We can rebuild her...

Today was by all accounts a good day. I started back at the boxing gym where I used to work out. Much of my chemo-surgery-chemo summer was spent in a hideous yet comfortable recliner, and I could not imagine a day when I'd feel strong enough to put my boxing gloves back on (fun fact about boxing gloves is that just wearing them makes you feel powerful, even if you don't know a jab from a left hook). Today I put them on.

Sure, ok, my cardio level is not what it once was -- it's basically non-existent because recliner. I had to stop A LOT and catch my breath, and a couple of times I felt slightly dizzy 3 or 4 minutes after doing something I used to do for 15 or 20. It is a slow road. Chemo really does a number on your physical fitness, and it's not like I was all that athletic beforehand.

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The day before Thanksgiving I went to get my blood levels checked. The doctors have been doing this once a week since I started the maintenance drug, because the drug can decimate your platelet count. Which is exactly what happened. So even though I had an apple pie to make, I needed to stay in the hospital and get a platelet transfusion. 

This sounds way more serious than it is. I mean, yes, it's serious -- but receiving blood or platelets is not akin to receiving chemo. Low platelets are a common side effect of the medication, and many people need to get transfusions. They then go back on the medication at a lower dose. It's the body adjusting.

It's a reminder (as though I might forget) of what I'm dealing with. And the realization that I'm never going to be the person I was before this all happened. It feels like I've been blown up into a million pieces and I'm trying to put myself back together again from memory -- but there are these gaps and cracks, I'm crooked, misshapen, and wobbly. I'm something else entirely, even if my face looks like the same face.

But today at least, I showed up to the boxing gym, 12" abdominal scar, compromised muscle tone and all. It is a weird and (hopefully long) road ahead.

Steps and directions

Everything comes and everything goes. I have never felt so fragile in the world. I am tenterhooks, or whatever you call it. The doctor says I am ok, everything is ok, I can go back to work, I can start to focus on living my life again. Intellectually, I understand. And yet.

All my literal footsteps feel shaky, even though they're actually not. It's just the feeling of life shifting into another cycle, but like, tectonic plates. Everything comes and everything goes. Innocence, health. Expectations.

Rather than feeling emboldened to do all the things I wanted to do before cancer (not really sure what they were, to be honest), I have more trepidation. I feel like I started out after the trauma facing forward, and then. My father without knowing, without meaning to, turned me back some.

A friend of mine who knows what she's talking about said to me, "cancer is the great editor. you see in black and white what matters, what you want." She's right, I get it. Yet now I don't know what I want. I know what matters, yes, but what I want? No idea.

I think it must be that I'm scared to take another step. My future is drastically uncertain. Feeling as physically good as I have in a long time, I can go forth fiercely, cancer be damned, full steam ahead. And once more get the rug pulled out from under me. It's really hard to make a move.

Earlier today, I was at the supermarket and in the middle of my shop, I stopped my cart to think, "is this really real? Is this actually me, only 3 months out from a life-threatening illness, with my dad about to start radiation treatments for lymphoma?" And it is. Everything comes and everything goes, but this, this is the fact of my life right now.

I hope next year has some better things to give us all.

Ebb and flow

Today we drove in early to meet with our parents and the oncologist and see what treatments are available for his lymphoma. People reading this, I hope you never have to do the same. It's that time of life when the children and parents trade places. This happens all the time, I know. But how the heart aches seeing one's parents so vulnerable. And my father is not a man of many words or outward emotion, so to watch him receive the news was devastating.

I had to come home afterward because today I'm meeting with my own oncologist to learn how my body is responding to this new maintenance drug. It's expected that my red and white blood cells, and platelets will go down, but how much? My liver numbers might increase, might not. It might push my CA-125 up, which is frightening to me. I might also be fine.

So yeah, a heavy day overall.

I think of the phrase "ebb and flow," words that were so comforting to me as I struggle with some mental health issues. The universe wants balance. The bad things will not last forever, nor the good things. Ebb and flow. Summer, then winter. Darkness, then light.

I think of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, a book I took great comfort in while living alone in a foreign country. This passage in particular:

     "... you mustn't be frightened... if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, move over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall."

The thing is, most of the time I try to keep a positive outlook, try to focus on living and going forward. When my mind races, I meditate, I go for a walk, I play A LOT of Candy Crush. I make lists: trips I want to take, cakes I want to bake, possible jobs I might want when I am ready to work again. It gets me through the days, anyway.

