I've been through round one of chemo now, five days of Temodar, a pill each night before bed. My hair didn't fall out, I didn't barf, I took a couple days off and laid around but am still not sure I needed to. Maybe there was some fatigue, but it could have also been just ("just") end-of-school-year-eighth-grader-madness and almost-time-to-close-on-my-first-house-and-move and mother-visiting-to-"help" and hoping-I-have-a-job-next-year-through-the-recession (found out yesterday that I do! confirmed!), as much as chemo side effects. Always hard to isolate any factor.
I wrote this last week but didn't post it: "I am continuing to think about mortality in a very different way... but I am also thinking that if I can't be Alice Munro, it would be just fine to be Flannery O'Connor, minus the moving home to live with mom, and minus the peacocks. Also minus the Catholicism. And minus the lupus. Really just the dying younger than Alice Munro part might be something I can deal with--Flannery was 39."
I continued, "This is morbid. I don't mean it that way. Point was supposed to be, you do what you can with what you have. Which doesn't even sound morbid, just cliche."
I didn't post it because of the cliche-ness, and also because it's not really true. I am not at all resigned to the idea of dying any younger than... I don't know. Than Alice Munro, I suppose. Because she's still alive. I don't want to not die. But I am nowhere near ready. I don't even want it to be something I need to think about, something that is part of my daily life. I have to figure out how to just live past it, without it being too present. Also, 39 is less than seven years away. Fuck that. I have too much to do.
But I'm here, now, so. I'll keep living till I don't. SHRINK, tumor, SHRINK! (Join me in a rousing chorus, please! Those of you who pray, I'd appreciate some prayers in this direction.)
***
[I still don't know how I feel about this entry. It kind of makes me wish I did still make zines. Maybe it's time for another one. & yeah, it wouldn't be altogether inappropriate to call it Hope, now would it.]
Saturday, June 6, 2009
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3 comments:
This is the sort of entry that it's hard to leave wise words about. I just want to register that I read it, and am thinking about it, and you.
Shrink, tumor, shrink. Shrink, tumor, shrink. Shrink, tumor, shrink. Shrink, tumor, shrink. Shrink, tumor, shrink. Shrink, tumor, shrink. Shrink, tumor, shrink. Shrink, tumor, shrink.
Shrink, tumor, shrink.
Shrink, tumor, shrink.
Shrink, tumor, shrink.
Shrink, tumor, shrink.
Shrink,
tumor,
shrink.
You're writing your own story, my dear. (Literally AND figuratively.) Rest up and take lots and lots (and lots) of time to see how the plot develops. xoxo
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