glad to be here

it's been a super long time since writing, but please know i have a bunch of drafts i started and could not finish for one reason or another, so i technically didn't entirely not write to you. but i think it's time to pick this thread back up because, usually when a cancer blogger goes a long time without writing, the worst is feared. and more often than not, the fears are confirmed a few weeks later by someone from the blogger's family. it's awful, really, and it's one of the main reasons i didn't want to start a blog in the first place. but that is NOT how this one is going to go.

i'll catch you up quickly, because really, any given day of dealing with this stuff could go on for pages and pages and this is the interwebs after all. no one has that kind of attention span. i finished chemo treatments #5 and #6, and my tumor marker (CA-125) has gone down, up a little, stayed flat a little. doxil, the drug i had this time around, works differently than taxol, the one i had last year, so the numbers don't go straight down but meander. the only way to tell what's really going on inside is with the scan. 

O THE SCAN. i have that in a couple of days (december 2), and then we meet with the oncologist the following week to learn what's there or not there, and to plan the next course of maintenance treatment. i feel about it all the way you might think i feel. i don't feel physically sick -- i mean i am tired as hell from the chemo, and with each treatment it takes longer and longer to get my energy back -- but i'm not in pain, i'm eating well (pretty much always), no fever or chills or tummy issues (aside from the regular). so i would think, no, no cancer is happening inside my body. but as i may have mentioned 80 million times before, ovarian cancer is really not one for bashing you over the head with telltale disease signs. 

BUT. today. today is actually my birthday, so i'm trying not to engage too much with the cancery stuff. i'm 55 years old and lucky to be here, which is true for all of us, i guess, but yes, especially true in my case. 

it is a weird day. it is my second birthday dealing with cancer shit. it is my first birthday without my dad around and i didn't realize how that would feel. my mom wrote me a birthday poem (a family tradition) and signed it, "mom," instead of "mom and dad," and that just about gutted me. the first year after you lose someone close to you is a lot about new absences, i guess. 

it's also a good day. my husband's family (all of whom live in the UK) arranged a birthday Zoom call for me, complete with the 3 adorable nieces. it cheered me in ways you can't imagine. or maybe you can. one of my dearest friends sent me flowers. my sister sent me the requisite photos of the dog and cat wishing me happy birthday in their own goofy ways. the husband gifted me a gorgeous box of amazing-smelling things from Lush. 

the weather is hideous -- gray and cold and rainy -- but it's cozy inside, and i've got some holiday lights up and twinkling, which makes me happy to look at (weren't you raised as a Jew? yes but the tree part is pagan, people. pagan! i'll add the menorah next week). 

and today i went to my Zoom poetry group, and wrote a poem for the day about trying to look forward. it's called "glad to be here." i won't put the whole thing here because in general i don't believe in forking my work upon unsuspecting people, but i'll leave you with the last 2 lines:

            "... trust something as simple as string could tie this all together.

                  let a handful of wings take hold."