When the doctor confirms your worst fears,
and the words “stage four” burn in your ears…
But at least for her cancer,
ENHERTU’s been the answer,
and we’re hopeful she’s got two more years.
------------
Frances was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer that had spread to her abdomen a year ago. I didn't think she'd make it to January 1 of this year. A targeted therapy did not work, and a chemotherapy only worked for a few months. The doctor started her on ENHERTU in late March and it has been an absolute game changer, nothing short of a miracle. She will be on this drug, every 3 weeks, until it stops working or she can no longer tolerate it. The doctor said the mean time patients stay on the drug is 2 years. We are thankful for our doctors and for the medicine, but God gets the glory!
Categories:
metastatic, cancer, miracle,
Form: Limerick
Written: September 07, 2023
______________________________________________________________
I can't sleep at night, so I stay alive.
I am awake, and I search and strive.
I'm no warrior, just a bumbling scrambler.
Restless nights render me a rambler.
I crave a paladin, a light to guide my way.
Yet, gloom reigns, and all hope wanes away.
Into a cloud of tedium and torpor of a tongue.
I long for silence, for optimism to be wrung.
Capsized in an abyss of frustration,
For solace, a catalyst in this desolation.
My gloom clings to such a symbiote spawn.
Snarled metastatic root quotum-dot drawn.
Hush, my tired soul, and let illusions fade.
In this darkness, all that is a masquerade.
Seek not the light, for it is only a gleam.
Rather, apply the recess to deem it a dream.
In the gloom, where shadows dance and play.
It is a quiet oasis where anxiety withers away.
I need faith, resilience, and perseverance.
To explore this squalid earth sans inherence.
Categories:
metastatic, allusion, anger, bereavement,
Form: Rhyme
The elephant in the room went out for a drive,
creating a scene in the scenic coastal town.
Large as a barge, roaming the hills and the valleys.
It was a bumpy road, mammoth and metastatic.
It was like letting the bees out of the honey hive.
Oh what the historic and stately place was shown.
Not normally seen, the victim from the alleys.
Causing accidents - it was briefly traumatic.
The elephant’s ride was towed and does now sit
out of sight. For his hide and tusk, it was quite a blow.
The elephant in the room, it was his last shot.
The affluent paid attention - for a time, it was quite dramatic.
By droves, as tanker-ton came through, they came out to see
the gray and stormy, with trunks and tusks, migrating.
His travails and luggage, his need for snacks, a barge -
the elephant in the room, they’d not allow a visit.
10/20/2022
end rhymes first two verses (drive, hive)
verse 3 rhymes with first words in verse 2 (sit, it)
with one exception.
verse 4 rhymes with first words in verse 1 (see, the)
Categories:
metastatic, allusion,
Form: Rhyme
Fading into silent tears
relief just a mouse click away;
Such a fantastic Metaverse,
enter a realm beyond your dreams;
Your dying soul feels eternal;
Tears fade within that vision;
Emptiness morphs into disconnection,
it’s the Devil inside;
Such an easy escape,
held in a pair of digital eyes;
Called to a place
where they are no longer bound
by all that cannot be unseen;
Free of the trappings of a limited existence
wake up an alternate reality;
The metastatic Metaverse
where lost souls go and log in.
Categories:
metastatic, computer, depression, emotions, feelings,
Form: Free verse
Chaos spreads like metastatic growth
In carefully designed manipulation
Family therapy
The puppet mistress casts her chords
Feeds her prey with miserable traction
Border lines crossed
Control is the trade she plies in glee
It corrodes and shelters dysfunction
Emotional bribery
Responsibility declared abandonment
Regrets resentment sadness anger
You make your bed and …
Vile venom sheathed in candy wrapper
She’s burning all her feeble bridges
Retreat the only hope
06th February 2020
Categories:
metastatic, family,
Form: Free verse
Mein Kampf...Self Imprisoned Gulag
Onset of conception wrought significant
destructive quantum sized genetic quark
invisible, fissile, and congenital skull,
sans crossbones deathmark
scythe kill logical metastatic
psychic path head shrinking Reichsmark
financial reparation taxed this human bark
at peril of ark
covenant fomenting incruent
lacerating psychological ordeal
triggering mythological hound fierce bark
king Cerberus from Hades
bajillion times more
ferocious than a shark
oppressive teeth gnashing
jawbreaking, human prey stark
dead meat, bleak fin de siecle lifespan
razor sharp teeth trademark
death sentence worse
than totalitarian regime,
emasculating, defeating, crushing any spark
to muster livingsocial jackknifing
sole ambition waiting, Clark
Kent (alias superman) powerless,
thus letting me die non staining watermark
as permanent solution
freeing relentless gravestone mark
piercing, sundering, and vitiating
against nemesis, sans panic attacks
exacerbated by infiltrated FARC
militia firearms at the ready,
where soul will peacefully park
amidst cognoscenti immune to snark!
Categories:
metastatic, 7th grade, anxiety, creation,
Form: Bio
A golden day, my mother said.
She had taken my father (who was dying - in the final stages of metastatic lung cancer, his face swollen and disfigured from the medicines, his once thick head of hair long gone from the radiation, his sure-rootedness now reduced to an uneven, unsure, unbalanced, slow unsteady sort of halting rolling step) to a place in a woods where they could see the tinseled leaves glittering in the sun,
Hear them moving in the breeze,
Smell the woody, loamy aroma of decomposition underfoot.
It was near a river and so water could be seen in the near distance.
One of the last good days.
A goodbye to the life they had
Lived.
A golden day.
See the sun.
Feel it's warmth.
Feel the air.
Hear the insects, the birds,the crunching of the leaves.
Smell the freshness,the marshy fecund scents.
See it all.
Feel it all.
A golden day.
Categories:
metastatic, cancer, death, father, leaving,
Form: Free verse
The metastatic figure.
He was seeking truth without thought,
being in and out, he was sleepwalking in
dream. I am the absolute, he said. Skeletons
are popping up everywhere. Poor beasts.
And there was the tired flame who
burned all night in vain.
The body was aching after the discovery
of a super terrain. Another earth? or
a conventional aberration? The planet
was heaving with hot clouds. Reason
for a substitute. Right perception of
life was difficult. Everybody was running
in opposite direction for a message.
He dives to pull up the corpse of liberty
locked deep in water. A noble idea to
free the corrupt world from the bondage
of decaying foundations. Half-truths and
half-lies must live together for the human
survival. Quest of the self ultimately
begs for forgiveness.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
metastatic, life, peace, people, philosophy,
Form: ABC