Post-traumatic Newlywed Syndrome...

My man moved in on Halloween 2013, and we had Thanksgiving, our wedding, a honeymoon, my birthday, and Christmas, then New Year's, 2014, and the spring semester started, with both of us teaching, and then: screeching brakes. At the end of January, the plans we had to kick back and relax after the fun whirlwind were swept up into another whirlwind, a scary one, one with mortal coils, spirals of fear and worry. Cancer is confusion, and irony, and self-blame, and vulnerability. It is also the strangest gift, one that keeps on giving: the most ordinary days and events become rewards and blessings, grace sprinkled on generously, with light and warmth, and unmitigated joy.

The past few weeks, at last post-treatment, have been filled with a flurry of delayed newlywed gratification. We have moved furniture, and spackled, and shopped for paint, and painted, and today, we went to IKEA. This sounds like trite, consumeristic nonsense. But for the past months, though I pushed myself to do many, many things that had to be done in spite of the hideous treatments, I could not rally the physical or psychological energy to go up to IKEA and make my home better suited for three of us, no matter how often I thought of it, gazing longingly at the catalog and website.

Today, we drove there, roamed around the maze of color and texture, laughed about ourselves and people there, ate gravlax, hoisted flat-pack, braved the snail checkout, and put it all in the car. Today, I stopped dozens of times to feel the rush of lucky roll over me because I don't think it would ever have been possible to enjoy the divine ordinary of a trip to IKEA if I hadn't gotten cancer. Today, ambling through with dear husband, planning rooms to comfortably hold us all, making a home, making a life, just like normal newlyweds, was a hard earned gift.

Joy to the world, all the boys and girls...

My slightly scatty ability to self-analyze seems to detect a liminal shift in my stage of cancer recovery. I'm rapidly approaching delirious joy, though I will try to keep the delirious part dialed down. It may be some kind of post-chemical/radiated response of my body and brain, but honestly: colors are brighter, music and words more moving, air smells amazing, cooking and eating bring pure pleasure, and everyone is beautiful. Not just in their own way; really beautiful. Cranky people who formerly drove me nuts are simply not, even when they are selfish and neurotic; I figure they need a smile even more than most. If my son has dropped to a B+ in English, so be it - this fall, he learned to be a distance runner who constantly improved his time, and now he is busy living his dream of being in a pit orchestra for a musical; he can pull up his grade later. But most of all, he is beautiful: a fully formed human who came to earth via me, and light shines out of him. My husband is beautiful, heart and soul; light shines from him, too, and music. My friends and family are better than any riches on earth, and they are beautiful, light shining from them all, lighting my way through this adventure, this life.

My gratitude for life is off the charts, and this joy, should it prove sustainable, may be more powerful than the Tamoxifen, could be the secret to long term cancer survival, learned late in life, but better late than never.

Dubious Gift

Dear Left Breast,

Don't think that I blame you, or that you have been singled out and punished. I know you have been squashed in countless mammos, ultrasounded, and pierced for a biopsy. You've been surgically sliced and diced, had a wire jabbed into you, as well as an implanted metal marker. You've been stitched and attached to drains. You've been flushed with toxic chemicals, squashed some more, then trussed up into plastic and velcro and radiated by the VARIAN True Beam until you resemble a brown coconut, blistered and spotted. All this is true. But we have been in this together, all for the best and we can hope it will be the last of it, after today's scans. This body has sometimes felt like a battlefield, with skirmishes breaking out: shin, shoulder, armpit, scalp, tummy, tongue - but peace will come.

Eventually, I'm told, you will go back to resembling Right Breast again, smoother and pinker, and less mottled. You will be poked and prodded less frequently. We shall both forget the indignities of illness, the receptionists who called us "Hon" and only remember the compassion, humor, and sweetness of the professionals who helped heal us. We will think of all the loving family and friends who gave us prayers, smiles, cards, gifts, and laughs, especially the laughs. We will remember the colleagues and students who showed their kindness in myriad ways.

We will never again go sunbathing topless in the South of France, but we probably wouldn't have anyway, at this age, even without the dubious gift of a life adventure like breast cancer. We will instead cherish every sunrise and sunset over the lake and river and sea, fully clothed, and grateful.

Love, me.

Step Three

If I've been quiet here, it is because I'm just beginning to raise my head up out of the foxhole. Okay, not a great metaphor, because there has been no hiding from enemy fire. A better metaphor would be getting off a merry-go-round, those metal ones ubiquitous in playgrounds before people worried so much about children's ability to play safely. Kids would load on, someone would spin it by holding the bar and running fast right next to it, and then jump on. The world would blur by if you looked out, familiar but lacking essential detail. Gradually, it would slow down, and you would climb off, reeling and tipsy, centrifugally altered, but still in the same place.

