Drink Up!

Somewhere around the age of thirty-two I started getting hangovers. Terrible, crippling hangovers. It didn't matter if I had one drink or one hundred. If I drank it became a total crap shoot. I could be fine or I could be so sick I could barely make it out of bed. My tolerance completely disappeared, my nearly two decades of seasoning myself with strong drink evaporated seemingly over night. To my credit this did not stop me from drinking.

Also, around that time, I started to have trouble sleeping flat on my back. Having slept that way most of my life suddenly I started to feel as if I was not getting enough oxygen while on my back. I chalked it up to a recent weight gain as I was on the down side of my yo-yo dieting (or maybe it's upside, either way I was fat at the time). On their own these two physical changes don't mean much. Everybody reaches a point where they can't whip it on like they did in their prime. Not everybody blows up to the point their own body weight is suffocating them but, hey - fuck you, skinny.

What makes this an important discovery is I now believe they are/were connected to me having cancer. Thanks to the prednisone I was on while undergoing chemo I'm a fatty boomba-latty now and while it took some getting used to after six years away from it, I can once again sleep soundly on my back. Like a beached fuckin whale. Also, after undergoing six months of treatments that broke down my immune system and generally made me feel like complete shit, I'm back to enjoying a drink without worrying how I'll feel in the morning. I can once again drink irresponsibly without repercussions! Physical that is. Legal repercussions can still rear their ugly head on occasion. You'd be surprised how little interest police have in celebrating with cancer survivors. Even after informing them the reason for being pantless on a roof is your first “all clear” three month check-up. If it had been my own roof maybe it wouldn't have been as big of a problem. We'll never know. Until next time that is.

This leads me to one conclusion. I think I've figured out around when it was I first got cancer. One of the early symptoms of Hodgkin's Lymphoma is a strong/bad reaction to alcohol. I assumed this referred to how I reacted to the actual drinking of alcohol not the after effects but now I'm thinking otherwise. On top of that, wouldn't it stand to reason I was having trouble breathing while laying on my back due to the massive cancer filled lymph gland in the middle of my chest that pushed against my lungs when I laid flat? It makes sense to me. When I told my Oncologist about my recent findings he looked at me sceptically and then had the gall to question my medical training! So I put it to you, blog readers. Has anyone else had similar issues before their diagnosis only to see them disappear once treatment was over? Or am I the only one foolish enough to attempt a return to imbibing like a college student. Perhaps with a larger sampling my Oncologist will give me the credit I'm due for this remarkable discovery.