But there are dark times, too.  I think of all the grim statistics and probabilities, and oh man. It feels insurmountable. On the way to my father's appointment, I had an awful thought: what if this thing takes us both? I probably shouldn't admit that thought so openly. Please be assured, it passed.

I want to focus on my forward progress, but my father's diagnosis is taking precedence. I want to look ahead and not see sadness, but sometimes I feel my body absorbing it, like stars into dust. Ebb and flow, though, right? Ebb and flow.

Cancer relative, part 2: the wedding

Tonight is my cousins' daughter's wedding, a grand event in a beautiful hotel with a view of the Charles River. Back in the beginning of The Big Horrible, I hung the "save the date" card where I could see it, so I could remind myself that happier times would be coming. And here we are!

I'm less nervous about being the cancer relative than I was before (though technically I'm WITHOUT CANCER, I think I'll still be considered that relative), but there's still a little reserve. Relatives from other parts of the country are in town, people I haven't seen in ages and ages, and they know about this. They'll likely want to see me feeling good and looking fantastic (new dress! fascinator!) or at least looking pretty good, and they'll want to (hopefully) hug me so I can feel the love. And I'm trying hard to be open to it.

In the forefront of my mind, slowly making its way to the back (for this evening only), is the state of things with my father. My dad. Next week, we all meet with the oncologist and find out the true nature of the mass on his neck. If it's cancer as we think it is, we'll find out the stage and suggested treatment plans. This will clearly be a difficult meeting, and to be honest, I wish I didn't already know how difficult it will be from own experience, but I do.

My parents are in their 80's now, and so ill health can be part of the picture. It's a life stage. Up until this year, our family had been so so lucky, no major illnesses or broken bones. My sister had a few back surgeries that weren't fun, but all in all, we'd been healthy. And then 2019 happened. I guess we had a good ride.

Whether or not this turns out to be another cancer situation, part of what's hard is coming to terms with the fact that parents do not live forever -- which ok, yes, you know this intellectually, but when you see your parents healthy for so long, it doesn't really sink in. People age. Their bodies begin to slow down, maybe start to break down. And I know this is probably the beginning of this stage for my dad, and it's hard. Mostly everyone goes through it, I don't think ours is a special case, and yet of course, every sadness and anticipated grief is as uniquely detailed as the family undergoing it.

Tonight though, is a happy occasion. Which is also part of life. And I am determined to enjoy myself, dance a little, eat a lot, cry at the "I do"s. I want to inhabit, even if just for tonight, the happy place, and re-remind myself that despite a shitty year, it also exists.

Learn and live and learn

The minor surgery to close up the last bit of my abdominal wound went well. It didn't take very long and the recovery has been rapid. In two weeks' time I will once again be able to loll in a bubble bath. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me1

It is the one bit of good news from last week.  The same day I was getting my wound revised in one Boston hospital, my dad was getting a PET scan in another. Cancer is suspected. The mass in his neck showed up green on the scan. There were no other large masses, just a few very small green areas that the doctor felt could be arthritis or other inflammation.  He's scheduled for a biopsy this Monday.  I mean, yes, there's a small chance it isn't cancer, but I don't think that chance is anything to pin our hopes on. We are proceeding as though it is.

What are the chances are that 2 people in a family of 4 with no prior serious medical issues get diagnosed with cancer in the space of 7 months? I don't know and I don't want to know. It's already unbelievable enough. And when I think of it (I try not to, that is what Candy Crush is for, right? but obviously it's impossible not to), I can't even. I don't know how to process this.

My sister and I talked about it on our way to our cousin's wake yesterday. And then we went into the wake. And there was our cousin D., in thousands of images flashing across tv monitors, laughing and smiling and enjoying time with family and friends, times at Grateful Dead concerts and at the lake where he loved to fish. D. across his 59 years, at weddings and parties and graduations, in living rooms and backyards and music venues, with people and by himself. In my favorite one, he's driving a boat with a cigar in his mouth and the most magical smile across his face. Pure joy.

It does seem now that Death is announcing its presence in some very serious ways in my life. My instinct is to jump into my beloved green MINI and drive, and keep driving. Or to hide out for all eternity in a dark closet under a pile of cozy sweaters---  but.  I want to learn something from it.

I know that this not only sounds pretentious, it's also utterly unrealistic--- because you know, it's Death. Death obviously teaches you the fact of its existence, that it's coming to you (for you?) eventually, whether you fear it or face it head on, or linger under the illusion that you can control it.

What else is there to learn from it, right? I don't know. But I need there to be something more. I guess I'll find out.