So, a group of scientists sit around trying to figure what might yield the greatest results in demonstrating to basically oblivious humans what being “Alive” means. Or, well, maybe they’re celestial scientists, from one realm or the other. After much discussion, they arrive at: chemotherapy.I was doing so well. Chemo on Tuesday, Wed. feeling good, Thursday I took a long walk on the beach. “I’m doing great,” I told my friends, in my steroidal enthusiasm. By Thursday night, the body started registering the assault upon its integrity. Sleepless night. Friday much worse. Saturday, oh, oh, oh.Like the flu, you could say, but that isn’t it. Aching, yes. Unable to think about eating anything except cream of wheat, baked potato, chicken noodle soup. Not wanting even to drink the required amount of water. Sounds like the flu, but there’s a quality to it that I can only describe as deathly. A sourly metallic taste to it. The body knows it’s been poisoned. You can feel the bone marrow beginning to suffer. Body and mind, in perfect concert, grow horrified. And this is only the first whammy. I’m told to expect each cycle of chemo to register deeper, last longer, killing as it goes.Sunday night I started to feel better enough to let down and have a good, long cry. By Monday morning, apparently the toxins had worked their way through. My body woke up with life starting to flood through me. Not “again”—but as if I’d never felt it. As if I’d never felt what it is to live—to be physically alive—before. The outline of existence painting itself in luminous colors. Intangible but palpable.
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” –Kurt Vonnegut
I’ll have 3 cycles of chemo, followed by 5 weeks of daily targeted radiation, then three more cycles of chemo. A long road, into June. But now I’ve seen how it goes. I may forget that I’ll come back from each one, but Jerry can remind me. Meanwhile, here I am, doubling up on all this, writing it down as if the whole contained a hole, and my assignment were to fill in with words.
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.” –Isaac Asimov.