It’s a question I’ve heard a lot over the past year or so. Returning to normal life, and work, and play—simply living—people have been variously kind and thoughtful and clueless when first talking with me.
My stock answer had always been: “l’m not dead, yet!”
But recently, it’s changed.
I’d wanted it to change for a while. I’d been ready, but I held back. I needed to pass a milestone first, before I could free myself.
And now I’ve crossed that milestone.
My Unremarkable Pelvis
Never have I been so happy to be described as “unchanged” and “unremarkable”. “Change” to me is an aspiration. “Remarkable” is a quality I admire.
But, this is different.
I recently had my now-permanant, semi-annual scan and evaluation at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. It’s a penitent pilgrimage I undertake. It’s a fundamental and necessary part of my living with cancer. It’s a journey that taxes me physically, psychically, and spiritually.
And it is a milestone. Every six months...time to make the donuts.
And the short version is that my results were…perfect. My blood is healthy. My scans are as clear as they can be (I have that residual mass…).
I have another six months…
Getting There
For the longest time I took strides forward, only to be knocked back. Sometimes I got knocked back and sideways. Other times I was spun around; dizzy and confused I fell on my arse. Usually spectacularly. Few people can fall on their arse with more style and less grace than can I.
I have a talent that way.
But recently, things have…shifted.
Living nightmares have become fugue dreams. Mistakes have become lessons. Challenges…opportunities. Fears have become hopes.
It’s not always that way. I have my bad days. But so do you.
What’s different is that every day is no longer a labor. I don’t go to bed wondering what will befall me tomorrow. I feel like I can handle things. Like I might actually got this.
I could dive inside and tell you how it feels to feel my body awaken. I could describe muscle warmth and sinew suppleness, cardiac confidence and respiratory renewal. I'm getting stronger. I'm finding me again.
I could wax rhapsodic about riding my bike (I've been known to go on about that...). I could share the of joy cycling with a goldfinch past bursting, cornflower-blue-brilliant wildflowers. I could romanticize the apparition of the golden bird that disappeared and reappeared, oddly rhythmically, among intermittent sunburst-yellow blooms.
I could do those things.
Isn't it glorious?
About Time
I’ve been thinking about time. It’s passage. It’s healing powers. It’s anxiety-inducing approach!
I’ve been thinking about people, and the lessons they often unintentionally teach. And about my willingness and ability to learn. And about how some lessons explode immediately, with insights strobe-flashing into awareness. And how others aggregate, accumulating over years before reaching their tipping point...and how I'm felled by revelations I should have known all along.
I’ve been thinking about how the former BCB has changed. And the LAs. And my parents. And my friends. And I see flashes of how temporal everything is, even as it seems permanent.
And how permanent some things are, even those that seemed temporary.
And I know that life can change in a second.
And I’ve learned that life is changing every moment. The river is never the same, no matter how many times you step into it. The stepping is the thing. It's what matters.
And I find comfort in that.
And it is good.
Redux
I haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?
"I feel...good!"
It feels good to say so.
It feels good to write it.
What will be will be what will be.
I’ve got this.
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