In Which I Whine, and Try to get Kleenex to Sponsor my Dinner Napkins.

I have an appointment for a new pain therapy this Friday. "What?" Sez you. " I didn't know you were in pain!" and I know you said it, because every one says it.
  
Well, yeah, they cut off  some of my tongue, and then, mad scientist style, they followed that up with 30 days of radiation aimed directly the surgery site, burning it to a fine crisp. That shit hurts, and it's gonna hurt for a long time.
   
Like all survivers, I've learned a sort of etiquette that goes along with cancer treatmentst. You just kind of figure out what people can tolerate and what they can't, and you learn what you yourself can take and what you can't.
 
 Realistically, how long can you stand around in your good outfit saying "Gosh, that's interesting, " and then following it up with "Ow, ouch, whoo, man, OW, oh boy! Damn, that hurts!" Right? Who needs it at a party? Who needs it anywhere?
   Well, you get it. There's just not really a way to work chronic anything into a conversation. and cancer is so gross, God, if I spent one minute talking about what's really happening? Echhhh. I can't even say the word mucus out loud, and apparently I am entirely constructed of....that. Ew.
     
I've developed plenty of eccentricities, the ones that it appears people can live with. At least, I hope it's not just good manners but, no, I think they've really forgotten how bizarre I've become. For example, I have this weird brown bottle with a long snoot on it.Well, snoot is not the right word,it's a needle nose cap designed to get to hard  to reach places, like the way back of my mouth. Several times during a conversation or at out at a meal I will take this bottle and aim that snoot waaay back there and give it a good squirt. I don't even know I'm doing it anymore. Can you imagine someone taking out a can of deodorant and spraying themselves three or four times while you're trying to talk to them about something? It is so strange.Believe me, I only try to get away with this in front of people who love me.
   
What's in the bottle? It's lidocaine, similar to the stuff the dentist gives you before the needle. It certainly takes the pain away, replacing it with an odd stinging numbness, and rendering my tongue useless.  But I do it and don't even realize it! And that's not the only odd thing that I do that people seem to take for granted after a while. I'm thinking about the trail of napkins that follows me wherever I go. And just in case I can get them to sponsor a lifetime supply, let me tell you that it has to be Kleenex dinner napkins, and nothing else. I won't tell you what I do with them, who cares? It's revolting, but it seems to be one of those things people let me do.  I personally would not enjoy talking with someone who dabbed constantly at either corner of their mouth with the Kleenex Dinner Napkin, until coughing up a some kind of hairball and then returning to the conversation without blinking an eye..I make veils out of them to avoid spitting on my audience, and often use them just to blow my nose But there is never a trash can anywhere near by and I've gotten used to that, too.. I just got out of a meeting with the mayor with two of those things stuck in my bra, one in the waistband of my pants and one in my hand, and even he took it in stride.. They might be secretly thinking " Oh my God, that s so revolting," Well suck it, if you are. You should see what goes on at home.

The other thing is, I'm not kidding, when I have to sit down, or go home, I mean at that moment. Not  in a minute, or when you finish your sentence.

     I am embarrassed to report that I  had a client, once, who said that she had to sit, and plopped down on a stone step right where we were standing. I didn't want her to have to look up my dress, so I plopped myself down next to her, leaving the issue of how I was going to get up again for later. She told me that she had MS. I had two thoughts. First of all I didn't all the way know what MS was, but it sounded like the the telethon thing, and I could see she didn't have that. Second, I thought, " Oh, come on, Miss Munchhausen, you could have made it up the fricken' steps and into the car, and then you would be sitting! Now look where we are!"

   Well, paybacks are hell, they say, and now I know.When I have to sit, it's because I've reached sit or fall, a state that comes over me not like a wave, but like a kidnappers hood being dropped over my head.  When I say I'm tired, I'm using the only word in my vocabulary to describe something so far beyond tired, I don't know what else to call it. And all of that comes a lot from having pain all the time.

So there's a new therapy, and they're going to try it on me. They do try new stuff on us, in measured doses. That's how things that weren't available five years ago are available now. I'm going in tomorrow for a new pain treatment that requires a two hour IV (Just like chemo! Yay!) and if it's successful over time, I'll have nothing to whine about. I've had so many treatments I dont' have much of a reaction to whatever any doctor suggests, but I am kind of guardedly excited about it.

