Forbidden Fruit

I really like this blog entry's title, but to explain why I will have to take a slight detour before I get to the main point of tonight's post. Bear with me.

When I was 15 or so I kept a "blog", only this was before they were called blogs. This was before LiveJournal, heck, it was before OpenDiary. I actually made my own online diary and didn't share it with anyone for a really long time, and it was incredibly helpful during the coming out process because it really let my friends know what I was feeling. It's ironic that I am so open and honest online (and was so even that long ago) when you consider that my area of expertise is now in privacy in Online Social Networks. After writing in my diary for years, my friend Kara discovered OpenDiary and we both started using that. Then I discovered a hole in their security that allowed me to steal anyone's password, sent them a helpful e-mail to let them know that they had a serious problem, and promptly got my account deleted. Including all of my diary information that I had, by that point, lost all of my local copies. That was my first experience with losing data in the cloud, so you'd think that I would have learned my lesson by now. Google has treated me well, though, so I'll continue to use their services.

Anyway, getting back to the title of this post, I distinctly remember that I used this title before in my old diary when referring to a straight guy that I had a crush on. (I still have crushes on straight guys from time to time, but I certainly don't obsess over them the way I did in high school, which is why you won't see such an entry in this blog.) I find the title of this post so funny because it applies very literally to my current circumstances.

Grapefruit.

I bought several food items from Bytes cafe -- the shop in A.V. Williams, the Computer Science building at UMD -- both this morning and this afternoon. Both times I grabbed a bottle of juice. The shop has basically four selections for juice that I would drink: orange, strawberry kiwi, cranberry, and grapefruit. I tend to favor orange juice and strawberry kiwi, but I get the other two occasionally. Or rather, I used to. One of the very prominent warnings for Gleevec is that I'm not allowed to have grapefruit in any form. You'd think it wouldn't bother me much, since I'm not really that big of a fan of grapefruit juice, but every time I open that refrigerator there I get this terrible craving for the drink that I just can't have.

Incidentally, there are a number of other things I'm not supposed to have, such as Vitamin E and St. John's Wort, but they're mostly easy to avoid (though I tend not to get Naked juice anymore, which is good for my wallet). There is one more thing: garlic. Garlic has been shown to (note: I'm paraphrasing from my understanding of the science behind it) affect the ability of the body to metabolize the Gleevec, so I'm supposed to avoid it as much as possible. This is of course nearly impossible since there's garlic in everything, so I've mostly stopped worrying about it. Grapefruit, however... I'm just going to have to suck it up.

As a final aside for tonight's post, even though I've been feeling great the past few days, I've had a few side effects. There's something strange going on with the pressure in my ears, and it comes and goes, but it's no big deal. I also have a little sore on the side of my mouth, and I had a nose bleed today. I was actually kind of glad for the nose bleed, honestly, because it confirmed my suspicions. I mentioned to Katrina on Monday that I was feeling great and jokingly said that I was thinking of cutting myself to see how quickly I healed (I think I freaked her out with that one a bit) because I suspected that my blood cell counts were trending toward normal. My nose bleed healed very quickly today, so I think my platelets are doing great. I feel like I have much more energy and that I'm more awake, so I bet my red blood cells are hanging in there too. And now I'm (successfully) fighting off the cold that Ted's trying to give me, so I think even my white blood cells are working! I'm actually kind of looking forward to my doctor's appointment next week after all, despite learning today how expensive my hospital stay really was.

I'll just say this: it cost more than I make in a year, and my health insurance is covering most of it, but based on my understanding of the statement from the health insurance company, it looks like I'll be expecting to pay a few thousand bucks. It's a good chunk of the money I've saved up over the past 8 years, but it's a small price to pay to take good care of my health.

Dinner with the Ulman Cancer Fund

Today I was invited to go to a dinner with some folks from the Ulman Cancer Fund, a cancer fund specifically for young adults (15-39). I didn't really know it at the time, but the dinner was mainly to get sorority members involved in fundraising and service for the Ulman Cancer Fund, so I kind of stuck out like a sore thumb as one of the 6 guys in the room; and 3 of them were there as members of the organization. I'm used to standing out, though, and that's basically the topic of my post tonight.

For starters, the dinner tonight was not geared toward me, but it was supposed to relate to me. We heard at least three stories of young adult cancer survivors, only one of which was delivered by the actual person (she happened to be the same person who introduced Obama when he was on campus recently). Whenever I hear these stories, I kind of feel like a phony, though. Treatment for Carmichael is very simple compared to all of these other cancers; I just take a pill every day or so. So even at this basic level, I already feel that I don't fit in.

Then Brock, the main speaker, went on to talk about all of the problems that young adult cancer patients face that other demographics don't, such as having difficulty paying for college or having to worry about infertility. The former I've never had a problem with (and my advisor, Bobby, really looks out for me in that regard), and the latter is not something I'm concerned with. If anything, it makes any decisions I might have had to make easier: if Ted and I actually want to have a biologically related baby at some point, I suspect we'd have him be the father. In some sense, I think that cancer support is heterosexist, but I can't really complain about it too much since I don't really need the support and when you start taking intersections of minority groups like that you quickly get down to a tiny group of people. For example, I'm guessing I'm the only young adult gay man who uses Linux with CML at the University of Maryland.

At the meeting tonight, I couldn't help but be drawn back to the days when I was involved with the gay community at UMD. I thought activism was so important, and that I needed to be a part of it. It took a few years, but I realized that I've got way more important stuff going on in my life than these issues. That's not to say that activism isn't important, both for gay rights and for cancer support, but it's to say that my talents are better suited elsewhere.

I think that this last point really highlights some irony in my life. I really feel like I've had a much easier time dealing with Carmichael because of everything I went through as a teenager when I dealt with being gay. There are actually a lot of parallels. When I received my initial diagnosis, it felt like my world had ended, but I have to admit that I felt the same way when I first uttered the words, "I'm gay," in the shower when I was 14. Then there was the problem of telling everyone I know and love that my life has changed; when I was young, it was a long and painful process to tell everyone, but I really learned from that and was able to deal with it quickly as an adult.

Really the toughest part is coming to terms with your new identity. I was an ordinary guy as a kid, and then all of a sudden I realized I was a gay man, and that was not an easy transition to understand my life in relationship to that new identity. After adjusting to my new identity that first time, it became very easy to adjust to changes to my identity in the future. So naturally, I adjusted to being a cancer patient very quickly, and life returned to normal very quickly. Sure, there are some issues still, but there are still issues with being gay, too, so life is pretty normal these days.

In the end, there are a few new interesting issues at the intersection of these two aspects of my identity. The first is that the Red Cross does not allow gay men to donate blood, which most likely delayed my diagnosis. That really irritates me, but I'm not sure how to effect a change in their policy or even that it would actually be a positive change from a purely statistical standpoint. The second is that my attitude toward gay marriage has changed somewhat. I no longer feel that it can wait and that it will happen eventually; I want to get married, and although I plan to live a long and happy life, being faced with my own mortality makes me want to get married sooner rather than later.

Fortunately, it could be legalized in D.C. very soon, so I may get my chance. Maybe I should be saving up money...