Worse than cancer

     Cancer is nothing but sucky, let's establish that off the top. When I was first diagnosed twelve years ago, I had surgery and started chemo almost immediately after, and for a while there, I went into that "survivor's euphoria" -- experiencing an outsize joy of everyday things, all that shit. It was nice while it lasted, maybe about three months. In due time, as I started to recover, the glow wore off and I went back to being myself; that is, my "worldview" (my Bush Doctrine, as it were) snapped back into place and I became appropriately grumpy over little irritations, argued with M, made humor from cynicism, etc. When the shitstorm started again four years ago, I was quite bereft of the smell-the-roses impulse, and it was all fear and sadness. The poorer my health, the lower I feel, the darker my moods, but even during the in-between upsides, I stabilize at my normal true self: optimistic, but looking over my shoulder. 

     None of this has to do with how much I love or appreciate my family. I am keenly aware of time passing, as any parent is when a tiny six year old starts spitting out teeth like she's George Foreman. My heart races when I think about my daughter, and it's literally tough to keep my hands off her when she's with me. I know we have maybe three or four more months of this utter innocence, this enchantment with fairies before -- poof! -- it gives way to something a little more grounded, mature, and "real," and I know this not because I have some enhanced sense of time brought about by illness, but because I'm a mother.

      I don't need euphoria, because normal is so good. I adore my husband and daughter, love my family and friends, love school, love where we live. We are the luckiest people in captivity. 

     It's easy to imagine people not so lucky. I don't even have to imagine them; some of my friends are not so lucky. I think of the heartbreak, the complete despair, of friends whose marriages are in flux and I hurt for them. To me, probably because of my rock-solid base with M and A, it would feel as though I'd been catapulted into another universe if my family life came undone. I cannot fathom anything worse. 

     Then there are the people I see in the infusion center every week who're in worse shape than I am, or appear to be. Some of them have cancer, some diabetes or kidney disease or immune suppressions that require perhaps daily professional care. Some of them have no family or friends to lean on. There is the hunched man who goes around our neighborhood with a mostly-empty shopping cart. There are people who hate their jobs, their circumstances, their lives. People who're stretched too thin, barely getting by on a few hours of sleep and taking care of small children and aging parents. People who are losing their homes. People who are unemployed and have no health insurance. (Jesus God, protect M's job and preserve our health insurance.) People who're losing or have lost loved ones. People whose child is desperately sick; who've lost a child. (The worst of the worst. I'd lose my fucking mind.) People who are dispirited for whatever reasons, and find the world too much, just too much. I don't have to look beyond the confines of my own little orbit to find these people -- they're right here, in the neighborhood, in the local newspaper, at school, friends, friends of friends... never mind political upheaval and wars and famine and disease and unrest around the globe.

     All these situations are, to me, worse, much worse, than cancer.

     

Cheever, school, and teeth

     Have read several articles on and one interview with Cheever (Paris Review) in the last several days, as I turn around in my head the effects of his last, slim novel Oh What A Paradise It Seems. One tenet that consistently arises: keep moving forward, don't look back. He did not, for example, like to give interviews because he didn't like to discuss his work (looking back), and he found reading his own books as distasteful as "listening to a recording of my own conversations" -- he didn't do it. Sharklike; always thinking about the next thing. That's good advice for me to cotton to, considering my awful obsession with submitting (and collecting rejections for) my short fictions. If I could just concentrate on the novel to the exclusion of everything else... Publication is like love in that respect: happens when you least expect it, if it happens at all.

     Speaking of the novel, school starts tomorrow, and novel workshop has moved from Wednesdays to Monday evenings. I'll also be taking a lit class (Magical Realism) that meets twice a week, and thesis hours. The Program of Strengthening and Conditioning has worked well over the last week, and I think I will have enough stamina at least to get my ass to campus tomorrow evening. I have a chemo next Friday, and no class the following Monday (MLK Day), so it'll be a few weeks before I can discern whether treatment is going to impede me. In any case, I haven't driven a car in six weeks. Should work out well, I think.

     The Big Story around here is that A lost not one but TWO teeth (center, bottom) in the last two days. The Tooth Fairy came last night to our house for the first time, and back she'll come tonight. This morning, A pretended to believe with all her heart that a fairy had visited her, but her six-year-old cynicism kicked in this afternoon, and she announced she thought it was probably Mama and Papa who'd swiped the tooth and left the loot. 

     The teeth themselves are impossibly tiny, and I will keep them in a special box forever.

Medicine and magic

     The Fentanyl is definitely helping blunt the pain. The cost is full consciousness. Hard to tell yet if part of why I'm sleeping so much is that I'm finally comfortable, or if it's 100% drug-induced. There are other side effects that haven't kicked in yet: all narcotics affect appetite and motility, but apparently there is a new wonder-treatment for that, in the form of an injection. Cause I can't get me enough needles.