But yo, Kleenex, I'm still going to need those Kleenex Dinner Napkins.

It just never fails. The minute the plumbers show up, I am overcome by roaring attacks of flatulence that will not be denied.It is completely involuntary, and clench what muscle I may, any movement at all will release a noise so loud there's not even any point in pretending it didn't happen. The poor plumbers' assistants look as though a chandelier has fallen from the ceiling, and I feel as though my cover as La Patrona is kind of tarnished. I'm Melanie Wilkes, blowing her own hoop skirt up at a tea for Scarlett.
    I must carry on, with my chin held high. I have spent nearly twenty years with Bruno trying to create the illusion that this never happens at all, and now I am reduced to blowing air pockets into my pajama pants in front of the work crew. And woe betide us all when I think I'm alone in the room! I will make a sound like the Queen Mary saluting the Statue of Liberty with a couple of deafening blasts and when I turn around, there again is the plumbers' assistant, looking thunderstruck.

So. Let's move on, shall we? This is not the only indelicacy that somehow has become my new normal. Cancer and it's treatment is gross, and that's that.

   I was so sad when I wrote my last post. Many of you could tell and wrote to me, and I thank you.That feeling of going down for the third time has passed. It always does, and I know that.
   So what happened? I dunno. You tell me. The Big Giant Something got a hold of me before I went down for the fourth time, and I realized that night in bed that I was back.

Of course. It always passes. Always.

 I knew it would pass because I'm fifty seven, and I've been through some shit. I knew it would pass because my sister and my step daughter, who are my Spirit Guides, kept telling me so, although there were many times when it was only because my sister and my step daughter,(the unlikeliest Spirit Guide in the world, by the way, with her Fendi and glossy hair),  kept telling me so. That's the bottom of the cycle, when all you've got is knowing that it will get better, and hopefully someone to tell you so, but you can't remember that it's ever been any different, and you can't believe that it's ever going to change. Horrible. Hurts.

And passes.

And then there's this plumbing thing that's happening. Really? Plumbing problems, now?
Yes.
This is what happened practically the minute that I published that post, from the depths of that well where I knew only God was going to be able to save me. The plumbers came. It doesn't matter why, but I'm ridiculously panicky about things having to do with home repair.They did their job, and then came to me and reported that they suspected a leak, either under the floor or in the walls. Excavation would be required. This would be a CSI operation, since they had no idea where to look. This was not exactly what I was expecting from God. Hmm. Mysterious ways and whatnot.

In the state I was in, I felt...nothing. No, what happened was, a clear image of a tree branch presented itself in my mind, and then snapped itself in two. I could not absorb the tearing up of tile floors until a leak was found. And what then? Putting the tile back? Putting back the concrete walls? No. Broken branch. I had been crying buckets all week, sobbing when the breeze blew, and that just dried it up. For a little while. It made me feel so scared, which my therapist, Valerie Rhoda, explained was me feeling like the cancer had spread to the house. Yes, possibly. I was thinking it might be about costing money we couldn't possibly have to undertake an operation like that, but mostly it, it just sounded ...impossible.

   But you know what? When Bruno got home, he didn't throw his hands in the air and say " Oh, Lawd!" When a new cast of plumbers came to look, none of them looked at each other and cried "Oh, no,what shall we do!?" In fact, nobody that knew anything, which does NOT include me, freaked out at all. Below you will see pictures of all my worst nightmares coming true. Thank you, God. Hilarious.

Is it here? No!

How about here? No!

CSI Detective Brad Grieve using sonar so the house didn't have

to be completely torn up.It ended up being maybe 5 locations they
had to excavate before they found the leak.
Pretty cool.

Somehow, it was during this chaos that I got tossed back up on the beach from the ocean of black depression that I thought might just drown me. Hate my life? That's crazy talk! I love my life, and want it and wish some things were different. I'll try my best to make them different, to get to the finish line even if I am stumbling. I am already being held up by my friends--you know how they do as you get closer and start really falling down-- my friends and my husband and my spirit guides hold me up and make sure I don't fall apart or fall down with the finish line in sight.
I went from feeling despair to living my life, feeling normal, having my house torn up, getting chemo on Monday. What happened? Like I said, you tell me.

