cancer – day 23

That was a strange dance experience. I guess in hindsight I should have just stayed home and kept resting, but sheesh, I’ve been cooped up for days and getting better every day, and even my parents thought it was ok for me to go (but they wouldn’t’ let me drive), but the best I can figure about what felt so strange is that maybe Mark didn’t think I should be up and trying to dance yet and that really affected his dancing too. I was nervous to lift my right hand to his to dance, that’s true, and I didn’t trust my feet or balance (heck, that bit of time at the milonga last night was the longest stretch of time I’ve been upright on my feet since a week ago), and maybe all that I was why I felt so disconnected. After the first song we danced, Mark asked why I was shaking. I was shaky, unsure of my feet, and during the second or third song we danced, when I did finally start feeling it a little and dancing a bit to the music, I threw him off and then felt bad for getting in the way of his lead. It was disappointing. After all the hours practicing with Mark for the show and having it become easier and easier to slide into that tango shared-energy nirvana with him almost every dance (that’s only happened with him, really, I’ve never gotten so far into it so consistently with anyone else), then to have that be suddenly so far from comprehension last night made me feel bad, like I’d really let both of us down. Maybe I can blame it on the painkillers. Listen to your parents, kids, Tango and drugs don’t mix!

Days when there’s “nothing happening” with the cancer or treatment (so nothing really to update anyone on), are strange for blogging because there’s nothing to write about except how I’m feeling about things, which I’m not always sure I should share, but I’ve made a commitment to myself to try to keep a daily journal throughout all of this, and the intent was to let my friends be a part of that by keeping the daily blog, so I’ll just try to go with it and write whatever I can.

I didn’t sleep much last night. I was lost in thought, which is usually why I don’t sleep . . . sometimes I just can’t stop the wheels from churning, I think I have it all wound down and then more thoughts get in the way. Now that surgery is over, I keep getting stuck in this frustration of not knowing how intense or how long chemo will be, whether I’ll be able to work no problem or with difficulty or not at all, and how to shut down my life here for an as yet indeterminate length of time, a time which we don’t even have the start date for, though it’s supposedly in the next 2-3 weeks. I’ve already gotten Emily to substitute teach my tango classes, so that’s taken care of, but there’s still all the CSCMP stuff: being on the advisory committee, running my programs team, being president of the board for this new roundtable in Sacramento that still has a lot to learn. I’m supposed to be in meetings and speaking at a CSCMP seminar in Chicago June 6-7, and I don’t even know if I can go because I don’t know when chemo will start. And when it starts, how incapacitated will I be? Will I be able to see Mark for his birthday July 1? And dance. I haven’t done west coast swing in weeks anyway, and soon, no more tango either. And when I come back, will I still have my tango partner? Will I be physically strong enough to do shows again, or teach again? While I’m gone, what happens to my relationship with Mark, my friendships, all the people I’ve gotten to know and care about out here? If chemo were only three months long, well, I don’t think that would be a big deal at all, three months go by before you know it. But six months? Nine? And then radiation treatment after that, every day for 6-1/2 weeks. I could be back before the CSCMP conference in October, and this could all be over by Thankgiving, or I might not be through with chemo and radiation treatments until Easter of next year. The range and number of unknowns really frustrates me.

What I’ve realized this morning, after not sleeping most of the night or even this morning like I can usually do to recover, is that I’m clinging. (Seeing this from the outside, you probably already knew that, but it took me a while to admit it to myself.) I’m clinging to my life out here in California, I’m clinging to Mark and all the things that make my life what it is here. The only thing I don’t have to worry about leaving is teaching at GGU since they’re not offering my BI class again until next year now (I think). But everything else has to be decided, and soon, but I don’t want to cancel the June Forum, I don’t want to step down from my board position with CSCMP or turn over my programs team to someone else, I don’t want to quite the advisory committee, I don’t want to pack up weeks and weeks worth of clothes to let Mom and Dad take to their house for me, I don’t want to close up my house or take down my hammock or pack up the cats . . . I don’t even want to make any decisions about whether I should drive or fly out to Mom & Dad’s house when I have to go, and whether I should go alone or ask Mark or someone to travel with me like Mom wants. What if the medical oncologist tells me on May 27 that I only have to have chemo once every three weeks and it’s only going to slow me down for a day or so when I have a treatment? Shutting down my life here and going to South Dakota for that really seems like overkill, but it seems like waiting until May 27 to make these decisions is silly too. For someone who’s always been the get-things-done person, I certainly don’t seem like myself right now. It’s unusual for me to be so indecisive.

But I also know that staying here for chemo is the wrong thing to do for my family, because they are worried about how difficult chemo will be and it means so much to them to have me close and be with me when I’m in chemo. Who am I to deny them that with some selfish desire to maintain the façade of my normal and far-away independent life? So I have to go be with them for this thing, and it’s about time I stop trying to belay the inevitable and just go ahead and step away from all these other things. Hopefully the new life I can start after all this will be greater than anything I could have achieved or contributed if I stayed here instead.