cancer – day 73

One of my fish is sick. Well, one of my remaining two fish is sick (Crystal, as you may recall, had a successful suicidal episode while we were away in Las Vegas). Anyway, Rerun had these spots starting to grow on two of his fins (he has seven fins), and when we looked at him really closely today and then looked up what the spots looked like online (well, Mark did, while I was trying to debug a problem in the darn estimators), we figured out that Rerun has fish lice, so Mark held him and I used tweezers to pluck the two lice off, and tonight we went to three fish stores to find a fish lice medicine (it’s not particularly rare, apparently). And tomorrow morning we’re going to medicate Rerun and Opie’s water (we’re assuming Opie has been completely exposed to the lice, even if we can’t see anything on him yet).

I got an e-mail today from an old, old friend that I was on tour in Europe with. What a trip, hearing from him. My “surgery” e-mail back in May had gone into his spam folder, and he just found the note a few days ago. But he didn’t know how to reply right away, he said it took him some time to work up the nerve to write to me. It’s really interesting, how this affects people. Older people seem to have more exposure to knowing someone close to them who has had (and more often than not, survived) breast cancer, but they also have this reaction of ohmygodyourrecoveryisgoingtobesohorrible. The advances in technology for treatment are truly amazing, so even if I’m doing chemo, I won’t have nearly as horrible an experience as a woman ten years or even five years ago would have had. But for younger people, friends my own age, it’s often more of an eye-opener, realizing that even when we’re young life is fleeting. Kyle isn’t the first person to tell me that hearing about my cancer has made them rethink their own life and pointedly ask themselves some difficult life questions that had been on their minds already but were now poignantly sharpened by my medical news. Oh, and he ended his e-mail with this great Robert Frost quote: “The best way out is always through.”

One of Mark’s co-workers step-mother and I (I think that’s the right connection from her to me) have been trading e-mails (she’s a breast cancer survivor, diagnosed at 40, the closest to my own age that I’ve met so far, but still significantly different in treatment and what the experience was like), and she said some similar stuff that lots of people have expressed to me about how the cancer made her really think about life and what it means to her or what she wants to get out of it or that sort of thing. Facing the fear of death. And I empathize with everyone who’s mentioned this to me, but it’s interesting because I feel like a counselor to them rather than the other way around. Yeah, ok, I don’t want to die, who does, but I’m not afraid of it, because I’ve already died three times (according to my cardiologist and the machines in the ER) albeit only for minutes at a time and not for good, obviously. But because of my heart condition, which was diagnosed five years and five months ago (note the timing in relation to Artie’s death, that’s probably not a coincidence), and the emotional trauma of Artie dying when he was only 30, I resolved my issues with death a long time ago. It’s not something to be feared, it’s part of life and part of our spiritual process. I can’t tell you there’s a Heaven, but I know we each have a soul and it’s only the physical body that dies, not the soul.

And with everything I’ve survived already (my Mom and I figured out a while back, way before the cancer diagnosis, that I’m on the eighth of my nine lives now), and a healthy dose of spirituality, it seems pretty obvious that I survived all that because I still had a lot to learn and/or experience in this lifetime, and my spirit wasn’t ready to give up on this body yet. Practically from birth my life seems to have had specific focus for me to learn about certain things like trust. How could it be a coincidence for me to be born and put up for adoption to be in seven foster homes in six weeks and emotionally abused as a newborn in order to end up with my parents who got bumped up some 200 names in the list to adopt me because of their medical backgrounds and positions and then for me to have such a wonderful childhood and upbringing? It was weird to hear that my biological mother later had more kids (multiple) that she kept which means I have biological brothers/sisters (either? both? no idea on the details, the adoption search woman mentioned it almost in passing, like it was information she thought I already knew, you know?). That was a little weird, but there’s no question about whether anyone could have raised me better or in a more loving environment than my parents have. And given the situation of my birth and adoption, how can that be a coincidence?

Now Artie’s death, I’m not going to blame that on my needed spiritual growth, though of course it had countless life-changing effects. And then my heart condition diagnosis, after I collapsed playing the flute in church, and the whole scare that they were going to put in pacemaker that night before my parents could even fly out here, then not being allowed to drive for three months while they made sure the heart medication was working . . . now THAT gave me plenty of time and reason to consider the possibility/likelihood of my own death, to make my peace with it, and to know what the rest of my life was going to be about. It certainly isn’t about my career, though I am still bound by the characteristics of my personality to care about doing a good job at what I do and not letting anyone down. But that certainly isn’t what life is about, and it certainly isn’t reason enough for me to have survived what I already have in life. All that has made me a tougher survivor than I would have ever thought possible ten years ago, and it has strengthened my tenacity to a degree I didn’t realize until very, very recently. I’m not one to let go easily, and surviving cancer and the trials of treatment is no exception. OK, I might not always do it gracefully, but I’m working on that part! And I suspect I’ll have plenty of opportunity to practice “gracious survival” in upcoming months.

Tomorrow morning @ 10AM Mark is going with me to the medical oncologist to find out the reliance score result, and whether or not I have to do chemo. I’m expecting to hear “chemo.” I haven’t told Mark that, I haven’t even said it out loud. I’m still hoping for the best, but trying to prepare myself for the worst. We’ll know very soon now. Finally. Maybe I’ll even sleep tonight. Well, ok, maybe not. Maybe tomorrow night.