Mind you, the dial has only swung to the middle, not all the way to the other side.
I mean,I'm going to chemotherapy on Monday, and I haven't done laundry in eight days because my house is torn up from end to end .I think my posse would be a little alarmed if I was feeling joyful about it.
No, I am right in the middle. I will spend a lot of days just boringly being me.
This entails;
   Wishing I was better at meditating. wishing I was motivated  to attend free online College courses instead of watching Judge Judy. Wishing I would study Spanish. Thinking I need to start exercising.
   I will wish I had that elusive gene, the Pinterest gene, that makes it impossible for some people to sit in their house if it's not spic 'n span, I will spend hours on Pinterest. I will be grateful and delighted that I'm out of the abyss, There's going to be a lot of gratitude involved.I will dream about the day that I  feel that charge of electricity that comes with joy. At Christmas, maybe, or on a beach vacation with my family. Oh, I know it's there.
Someday.
It's not far now.

   

Grief and Gratitude

I am, shockingly, a member of a church. Old time religion.
 I say shocking because it seems so out of fashion among the people I hang out with. Most of my friends look serious and say something like "Oh , I'm spiritual, not religious", or "My religion was such bullshit when I was growing up that I rejected it and went out and shot heroin," something along those lines. I have more than a few friends who insist that we are here, and then gone, that our existence is nothing but an accident of cells banging together.

It's a choice we are each allowed to make, and since I'm too lazy to organize a whole church with its own songs and literature etc., for myself, I stick to the one I was raised in.
   
 I am aware of the mistakes and atrocities that have been, are being, made in the name of religion. I can't help you there. All I know is that in a situation like mine, I gotta have a Something to depend on. A Big Giant Something. I find comfort in the things I recognize from childhood, no matter where they may be found, so my reasons are neither holy or pure. Going to church reminds me of the days when my sister and I wore matching hats at Easter Time.

As far as my big Something goes, I don't treat him very well. I just want him to get me through this cancer. Period.
 Example: I am alive through a series of miracles, medical and otherwise. Right now my blood is cheerfully coursing through veins ( and so forth, you know how I am about anatomical language ) that once were running down my arm, my arm is being supplied by blood that once was running through my groin area. What's happening in my groin I don't know, perhaps the doctors thought it it was no longer a big deal to me, but whatever it is, it's working.
   
For two days after surgery, someone came in every other hour with a miniature doppler machine, much more powerful than a stethoscope, and gently ran it over the area of the skin graft. With it, both the nurse and I could hear the sound of the ocean, which was actually the sound of blood running through the successfully connected veins. Can you imagine? I gotta tell you, for me, it was hard not to feel a Big Giant Something at work there.

 However, and this is just between you and me and the internet. I hate my fucking life. I can't do the things I love to do, so what am I doing here? If I was talking to you, I would sound like one of those awful teenagers who has been watching too much of  the reality show in which the subject always receives a BMW as the high note of her sixteenth birthday party. The party is invariably on a yacht or in a circus tent, and starts with a day of professional hair and make up and mani/pedis for everyone she knows. Then there's the party with a celebrity band, and then she gets the BMW.  Can you hear her if she received the keys to a nice sensible Prius instead?
 
 " Oh gee, thanks a lot. What am I supposed to do with this? It's a Prius. All my friends have Land Rovers." 
  That's me.

I know how that sounds. Ungrateful. It sounds that way because it feels that way. I told you, I hate my fucking life. What? Are you surprised? Shocked? Do you want it?  My tongue hurts every minute of the day and I talk like I have my mouth full of rocks, and if I did,they would be falling down my shirt. Want it? Yeah, that's what I thought. And by the way, what is my Big Giant Something up to in the first place.

But I have a sign on my wall, where I post important sayings that immediately become invisible, that says "Smile. You don't own all the problems in the world"
   
I once read ( or heard, or possibly just decided ) that a human does not have the ability to conceive of a God larger than their relationship with their parents. Time has taught me how much more capable and interesting and loving and sometimes freakishly misguided my parents were. But on the subject of their ability to run the universe and count the hairs on my head and know when a sparrow has fallen out of a tree and whatnot, I'm quite clear. It would be a stretch. So that means  I have to have a bigger God than I am able to think of. Give that some thought. I can only meditate on it for a few minutes before it gets too big for me. I interpret it as meaning that if whatever I'm imagining isn't big enough. I gotta believe that God is bigger. That's where it gets outside my limits. I know that my having cancer is not a failure of thinking the right thoughts or having the right God, and I know that if I close my eyes and thing about wonderful things, Disney style, everything will be okay. Nope, it's just something that is outside the limits of my ability to conceive. So instead, I'm going to keep my eyes open.