Going through two surgeries and six rounds of chemo in seven months required my hanging on through a swirl, looking out at a sometimes blurred world going by, dizzy, often nauseated and disoriented, precisely at a time when thinking clearly would probably be a good idea.  Then the chemo ends, things stop swirling so fast, and smelling weird, and the hair starts growing back, altered, but still on my head.

So now that I'm done swirling, landed in the same place, I have possibly too much time to reflect on what the hell just happened. Getting from one appointment to the next was in many ways easier. I used to love Jed Bartlet in West Wing when he'd say to staff, "What's next?" but I console myself now that I don't have to answer anything except "radiation," the Step Three after surgery and chemo.

Radiation offers those bizarre moments unique to breast cancer treatment.  I am having a new form of super high-tech radiation, with a Star Trek-like machine, and in case you think I'm exaggerating, it is called the VARIAN TrueBeam High Energy Linear Accelerator (THELA). I have a team of three highly trained technicians who make this thing work with admirable precision, including playing jazz on Pandora while I'm on the table. Mandy is an artist of alignment, and her two handsome assistants tug and shove me to her requests like "left hip 3cm right" with fervent devotion.

But the first day was slightly intimidating, and I walked into the vast room with the plutonium-powered DeLorean THELA machine with no idea what happens next. I looked up at a monitor next to the machine and saw large photos, including a side angle shot of my left breast, trussed up in the plastic and velcro thing they fitted me with for these treatments. My face must have done something because Mandy said consolingly, "That is just so we know we have the right treatment location. Probably not what you expected to see this early in the morning."  I answered, "Well, as long as you don't leak it on the internet with Jennifer Lawrence's naked photos..."  There was a second of silence, and then three loud guffaws. From that moment, I figured it would be fine.

Cancer cures wrinkles...

One of the great things about cancer treatment is that it refocuses priorities, at least for the patient. Rather than worrying about the long-term effects of a bad haircut, I worry about the long term.

Having lost most of my hair, including eyelashes, eyebrows, and other bits, I am freed up to worry about having lost some cognitive function, like finishing sentences.

When I look in the mirror at my fuzzy head and puzzle over what look is coming next, I realize no one ever knows what is coming next. I should already know this, given my life history, but clearly I need big, heavy hammer reminders. Nothing subtle.

Last week, while arranging a consult with a dermatologist because of the former melanoma on my leg, my oncologist joked that it could take awhile to get an appointment for cancer follow up, but if I wanted Botox, they'd see me fast. So this got me thinking about the wrinkles and creases meandering around my face as I slide down the slope to sixty...maybe that is the look that is coming next?

Absolutely not. All earned, all me. After enduring a multitude of things shot into my body for the past six months, nothing unnecessary will be, well, necessary. Cancer has eliminated wrinkles from my worries. Both my wrinkles, and yours. Cured.

Not lol. Loll.

I don't lol. I don't mean laugh out loud - if you know me, you know I do that raucously. I mean I don't write "lol" to signify I am laughing out loud. I am nearly 57 and it isn't becoming. I would have cringed had my mother said "far out" as an exclamation in my youth, and no doubt Love Child would cringe at my writing "lol" in social media or anywhere else. (I do write WTF in text messages, but he doesn't usually read my texts, so he is spared embarrassment.)

In any case, I do not lol, but I do loll, as in around. As in lollygag. Summer increases my need to loll, particularly in the sun, and Vermont has only intensified the need this summer, because the air smells so darn good, like green, like cool water. 

Right now, I'm staying in a lovely house with a screened porch, complete with a sun-loving kitten who shows absolutely no guilt about lollygagging. He works hard and fast in the morning, knocking things off the shelves, chewing on my computer, spinning a pen across the floor, licking my breakfast, then curls up in the sun by me and yawns. He is an excellent teacher; now I work hard and fast in the mornings, too, and when the sun starts leaning in through the screens, I curl up and yawn. 

Chemo has given me a very particular justification for lolling. When I feel horrid, I need to focus on something to both remember and look forward to, and on the scale of great things to remember and look forward to, lolling in the sun in Vermont ranks in the nosebleed level of the range, way up there. I'm grateful for my teacher. 

If I were you, I wouldn't read much further...

Really, this is just going to be more chemo grumbling; useless venting.

I seem to have reached the point of fed-up a bit short of the point of finished. My patience is worn not only thin, but off, like the soles of my favorite Merrells. I've worn through two pairs so far, replacing them when the soles had turned to holes, but for this, I have no idea where to go for replacement.

I'd like to stop complaining and catastrophizing, and I'd like my real life back, the one with normal chaos and annoyances, like dog hair and the service light on in the car. I'm weary beyond reckoning of being bone tired, feverish, weak, nauseated, brain-addled, and in pain.

I'd like to once again be a nice person to live with: one who is cheerful, helpful, generous, positive, and cooks good things, instead of someone who runs from the smell of coffee or lettuce (chemo and lettuce: very VERY bad) Who wants to live with a retching wretch? Certainly not me.

So, yes, I understand that I have to do this one more, one last time. July 31. But I don't have to like it.