“Detour:  The last roller coaster ride scared me into vowing I’d never take another one. It was on the outside of the Las Vegas Hotel/Casino known as a New York, New York, and is described on their promotional website thusly:

The Roller Coaster will lift you up 203 feet, drop you down 144 feet and leave you coasting at 67 mph. This Las Vegas ride experience simulates a jet fighter's barrel roll while taking you on the famous "heartline" twist.

It cost me $10 (the price is $14 today) to experience “the famous heartline twist” and to scare me into a promise that I would never  - and I mean never – voluntarily take another roller coaster ride. Ever. Our wonderful niece Tori was with me on that righteous last ride and now is in Divinity School at Duke. I think there is a connection between those two events. I really do. Of course, if you have never taken that particular roller coaster ride you may be tempted to think I’m just exercising my right to hyperbole, but I assure you I am not. Well, maybe a little bit.

Anyway … 

*** 

“It’s a roller coaster ride” therefore reminds me of that vow. I have to smile. God jokes with his best ones, right?

The news from Doc Obenchain was, as I said earlier, mostly good news. My innards are all functioning normally, my heart beats true, and yes there are a couple of teeny-tiny specs on the bottom of my left lung, but they were always there and probably mean nothing. 

Similarly, my blood is still red and the numbers on most of the blood tests are excellent. One of them is not. But that may mean nothing. Or it may mean something. Larkin’s poem enters my head. But either way, between nothing and something three things are certain: I still look good and feel good and I have no symptoms of anything worse than maybe an oncoming head cold. Although it could be allergies. I’ve had allergies before.

I’ve had cancer before, too. That my CA-19/9 marker is up a little does – let’s be honest – give me pause. But as the good doctor points out, it may mean nothing of the kind. After all, my blood was drawn after I took the iodine solution into my bloodstream for the CT-scan and that may have influenced it. Or it could have something to do with stress. Or it might be just a blip in the test.

In other words, “there is no need to worry,” she said. “But just to make sure, let’s get some blood today and schedule another CT-scan for the abdomen.”

Yes, let’s.

Sigh.

*** 

By now those of you who are regular readers of this blog are probably wondering what prompted the change of doctors. You had come to narratively know – and probably even to love – young Doctor Rohit Sud. Me too. He led the team that saved my life and that is no small thing. So when he informed us back in December that he would be moving to a new practice with a larger group for financial reasons, it was a hard thing to hear. That his new group doesn’t take our health insurance made it even harder. But we still remain friends and I’m sure we always will.

That said and with the sincere sadness that comes with it, our experiences with the whole of the Four Winds Cancer Clinic has been so positive, so life affirming, and so good that we want to stay here. It’s also no small thing that “Doctor Robin” is universally loved and respected by her patients and the staff. Remaining here and switching over to her is not at all difficult. We consider ourselves lucky to be in her care. Our first meeting with her, even with the attendant “mays” and “may nots” and “maybes” as well as the notable return of that old abiding blood marker ambiguity, confirmed it. 

*** 

The poet Philip Larkin’s line “nothing, like something, happens anywhere” captures perfectly my sense of the possibilities for everyday life within or even outside of the ongoing ambiguities – the probably and maybe and hopefully and all that we don’t yet know - that is inherent, damn it, to this Cancerland narrative.

This is because it carries with it the unspoken but always present reminder that every day is a gift for which I am grateful, and because it is one more second chance I have to make something happen here, writing as I do in this blue chair, or over there, chasing that first day of every month rabbit, rabbit, rabbit into another grand adventure. If I don’t do that, Larkin’s poem reminds that me that nothing will happen anyway.

Between that nothing and something is always where life happens to us. Anywhere. I know that. I am grateful for knowing that, for the choice it offers to us, and for the ambiguities that accompany the outcomes of all of our choices, regardless. 

To make something happen, something good, for as long as we can – that’s true living. Everything else is what happens anyway.