In West Virginia, I rented a private tub for thirty minutes, filled with the spring water for which the resort is famous, heated to one hundred and four degrees and filled up with magic potions.The room, also completely private, was made of cedar , floor, walls, ceiling, and had a window in the far end that looked out on the sky. The tub was big enough to walk around in, and there was a shower in case you got too hot, and stacks of fat, soft, towels that made you hate the ones you have at home. It was lolling around in that tub and looking out the window, that blue sky, the clouds, the tops of spruce trees that really got me going down this sort of mystical trail. Life is hard for me right now, but there's still that window.

photo courtesy of Annie Campbell

     Perhaps I am too impatient. Less than five months ago there was a moment when I was attached to the feeding tube. The feeding tube was also supplying my hydration, as I was not allowed to get my mouth wet at all. My arm was in the cast. I hadn't had any kind of a drink of water in nine days.

     
The home nurse on duty that day suddenly brought a stool over, and an assortment of supplies. She sat down in front of me and, one q-tip at a time, one tooth at a time, scrubbed them. She did the same with the inside of my mouth, using tongue depressors wrapped in gauze and a spray bottle of disenfectant. That was the first time that even that much moisture had been allowed in my mouth, and when she got it clean, oh, I heard that choir of angels, let me tell you

And now I am writing to you about having the same kind of moment in a spa tub in West Virginia. Bruno always points out when I cry about spilling food while I eat that at least it's not coming out of the side of my neck.

Listen it sucks, it really does.I have more treatments, more doctors,more medicine,more blood tests, more trips in and out of the city, a giant sucking hole in my bank account and the best case scenario includes a lifetime of looking over my shoulder.That's me getting the keys to the Prius.

I gotta keep my eyes open though. The difference between rejoicing because someone brushed your teeth with a q-tip and rejoicing because you're in looking at clouds float by from a private tub in the mountains...well, what will come next? I get that it's going to come along with chemo, like a fab party favor with a terrible meal.I get that I may not have ordered it, because I've never even seen the menu it will come from.

Maybe it will be a Mercedes.

Life is Like a Bowl of Cherries!

Boy, am I glad I'm going to finally see my psychologist in person this week. We've communicated via email, and she's somehow managed to help me that way, but remember, I wasn't able to talk  before. Talk therapy is best practiced, I believe, with someone who can talk.

 I'm in a tricky place, my friends. What do I do, now that I'm well enough to do some things, but not all things? And I kind of don't want to do anything. I don't want to write, in case you're wondering where I've been since the twentieth of June.

 My life doesn't feel like it belongs to me. It feels like I showed up at someone's door after being robbed on the highway and had to borrow something to wear, and somehow that's all I'm ever going to have, and it doesn't fit right. If I could scratch from the inside, that's where I itch.

 Jesus, I look at the pictures on facebook and can't imagine who that is waving so cheerfully. Photographic evidence suggests that not only am I okay, I'm awesome. I keep explaining to people that I'm not going to snap a quick selfie during the times that I'm flat on my back staring up at the ceiling fan whap around and around,I'm not Kim Kardashian for Pete's sake,but I had many of those moments. At least as many as the ones that are chosen to be posted online. Look at this ;

Fun, right? Of course.This is a photo collage of our family vacay in the mountains. Look at me! I'm celebrating the Fourth of July in matching scarves with my Mom! Look at me doing a touchdown dance because I scored in a game with the graceless name of Cornhole. ( Come on. Is it just me?) I'm spending quality time with my sister, sharing a morning routine that developed  instantly and without discussion to be together, and that I miss every day. There's my nephew with his wife and kids, and my adorable niece, and my great nephew. And look, there's my brother!

All of these photos documenting my super fun life were taken on a recent visit to see my family, and if that's all you knew of me, you wouldn't think emotional suffering was my close personal companion.

But that's been true for a while, and  it was miraculous, indescribable, to be with the most understanding people of all, my family, when I tried a few baby steps back into the human race.

