2am. I had no lights. There was a police car parked to “protect” the neighbourhood I’m sure. When I rode by breaking the law in front of them, did they jump out or chase me or anything? Of course not. They yelled out to me “Buy some lights!”. “I will, thanks officer.”
…
My family has been on this continent we’ve named “North America” for hundreds of years. 13 generations, by my count, from the generationally oldest colonizer ancestor. United Empire Loyalists through several different connections. Slave owners through at least one family, cause when they chose to be loyal to the British Crown, they explained that 2 slaves were part of what they left behind in upper New York State.
We’ve written books about the flora and fauna. Books about how hard it is to live out here if you’re trying to live the same as you would in Europe. Books about how to tame and colonize the land. We’ve written about our First Nations friends, whose names or even nations we don’t pass down to our children. Some branches of the family had close First Nations friends, so close that they braved a colonizer wedding to drop off a gift and give their congratulations to their friends getting married. But they didn’t stay. The canoe that they left the family is an heirloom somewhere. But the names and Nation are lost to the past, as far as I know.
We started on 2nd base at least, with free or relatively cheap land. Land that is basically stolen, because the treaties our governments and predecessors signed were instantly broken by us, and we never intended them to limit our actions.
Some of us were literally part of the upper class society while they were in England. The fact that we’re not bougie rich assholes here doesn’t mean we didn’t try, didn’t want to be, didn’t work to be. Teach your children how to use all the fancy knives and forks. OWN all the fancy knives and forks. Have a place for all the fancy knives and forks. The privilege of those things was not only never mentioned, it certainly wouldn’t have been a “privilege”! For shame, we worked hard for all that stuff, from our starting position on 2nd base…
I’d rather not continue a life that ignorant and disconnected from the reality of the lives of working people…
To be continued…