The medicine made it easier. It helped me through. When I was in pain, it took it away, and with that button next to me, I felt safe, just as one seeks to be safe from a predator, and believe me, pain is like a predator. It stalks you, leans over your shoulder, waits until you are weakened, and then it sneaks up and strikes, hard and fast.

When I left the hospital, I was sent home with two bottles of pain medicine; Oxycontin to take 'in-between' for 'breakthrough pain,' and Demerol, to take for more immediate relief. The Oxycontin, they said, was longer acting. The Demerol was faster acting - a baseball bat for my predator, Oxycontin the jailer and guard to keep it at bay. And it worked. A nurse came every day to clean the wound and check for infection, and I did get infection. I developed cellulitis, which is another form of fascitis - that rare flesh-eating disease that we joke about with friends.

Redness crept up and around from where they had removed lymph nodes from my groin. It spread out like a sunburst and it hurt like hell. I was rushed back to the hospital, my surgeon paged. I was admitted again and when my surgeon arrived, he was furious that I had not been hooked up to a morphine drip. That I was in pain. A doctor who knows me well and has seen me for years, and who knows that while I'm no martyr, this shit, all of this illness is hard, once said to me, "There is no reason why someone like you should ever have to be in pain." And I couldn't agree more. With this doctor's help, I had everything I needed and I felt safe.

But there was and there is still another kind of pain. One that is emotional. Cancer has taken away my sense of safety. I now know that I am not immune - we all think it will happen to someone else. None of us are prepared for this diagnosis; it sounds absurd the first time you hear it. It can't be me, you think. Not me. Then and now, there are times when I am consumed with anxiety, with rage, with worry. When I wonder if I will ever again feel anything physical that is pleasurable.

When you become as ill as I became, no matter how hard you fight, you are redefined by those who love you; I am no longer me, just me. I am a Patient. Someone who needs care. A worry to others. I am a person with a prognosis, with certain surgery in my future, number on my head. It is difficult even for someone who truly loves you to perceive you as sexual under these circumstances. Cancer is not sexy. Gauze and tape and stitches and an i.v. drip next to the bed are not sexy.