 During those two weeks my brain was kept busy. It's distracting spending every moment either bursting into tears or having a great time, caught between enjoying the feeling of being something besides a cancer patient, and feeling like a freak because, well, that's what I am.

   I tried eating solid food again with very iffy results, and sat at a table three times a day making only slightly less of a mess than my almost two year old nephew. I may have made more of a mess at some of the meals. I went from using a whiteboard to communicate to trying to talk at the dinner table with some really smart, funny people, and having some smart funny things to say, but not being able to get them out before I had swallowed my food and chased it with water. By then, the conversation would have moved on to a new and different place, and my witty comment had to die on the vine in my head. My head is a withered vine of unsaid witty comments.

But there's more.
When we left the mountain resort, I was able to spend some time with my stepchilluns, who are my favorite people in the world. That was wonderful too, and there are pictures to prove it, believe me. To look at those photos, you'd think I was a Real Housewife of Northern Virginia. Their Mom was obviously once married to My Husband, and I often sneak glances when she's not looking and wonder how that happened, but I have grown to love her dearly, and on this trip she pampered and cossetted me as though I was a cancer patient. Hahah.
  My two daughters helped me take a step toward chemotherapy that I wanted to share specifically with them to kind of include them in "my journey" (One of them is my favorite. You know which one you are.)

My thinking was that it was a step closer to my hair falling out, and we'll all be a little more used to me this way.It still seems like a good idea to me. However,  I had a chemo on Monday, and I have two more which I suspect are going to be spaced three or four weeks apart. It gives me the suspicion that my hair's not going anywhere. So now I have two wigs, two turbans, two little caps to wear underneath hats and to sleep in. Oh, and a really cute short haircut.

The photos don't lie. All of this happened, all of it was wonderful. I learned that you can enjoy yourself and be depressed. Now that I'm stronger,  I'm going to try to string together some "enjoy yourselfs" but maybe not too many, too soon, even if it does take my mind off feeling sad and as though sometimes I can't push the dumb rock up this hill anymore. (I can, by the way ) I've never thought that it was my entitlement to feel good all the time, and I'm persuaded that it would be a poor idea if the option were available.

By God, everyone should write a blog. I feel better. Not perfect, not "happy" but aware that I have access to "enjoy yourselfs," lots of them, and I can go out and get them as I choose.

That makes this stupid outfit I borrowed after getting robbed on the highway feel a little better.

Chemo Sucks. Who Knew?

Well, I am sorry to have to report this to you, but it turns out that Chemotherapy sucks.

Why, oh  why am I always surprised at how hideous medicine for cancer is?  I can't remember for one minute how perfectly awful every single treatment turns out to be, and always show up dressed for a cruise and packing an eyebrow pencil.  But they are all monstrous, clearly designed in a Transylvanian laboratory by some scientist with crazy eyes who has been kicked out of every legitimate institution and is assisted only by an abhorrent little pervert who calls him master. Chemo especially. Don't tell me that hideous drip came from any normal person.  How did I not think that this was going to be terrible? I know that someday in the future, they are going to look back on Angelie Jolie cutting off her own breasts with the same horror with which we view Aztecs throwing virgins off of pyramids. When faced with chemotherapy, the people of the future are going to be all
"They did what?"

I am frequently accused of heroism and bravery, as though some baby was going to be rescued from a burning building if I say Yes! to this surgery or that chemo treatment. The fact is, I probably would take a chemo treatment to save a baby from a fire, but up to this point, well, nobody has asked me if I'd like to choose.

   I'm sure I would save the baby. Pretty sure. But the point is, I'm not brave. Just obedient. And I have the long term memory of a gnat. I keep forgetting that my obedience is going to result in feeling bad in ways that I have never imagined. Not that there's a lot of choice.

 I mean, I guess that all these Doctors kind of give me a option. Do the treatment or die are usually the selections. But I approach these various forms of torture with such a positive attitude! When I know it's going to suck!I learn nothing from previous experience. I keep telling myself things like "Anybody can do anything  four times" or "How bad can it be?" Oh brother.  I keep forgetting!

