Nothing, like something, happens anywhere”

--Philip Larkin

On Wednesday I had a follow-up CT-scan, this time on my upper chest to check for any damage from six months of chemo and to give my new oncologist, Dr. Robin Obenchain, a more complete picture of what my dear ol’ Granny – Nellie Grimm Saylor – used to call “my innards.” I also had the usual telltale vials of blood removed from my body. On Friday San and I met with Dr. Obenchain to discuss the results. And the news was good, mostly and good … maybe.

That’s kind of how the news goes in the frontier territory called Remission. Yes, I am a “cancer survivor,” but at least with pancreatic cancer, the detour out of Cancerland means that I am never more than a few short sentences away from the longer, harder narrative, and that harder narrative is always lurking, forming, insisting, somewhere inside me no matter how I fight it – how we fight it – each and every day.

It also means that the ongoing storyline between these wild narrative territories is never exactly linear. As one of our oncology nurses and my personal “chemo wife” Monica puts it: “it’s more of a roller coaster ride.”

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