up, down, flat

 i haven't had a lot to say lately. in between the drama/trauma of appointments, treatment days, scans, and scan results, life in cancer land is made up of these huge silences. mostly they are made up of waiting for said appointments, treatment days, scans, and scan results, and they are boring in a slightly terror-inducing way. 

it feels like this today. the giant Clock of Life is above me, loudly ticking off the seconds. I think the medication I'm on is working (a little? a lot?) but I don't know for sure, and I do know it can change at any moment. every three weeks when i head to the cancer center for an infusion, i know they will take my blood, check my labs, and know something they didn't know the last time. 

they'll know something is working because the numbers keep lowering. or something's plateau-ing because the numbers aren't moving. or worse, more cancer is likely growing because the numbers are going up. they're looking for patterns, trends. even tho i have asked not to know specific numbers, they will still tell me: up, down, flat. the trajectory of the disease continues whether or not i intellectually participate in it. 

today is a good example. today is downright boring. i had a little freelance work to do and that helped a little in the way of distraction, but a phone call from the hospital inserted itself into my day -- just an appointment reminder -- but still. just in case i'd forgotten for even 20 minutes, something will remind me. 

i got something from a bathroom drawer last night and forgot to close it, and when i'm in the bathroom today i see inside: the tops of 30 or 40 different pharmacy pill bottles i've accumulated over the last 2 years. in the corner of my workspace, 2 boxes of medical supplies left over from that time after my surgery when the wound was not healing. i can't tell you how many times i used to daydream about how good it would feel to finally throw all those fuckers in the trash! 

but either i got too dispirited or lazy or tired of waiting for a day I could confidently do that. I'm coming up on my 2-year anniversary of being diagnosed, so maybe i'm finally just accepting the integration of the monster into my life. 

on a nicer note (i think), i think have amassed about 50 odd poems or so trying to makes sense of this shitshow. they're not all good and they're probably not all poems, either, but they're enough to start working with, i guess. enough to start another manuscript. 

even if i can't imagine someone wanting to read a whole book of poems about this stuff, it's a creation of sorts. some of the awfulness turned into something less awful. there is that.