 Did I learn nothing from that surgery, where I thought I was going to be given some good drugs for a couple of days wearing my cute pajamas and then go home? Did I learn nothing, when they bolted my head to a conveyer belt, worse than the scariest movie ever made? And then microwaved me on high for twenty minutes? Did I forget about the feeding tube in my nose and that I wasn't allowed to have so much as a sip of water for weeks? I learned nothing. And now this.

  I had a little chemo lite during radiation, back when I was going to the opulent private operation run by Dr. Carlos, or Dr. McSueño, as we call him around here. It's a bit different at the National Health system, I don't mind telling you. At Dr.McSueño's they had individual booths outfitted with the most comfortable loungers I have ever draped myself over, and equally comfortable chairs and tables for visitors in case you wanted to offer cocktails, along with individual flat screen tv's.

 My new set up is very different indeed. The room is tiny, and they fit two chairs in there. In order to make it work,  the chairs face each other, and you sit sort of knee to knee with your cube mate. The nurse has to edge in sideways every time the IV alarm goes off--which it did about a dozen times, and  which always turned out to be me, forgetting to keep the hand receiving the IV motionless. Trying to use my eyebrow pencil.

My roommates rotated during my session, which was kind of fun. The first was a skate park type with a spray of hair that rose into a magnificent curl over the shaved sides of his head. He left half way through my session and was immediately replaced with an old cowboy, skin like hide and a fine old hat and wranglers. Neither roommate was disposed to conversation

    I was fooled for about eight hours after the actual chemo session that for once treatment was not going to be a grisly nightmare.I even bragged to my friends that they had fed me so well on homemade bone broth that I was going to sail through it. I was wrong. I started getting sick that evening and stayed sick until the middle of the next afternoon. I was raised too delicately to talk about what I mean by sick in this case, but it wasn't pleasant.

The worst, though, is that it has messed with me emotionally, and has been relentless in the battering of my mood. I got over the physical, flu like symptoms in less than a day, and I felt I might be safe. For a minute. But there's something about being back in treatment that makes it hard to forget what's been happening to me.

 This is the fourth day since I shared chemo time with that old cowboy, and I feel dejected, and insecure, even though everything is good and I'm getting ready to go see my family. I feel afraid, and my stupid doctor told me I have to wear a mask on the plane, so I'm going to be that person, and instead of picking out an awesome capsule wardrobe which  can make twenty five outfits out of five pieces, I'm trying to figure out if I've got all my medications.

Don't tell me to keep my chin up! Oh, yes, I know you were going to. I know you were going to tell me to be grateful and remember how lucky I am, to count my blessings and think of the good things. I am doing those things, I really am, and I have moments when I remember that I can eat and drink like a normal human being without wearing a maxi pad tied around my neck, so wearing a mask is not that big a deal. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

But not when I'm picking out turbans to wear because I'm going to go bald.


 

Chemo Frenia

I am someone who bursts into tears.
 
    As you know, if you've read the blurb my uncle unknowingly supplied for the header of this blog.I don't have a lot of formal education.  The lure of lime colored chiffon and feathers dyed to match that was offered by ballroom dance schools was more than I could resist when I discovered it in my late teens. I had already exhausted my ability to be a hippy, which turned out to be a suprisingly similar thing  to being poor and trashy, only with poor, trashy musicians. That was the first thing I tried after leaving high school, at much too early an age. Then came the lime chiffon.
 
        Regardless, I do know that one wants to avoid cliches like "burst into tears."  ( and one wants to describe oneself as "one," so refined! ) But I can't help it. No other phrase will do. Daily I burst, and thankfully it's into tears, at the tiniest provocation.
 
        One minute, I'm minding my own business and wondering if I have to wash pre-washed spinach, the next I'm spraying saltwater over who ever has poked me in the emotions, which are right up there at the top, easily reached.
   For instance, yesterday, I bumped into Don W. I was at SuperLakes, the local equivalent of Wegmans. Sort of. I was having the same washing discussion with myself over Kale...nothing but cancer fighting superfoods in my grocery cart...when I bumped into him.

        Don was one of many who sneakily participated in an underground fundraiser for me. It wasn't the sort of thing where there's a bake sale and the chance to throw darts at balloons or guess a person's weight.
 
       Pause. I'm just thinking what an  unholy disaster a weight guessing concession would be around here. Wow. Okay, unpause.

