Phase IV - Life

Dear Friends,

Last Friday was my last day of radiation. Another milestone passed. This week I have no doctors' appointments. I can't say that my feeling is one of pure joy since there is plenty to worry about if I wanted to. For the most part I have been successful in not focusing on the uncertainty and the 10% chance that there are still some devil cells hiding out, regrouping and steeling themselves for the slaughter. But now that I am not receiving very frequent treatment it may be harder to push those thoughts away. On the other hand, every three weeks for the next seven or eight months I will receive a mini infusion of chemotherapy, and every day for the next five years I will take an oral form of chemotherapy. I will also see my oncologist every six weeks. So my treatment isn't exactly over, which is some comfort.

The one thing that doesn't happen with this cancer is regular CAT scans - at least at this stage. This is a relief. I guess they figure that no good will come from discovering renegade tumors after all this treatment. If those nasty, little cells were able to survive eight months of chemo blasting, we might as well give up since no amount of early detection will save me.

I have my annual physical next week. Remember the jealous internist who was sad about missing all the cancer drama? Well she's making me come in the first week of October. I know it is silly, but I am terrified of that appointment. I am sure she will find a new cancer threat to worry about. Cancer, cancer, cancer. Every health professional on the planet is so eager to find cancer: the internist looks for lumps and tests your blood hoping to find whacked out readings that might suggest there are tumors in your kidneys, your liver, your intestines or your blood. The gynecologist also enjoys finding internal malformations and taking cells out of your personals to look for cancer. The dermatologist looks for god-only-knows what since every blemish on the body looks like cancer to me. Even the dentist likes to do a kind of mammogram of your head to look for tumors in the jaw or some crazy place. There is no limit to the creativity of cancer to find new body parts to chew up. You got to admire it, really. Cancer has every characteristic that my father used to try to grind into me: determination, tenacity, guts, imagination...no wonder it is so successful.

So the question is what to do with this blog. The original idea was to keep you all posted on my progress. Now that the treatment is pretty much done and there is nothing to do but wait to see how long I live, there won't be much to report until something terrible happens, in which case I may not feel like writing about it here. On the other hand, if I don't write this blog you might think I'm dead. You could just assume I am alive until the husband posts an epilogue on the blog. Another option is for me to write occasional, boring updates on my gloriously, humdrum existence. Lets go with the last option...for now.

Thank you all for supporting me through this ordeal. Your help with meals, gifts, companionship and kind words made me feel more lucky than unlucky. Thank you also for reading and commenting on these posts and for letting me know that now and then they made you laugh.

Until the next time I have something to say...

xoxoxox

The End of a Season

I read a poem every morning, thanks to The Writers Almanac sponsored by American Public Media. Today it was Robert Frost and it caught the mood of what I wanted to write about in this post.

Reluctance

by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

"Reluctance" by Robert Frost, from A Boy's Will and North of Boston. © Penguin, 2001. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) 

September. The sad music of the nighttime crickets brings back years of memories of lying in my childhood bed the night before the start of a new school year. I felt so sad about the end of summer in those days. I thought of summer as a time when I didn't have to worry about homework and could play with friends any day of the week. It wasn't that I disliked school so much, but that last night before the new school year began I imagined I would feel homesick that next day, that I would miss my mom and swimming and playing "My Side of the Mountain" in the woods. This is a feeling that is ingrained in me. Every September I am haunted by a back-to-school anxiety and "reluctance" even during those few years of my life when the crickets heralded no change to my routine.

So why does the end of summer make me feel so blue? Might it be the loss of long and lazy summer days? That is NOT it. The pace of my summer day is closer to that of a labor camp than that of a day at the beach. Hours spent pulling at the billions of stinkin' weeds which threaten to strangle all living creatures on my property, or dragging two miles of hose around the yard with arms connected to a recently mutilated torso, are enough for me to long for snow-bound, winter days trapped in my office.

Is it the loss of having my darling children near me all day long? Those sweet little voices chiming pleasantly throughout the house atop of summer breezes floating through the window screens? I don't think so. Take for example the greetings I am likely to receive after the daily trip to the grocery store that is required when my voracious offspring are in residence. "Mommy! You forgot to buy that critically important, incredibly exotic, habanero, tequila spiked, roasted chipolte hot sauce I need. I've asked you to buy that five times already!" Or, "Don't tell me you forgot to go that store that is about 20 miles out of your way to buy that bottle of probiotic organisms that costs about $90.00 but that is absolutely critical to maintaining the natural balance of my intestinal microflora?"  No, I don't think it is the cheerful family banter that I miss so much.

Perhaps it is the shared pastimes of summer that I miss. Such as when my darlings "share" with me their gigantic towers of laundry that they have been saving up until they have worn their last pair of 13-year old underwear twice. Probably not. I feel like passing out when I see their sheets. My daughter's look like several people were slaughtered with a dull knife in her bed. And my son's look (and smell) like they had been used to clean out the chicken coop.

Could it be the colorful clutter that charmingly adorns their bedrooms and that makes me shudder with repulsion every time I accidentally allow my eyes to shift in their direction when I walk by? Not likely. It took me weeks to remove from their rooms the empty seltzer cans, dirty coffee mugs, shreds of tampon and razor packaging, crumpled sheets of notes on topics like "Dance and Society: 1960 - present" (Jesus, what are we paying for!?) or "World Politics" (huh?), and most horrifying of all, a large, albeit unopened, box of condoms.

So I am reminded of another "poem" of sorts - one perhaps that my daughter might have "danced" to last semester....

One less bell to answer
One less egg to fry
One less man to pick up after
I should be happy
But all I do is cry...
Songwriters: Hal David;Burt Bacharach