The plan is to do this new protocol once a week for three weeks, then take a week off and do a count on my blood again. The treatments this time last less than an hour and Dr. Robin expects no negative side effects. “Compared to what you were on before,” she says, “this will be easy.”
Maybe so. But I feel like a cancer veteran version of an old and grizzled but still tough Clint Eastwood being sent back into battle after having survived and won the initial assault on the mutant protein ninjas’ beachfront. There are more mutant ninjas out there. And they threaten to rob me of my life. Going back into the fight isn’t so much an option as it is the only option.
Count me me in, Doc. I had two months off to catch my breath and live a normal life again. I needed that break. But if staying live means living with maintenance chemo, hey, I can do it.
I want to do it.
***
As you can imagine, I have given some careful thought to this return to the chemo life. I knew that terminal cancer doesn’t stop being terminal if you are nice. Since the very beginning of this adventure in Cancerland, we have known and accepted that chemo is a way of prolonging my life for awhile and maintaining a level of respectable quality in it, but it is not a cure. There is no cure. Chemo can help me put off, but not erase, the inevitable. There will come a time when chemo won’t help and nothing will. We know that, too.
We have also learned that it is not chemotherapy alone that makes the difference to either the length or the quality of what time remains. Each day is a gift, another chance, a happy opportunity to get on with the things that are important and to discard (as much as it is ever possible) all the rest. Each day is blessing, a time to do some good in the world, to find God’s handiwork in all things. Each day is made that much better by focusing on what a miracle this life is, what good there is in other people, and what happiness may be found, and can be made, by simply opening our hearts and minds, and sharing our lives – the truth of our experiences – with them.
People often ask me how I can keep up such a positive attitude and I have a very simple answer: It helps me to live. It also makes this passage somewhat easier on those I love, because at least for the present time and foreseeable future, I feel good and I want to share with them all that I can for as long as I can.
I’ve learned that when you remain positive and enjoy your own life, you enable others to be positive and to also enjoy their own lives. A smile, after all, is infectious.
***
So, yes, it was a short remission. It was a theme I hoped would sustain over a longer span of my overall narrative, but instead it was over in the length of a chapter. An excellent chapter, nonetheless; one chock full of friendship, family, holiday cheer, love, travel, and much good food, good whisky, music, books, movies, and laughter.
Now we are at the beginning of a new storyline. Will it be a chapter? Or many chapters? Will my life on lightweight maintenance chemo allow us to do the things we have planned to do for the rest of this semester? This summer? This year?
I don’t know the answers. I don’t know anyone who does. What I do know is that each day I will awake grateful for life and for the love of my family. I will offer prayers for others. I will remain positive and use the time I have to do some good for the people and causes I care about, as well as for those who come to me in my role as a teacher with a desire to learn.
I will look up at the stars as I do every night out here in the desert where they are so big and bright, and I will be reminded that’s where I came from. And I will recall the words, the true sky poetry, of Octavio Paz:
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