          Somehow a number of friends got organized by my friend Jan into slipping a little cash here and a little cash there into envelopes and making sure that it got into my hands, disguised as a a "Get Well" card.  Yesterday, I was trying to thank Don for his participation in this effort, and ended up wiping my nose on his shirt. It's awful. I can't get through a conversation without crying.
 My sister and mother are particular minefields. Zero chance of getting out of a text or email exchange without me bawling. But you know what? It's only things that make me see how wonderful people really are, or how great my life actually is, that has this power over me.
 
       I seldom cry over what people would consider bad news. Well, cancer is bad news, let's face it. But I didn't cry when I was first told I had cancer. Or any of the times since, which seems like about a thousand. I  cried with Bruno when we first considered the reality of being separated by how the world is made. That got a pretty good Celtic style keening out of both of us, but not so much since.

  Oh, I feel it. I react. I react as though Thor the Thunder God just swung his hammer of doom into my solar plexus. It just doesn't make me cry. Things I love make me cry.
   
      So,  I didn't cry when they told me I was having chemo after all. Yep, you read that right. We went to see my doctor on Thursday, and he wrote an order for chemo as though the last time we'd seen each the topic of chemotherapy had never even come up, never mind that we had high fived over not getting it.
 
      And of course, I had promised in a group email, to all my friends, that I would never, ever, make Marti of the fluent Spanish go to IMSS with me again.  So there I was, unable, with my faltering Spanish, to ask questions of  the doctor who had just told me to order up a wig, sister, looks like your hair's going to be falling out after all.

         In a later conversation, Bruno talked about how they had moved the football again, but I didn't feel that way. I'm not excited about getting chemo, because I'm not an idiot. But I know that this was the original plan. It seems, therefore, that there must have been some kind of communication between my surgeon and my oncologist, at IMSS. There aren't any new tests, there's no change in my status (cancer FREE), so I think we've just gotten on to the original treatment track, and I find that reassuring.

Still not excited about chemo, though.
 
    Naturally, I had just made an appointment for an expensive cut and highlights because I wanted to be looking good when I go back to visit my family.Hair genius Jim Coolidge at Gloriosa ( oh, come on, a little link is the least I can do) isn't the kind to hold you to an appointment,though. And, of course, he has no desire to see his work coming out in handfuls. We'll work it out. I've seen all those movies where  the heroine goes crazy and starts hacking off her trademark hair with a Swiss Army knife and it comes out looking adorable, so Jim can certainly pull that off. What could go wrong?  

The short curly (!) hair is what's growing in since my
last dance with chemo. That whole area just went...
bald. Which I didn't know until I wore my hair in a fabulous updo to
a party and caught sight of myself in a corner mirror.

   
      My doctors somehow managed to intuit, perhaps as a result of me bursting into tears, that an upcoming trip I have planned is very, very important to me. I want to see my sister and my brother. I want to see the rest of my family, and they will all be gathered in the same spot so that I can. I want to see my children, who aren't technically mine, but I think they are. Don't tell anyone, that's the kind of thing that gets you into the Lifetime movie rotation.
     
 I want to see my Mommy. Whoops! Bursting into tears over here, kleenex, stat! Thinking about this sort of stuff is what gets me.
 
     If you can believe it, they have planned the chemo around my trip so I can still go. I can still go! I have my first treatment on Tuesday and the rest when I get back. So probably just a few weird patches of my hair and maybe one of my eyebrows will fall out during the week I have to recover before I leave, but you know, it's family, they have to love me.

   Cancer is not exactly what I would call my friend. But I am growing used to the idea that I will live with it until a safe labeled Acme falls on my head.

      So I cry. I burst into tears. But about cancer? Fuck you, Cancer.
 

I'm Cured! Um, I guess.

So where's Elliott? Did I die? Back in the hospital? Some other ghastly medical disaster? Believe me, after experiencing that business with the hole in my neck, I've learned that we don't know what we don't know as far as how weird the body can get.

Waiting in Line.

    However, the answers are nope, nope, and nope. Where I have been is standing in line. Yes, I have literally been standing in line since May 27th, the date of my last post. Not the same line, sometimes we changed lines, and there have been moments when instead of standing in a line, I've been waiting in large rooms filled to overflowing with people who, like me, are waiting to find out which line to stand in next. It requires a certain Zen outlook to remain positive. But I am! I am positive!  Why wouldn't I be? At the end of one of those lines was a doctor who looked at his computer and said "No need for chemo. You are cancer free." Yahooo! Yipppee! Hot Dang! Right?

