I am a cancer patient. I am also a person with an auto-immune disease and epilepsy. When I took Demerol, which I did for a year or more, I never increased my dose. I took the prescribed amount and was pain free. But because it is not the usual drug for head pain, for what they say I have, which is complex hemipelegic migraine. Because narcotics are no longer the recognized treatment of choice for head pain, I have had to try over twenty-four medications over the past six years. I was everyone's favorite guinea pig; a temporal lobe epileptic with a rare auto-immune disease, cancer, and a history of meningitis. My medical records are a tome of rare infections; impetigo, sjogrens syndrome, malignant melanoma (and I was never a sun worshiper). We tried drugs both narcotic and non-narcotic; some worked but with intolerable side effects, others didn't work at all - didn't even touch my pain, and some actually increased it, causing what they call 'rebound pain.'

Now, we have settled on three drugs, some narcotic some non, and since it has taken us so long to get here, my doctors are happy to stick with this program. After all, they want to make me better - and, in as much as anyone can, they have.

It's been four years since I had a large part of my shin removed along with six lymph nodes. I had discovered a black freckle on the spot, which was biopsied, and when it came back as an aggressive melanoma, I underwent a radioactive-dye scan that would highlight any potential problem spots. . They found cancer growing wide and long like a mold, burrowing into my skin, my muscle.

The black mole that served as the red flag was smaller than a penny, the size of a button on a Gap white oxford. I left the hospital that day with a date for surgery, and when I stepped out into the daylight to get my car, I realized I was no longer just me; I was a cancer patient. For a minute or two, I stood frozen. Then I called a friend from my cell phone and told him the news. It still didn't seem real. None of it seemed real until two weeks later when, one hot day in July, I underwent a surgery what would both save my life and change it forever.

When I awoke from the surgery, I was not prepared for the pain. I had a machine that beeped and a black cord with a red button. Noah stood at the end of my hospital bed when I cried, screamed that it hurt so much. "Press that red button," he said. I did. Then I did again. Relief washed over me in waves. Pain was erased. When the nurse came to check my wound and change the dressing, I saw my leg for the first time; it had the mark of an apple of which someone has taken a large bite. It was red and swollen and bloody. The stitches were thick, like Frankenstein's neck. I was not prepared for this. I was deformed, a whole chunk of my body was gone. I wondered what they had done with that part of my leg that had been with me for my whole life; that had played hop-scotch, traveled the world, wrapped around a lover's back. Part of my body was gone, and I felt like a friend had died; like I had died. .