     Also saw that the CA125 is, finally, going in the right direction. (That's a blood marker that tends to rise with malignancies, though not reliably. Normal is 0-30. Mine was 60-ish a few months ago, and up to 125 several weeks ago. Yesterday it was back down to 75.) I have been willfully not looking at my CA125, but Dr. J mentioned it on Thursday, and so I peeked at the paperwork after the blood draw yesterday, and even though it is notoriously unreliable -- I mean, like, they tell you not to pay attention to it at all after you've had one round of chemo, and I've had, um, I have no idea how many rounds I've had, ten, maybe? -- it's a spirit-lifter when it's on the way toward normal, like a rainbow, elevating but not substantive, but still, why would they bother counting it if it has no bearing at all? 

     Run-on sentence much?

     A and M are downstairs having an earnest conversation about Christmas tree lights. A keeps using the word "magical," not the schmaltzy kind, but the real-live fairy kind, as in, "I bet those lights are magical." M agrees. I love their voices. 

     

Saturday morning

     M and A have gone off on some adventure or other. I slept poorly last night, having watched the coverage of Ike slamming into Galveston, and I woke up and put the TV back on, then promptly fell asleep. I vaguely recall A whispering in my ear, "Mama, did you turn on the TV or was it fairies?" I think I said fairies. Anyway, the house is quiet. M has a car show tomorrow he's preparing for (he has a 1964 Series II Land Rover) and I'm sure he took A to the art supply store to get a gift for a friend whose fifth birthday celebration is this afternoon. I like to think about M and A tooling around town in that musty truck, she in her booster seat beside him, he wearing some kooky old hat. I love them.

     I am in the homestretch of a first chapter (if you consider homestretch to mean barely begun) for novel workshop; I'm due to turn in tomorrow for Wednesday night workshop. My problem is one of mental momentum: everything I see lately somehow will fit perfectly into this book. So, in it goes. Saw a crazy tease for baby footwear on CNN sometime overnight; it's going in. What this means, of course, is that I am still formulating the characters, still deciding what I want to write about, still procrastinating actually writing it. 

     I did not hear back from Dr. J's office so I choose to assume they didn't have a chance to mull over my predicament. In any case, it's unlikely I'll start chemotherapy this coming week, though they've waved me in pretty darn fast in the past. Trying not to worry about it. Trying.

     M and A are home -- A says she found evidence of fairies in the car. Gotta go!

Late fragments

     Well, as it turns out, it was too big a day. I came home after class and cried a big snotty mess all over M. Starting to not feel good, persistently. This is upsetting, of course, considering the last CT scan was only a month ago; seems things are happening quickly. 

     I should mention here, because I haven't and because it's dear to me, that we adopted our sweet baby daughter from China in 2003. It was, and is, a miracle of love.

     When I turned to lock the front door behind me tonight, I saw a note affixed to the light switch:

     "Lost is fairy book. It was on my bed." The word "fairy" is written in cursive.

     She is five.

     She is magnificent.

     Late Fragment, R. Carver:

     [And did you get what/ you wanted from this life, even so?/ I did. /And what did you want?/ To call myself beloved, to feel myself/ beloved on the earth.]

     Even so.

Ten things that help me feel strong

1. Doing laundry. Changing the bed clothes. Teaching my daughter how to make her bed the old-fashioned way, tucking the pillows under a cheerful vintage chenille bedspread.  Folding sheets.
2. Walking through the neighborhood with my husband, my little girl, and a go-cup, assessing paint jobs and plantings, peering through leaded glass doors, holding A's hand while she "walks up high" on raised brick curbs, carrying her piggyback for two whole blocks before her heft forces me to hand her to M. Feeling sweaty and a little buzzed when we get home, rocking on the front porch as the sun goes down.
3. Starting a blog.
4. Having friends over this afternoon for grown-up cocktails.
5. Drawing fairy dresses with A. Writing a fairy story. Showing her how to write "fairy" in cursive.
6. Buying all the crap on the kindergarten supply list.
7. Cursing in the CVS about the list.
8. Using coupons to save money on the supplies. (I saved more than $17, yay.)
9. Letting A stay up late to watch Laurel & Hardy movies. Cuddling with her in our bed. Inhaling her hair while she tries to keep her eyes open. Hearing her and M laugh over the dumbest slapstick. Watching them both fall asleep; hearing them snore in unison.
10. Picking up A without waking her and depositing her in her bed. Tucking her in. Kissing her sweaty neck. Returning to bed and turning off the TV. Reading. Snoozing. Resting. Sleeping.