    No. I don't know why. Maybe I've got that weird Baron Munchausen disease, where you don't want to give up being sick. But I don't think so. My genius local therapist, Valerie Rhoda, writes

"The specter of cancer & the recurrences put a damper on any relief & joy because you don't, can't, really trust that it is gone. As you said you were prepared for chemo & odd as it sounds you now have to adjust to no chemo. Chemo represents actively fighting the disease, doing nothing is scary, it's passive"

 I was really, really happy. It's just that I'm no wide eyed cancer virgin. I've been cured of this shit before. Twice. And the doctors always say some variation of "You're cured. But don't go too far."

    It took a a couple of days to realize how strongly the assumption of chemo in my future had taken hold. The biggest tip off was during my next turn in the giant waiting room. I found myself scanning the room for women who had come up with interesting ways to tie their headscarves, and had to keep reminding myself that my hair wasn't going to fall out. Because I'm not having chemo.

  Yet.

  See what I mean? I just can't quite get free of this. And if you write me and tell me I have to think positive I'll write you back and it will not be pretty. If my future depends on the quality of my thoughts, after all of this, then I. Am. Doomed.

    No, I think I just "have my walls up" as they say on the Bachelor. ( Don't watch the Bachelor? I'm shocked. But every single one of the promiscuous ninnies that line up to be hosed by whichever fatuous himbo is this season's Bachelor announces that she has  her walls up as a result of a previous heartbreak.That's usually about one minute before she takes off her underwear.) Leave me alone, I've been stuck at home for a long time

    So that's what Bruno and I have been doing. But we sure didn't do it alone.
  My friend Marti, fluent in Spanish and willing for reasons unknown to do anything for anyone lucky enough to be her friend, has been with us and we could not have made this transition from private care to the National Healthcare System without her.  Leaving at 6:30 in the morning to arrive at the National Health Hospital in Guad in time to wait for four hours before spending twenty minutes with my surgeon, which is just long enough to receive a stack of authorizations written on post-its and scraps of file folder for appointments and tests to be scheduled at the same time in different places with a variety of specialty departments. ( We had to travel up and down stairs and back and forth across the building, making individual appointments at, respectively, plastic surgery, rehabilitation, Xray, imaging, and oh yeah, oncology.) Thanks to Marti and her Spanish and unflappable patience, and Bruno and his ....thereness, I have somehow managed to enter the Mexican Medical system and come out on the other side.

     I have wanted, often, to somehow address the village that I live in and their participation in my recovery. I don't know how to do it.  It is so much the stuff of the Disney movies of my youth, and so unlike the world I left behind when I moved here, that I just don't know how to describe the way that I have been held aloft for this entire time. Groups of people have coalesced into teams. Sometimes corralled into teams by friend who were born with the get 'r done gene.
      Teams and individuals have kept me upright and fed, have groomed my dogs, and given me free passes for counseling, who have provided homemade gruel for the feeding tube when that was still going up my nose, who have kept me on a steady diet of bone broth which I believe to be responsible for the successful healing of my surgery. Fresh aloe vera and honey, cases of Ensure from Costco, handmade cards. Friends who have kept our refrigerator stocked and made sure that Bruno never went without lasagna. Friends who snuck around and collected anonymous envelopes of cash like it was hush money so there would be a little something to help.  It's magic, and impossible to adequately describe. I would have to write a song, like Lulu in "To Sir with Love"

Got out yesterday to my first Dancefit class with James since
the surgery. Christine wrote this
 "

So looked who joined us for exercise this morning! She started at the back but by the end of the class she was on stage with James. So not surprising. Welcome back Elliott xxxxxx

   In minutes, there were so many comments and likes and words of support and encouragement, I felt like Kim Kardashian.

I want to be very clear about one thing. This isn't about people liking me, facebook thumbs or no. This is about the kind of people that live in this place and the the kind of place that it is. In other words, it's not me, it's you. 

 I wrote a story about community after my first Christmas in Mexico. As part of my project of getting all my stories under one roof, as it were, I've posted it here. It was a different community, but the magic is the same.