Yesterday I completed another long day in the chemo chair, emerged from it tired but happy (you are always happy when a session is over and there are congratulatory hugs shared all around). Slept well but dreamt – for some reason – of next season’s “Sons of Anarchy” episodes. It will be interesting to see if my dream pans out. If it does, then one un-anticipated side effects of chemo is prescience and maybe I can channel that skill into a lottery win. J
In my continuing work here, trying to write about my/our journey through Cancerland, I feel a need to “go deeper” into my experiences (San is keeping her own journal), at least deeper than the opening paragraph, which, without the bit about SOA and a lottery win, is the kind of illness gloss that is true but isn’t very helpful in showing you “what it is like to” live with cancer. So in the spirit of doing that, what follows is a chronicle of yesterday’s chemo treatment and today’s reflection on it. It is a longer piece but I hope you find it helpful.
***
Life is eternal, and love is immortal,
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
~Rossiter Worthington Raymond
Sandra and I lost a friend to colon cancer this week: Rebekah Smith Whitehouse. We met her last summer when we arrived for the first time at the Room of Orange Chairs.
She was perched in one of the chairs waiting for her chemo treatment to begin. “Hi!” she said with her characteristic big smile and genuine joy in her voice. “I’m the poster girl for chemo!” She spread her arms wide and broke into a laugh. We laughed with her.
“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”
David Whyte, “Sweet Darkness”
Twice this week I have been rendered alive and speechless by dear friends who also happen to be valued colleagues.
The first episode of speechlessness occurred when Amira de la Garza shared with me the progress she, Bob Krizek, and Nick Trujillo have…
“Which are the magic
moments in ordinary
time? All of them,
for those who can see.”
--Tim Dlugos, “Ordinary Time”
This has been a week of good news, visits, gifts, a graduation, and much happiness. We are truly blessed and very grateful each and every day. And blessed also for the wonder of another starry, starry night.
The good news was reported on Facebook right after we received it from Dr. Robin on Wednesday afternoon…
The first sign of trouble with our air conditioning was on Monday and it was an obvious sign: adjusting the thermostat down to 78 degrees didn’t produce the usual start-up whir of a electric motor nor the reassuring whip-whip-whip of a fan. Adjusting it down further – to 75, then to 70, then all the way down to 60 met with the same aural absence and a gradual admission that, in fact, we had a…