2 year anniversary

Zpora writes:

I don't know the exact date of my cancer diagnosis, because it was an ongoing process, a week of getting bad news, but I think I sent out my first update to you all, telling you about the mass in my chest, on May 27, 2006. It's a little weird to be marking (celebrating?) two years later because I'm still doing chemo and cancer therefore is still very present in my everyday life. But the mass in my chest is now just some shriveled up scar tissue and my cancer has been in remission for nearly two years.

I remember this week two years ago as a mixture of both vivid snapshots and hazy blurriness. I have no idea biologically what happens to our bodies when we are all of a sudden faced with bad news, but I imagine it is something akin to shock. I remember being so calm for most of the time, with brief interludes where I was gripped by a storm of sadness, fear, and questions. I don't think it was that I wasn't scared the other times, but that I had so many things going on that I was numb. My mind seems to have stored some of the more intense experiences away and in the past year, as things get smoother, I get these little flashes of memory and emotion and I can sit with them. It almost feels indulgent now to go back and revisit them, like watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy with gratuitous gore and drama, but I have been allowing myself that time to go back and remember, to talk about it with people who were there, sometimes to write about it so I don't forget. Because I don't want to forget. I want to give cancer its due, treat it with the respect it commands by its very nature, learn lessons from it and never forget how lucky I am.

I am so used to talking about my cancer and my treatment without much emotion that it was surprisingly disturbing to walk the same path to the hospital as I did most days when we were living on Robinson Parkway, probably the place where I was at my sickest. It caught me off guard until I was there, walking down Prospect, and all of a sudden I started feeling more tired and a definite sense of dread. Once I let myself go there and as I got closer to the hospital and the infusion room, everything carried symbolic weight: the bench where I ate hospital soup and made the decision to start chemo that afternoon; the curb where I sat to retch after getting my port placed, the valet guy who broke his arm and healed it all while I was doing intensive chemo. I tried to take deep breaths, and that brought in more: the burnt coffee smell of the waiting room, the antiseptic smells of hospital, and on and on.

I waited too long to get labs drawn and then too long at the pharmacy for my prescriptions. By the time I walked out of the building, I had the familiar feeling of being tired, a little hungry and a little nauseous, and wishing I had spent the past 2 hours somewhere else. Piled on top of all the sensations of two years ago was the added question that plays around the edges of my brain sometimes: "What if I have to go through all this again?" These what if questions are the hardest part of cancer for someone like me who enjoys knowing more or less what they are getting into. The what if is what really brings me down when I'm sick. I can handle having a cold or an infection for a few days, even a few weeks, but wondering if that's all it is adds a whole new element. The what if is what sometimes stops me from making fantasy plans for the future, as if I am somehow jinxing myself. The what if definitely lurks.

Then, as I walked away from the hospital, across the UVM green, and headed down the hill, I had a brief moment of Zen. The sun was out but there were dark clouds over the lake, the Adirondacks were brilliant spring green, and all of a sudden it didn't matter. That question seemed totally irrelevant in the moment. I was completely content and absorbed in feeling good and the beauty around me that it really did not matter. (I think it helped that I was listening to the Blind Boys of Alabama sing People Get Ready on my headphones, that's one of those songs that helps absorb me.)

I get hung up on this time of year as my diagnosis time. Rightfully so: it clearly carries a lot of weighty memories with it. But this time of year also has other associations. Yes, two years ago was cancer time. But a year ago, I started Smith. Three years ago I left for a month-long cross country trip. Four years ago, I ran the Burlington marathon and played flip cup all afternoon in the backyard (no, MY pants were never down...) Twelve years ago I was handing out water and gatorade to runners at mile 22. It's all part of who I am. A few days ago, someone said to me, "cancer is in your past". That is true in some ways, and it's also part of who I am now. Cancer is woven up in the very fiber of my being, and it will always be. But it is just one thread.

As I approach the end of my chemotherapy regimen, I have been playing with how much a part of me and my life I want it to be. Some of that I have no control over, but I do have a choice about how much I immerse myself on a day to day basis and how I identify myself. And I don't know the answer. I suspect it will shift and change and I'll just have to see how the fancy strikes me. But the fact that I won't have to be thinking about it every night as I take my mercaptopurine and every week when I get my blood drawn is quite a gift.

When will that time come, you wonder? Why yes, I do too. I just had treatment #16 of 18 monthly maintenance treatments. If all goes according to plan, I will finish up in mid-August. Yahooooo! Two years of absorbing, using, and filtering chemo medicine has taken its toll on my body. I don't clear it as quickly or completely: my liver seems to stay a bit inflamed, my skin is consistently red and a little rashy, I am more tired. But I am also still able to do most everything I want to do. It reminds me a bit of doing interval workouts in high school. We would do four timed loops, each one feeling progressively harder. At the end of the fourth one, you would come across the line, sure that you must have run it a full minute slower because your legs felt heavy, your lungs were burning, you were working so hard. But the time would be consistent with the other 3 loops. That's a little what I feel like now: the results are the same, but I'm putting in a lot more effort to keep them there.

Needless to say, I AM READY TO BE DONE.

I'll be headed back to North Carolina mid-August, throwing pills out the window as I drive south. Come visit and we can celebrate, maybe over a bloody mary. (Wow, two years of anticipating one of those...it better be a damn good drink.)

Hope you are all well.

Love,
Zpora