My Wobbly Bicycle, 11

Every week an adventure. Monday I met with the radiation team to get “mapped” for radiation, which starts a week after my next chemo. Either I still haven’t gotten used to living in the Midwest, or hospital staff everywhere are preternaturally sweet. The nurse in charge hugs me. The vile dye mixture I must drink goes down with her tender solicitations. Another dye is intravenous.Then I’m on the CT bed, my feet held slightly apart with a piece of foam and rubber banded together so they won’t move. I’m lying on a mat that, when deflated, holds my midsection in position. My hands grip two handles above my head. I am for sure locked down. I get two CT scans, one before the intravenous dye and one after. Then I’m tattooed (permanently) with three tiny dots to line up the machines each time for radiation. More than you wanted to know? More than I wanted to know, too, but now that I’m in it, I am curious at each stage.Wally does not know I’m sick. He lies across the back of the chair, a white and gray decorative throw, or sits his heavy self in my lap to be rubbed. He knows about as much about what’s going on with me as I do. Neither of us can see any evidence of illness. I do what I’m told because of the test tubes, CTs, and slides. Wally does what he’s told, more or less, because we are the keepers of the sacred Iams bag. He is a great comfort to me—he lives his life with seeming perfect aplomb within the confines allotted to him. He must stay inside, but what does “inside” mean, when there is only a picture of outside, out the window? Who knows if it exists or not? It is enough to watch it go by, like thoughts.Wally plays with his food. He lies flat on the floor and scoops one morsel of food from his bowl at a time. He scoots it a little distance so it’s necessary to capture it. He lies with his considerable ruff leaning in his water bowl. He takes a sip, looks away as if he is content never to drink again, then turns to take another sip. He is in possession of his life. He has perfect comic timing.Wally came to us, a stray, limping and not wanting to take more than a few steps before he sat down. We checked everything and determined he had arthritis.  After only a few days of a potent glucosamine mixture, he started leaping and chasing his mouse. Did he question any of that improvement?  “What improvement?” he might ask. “One day I was one way, now I’m another. So?”I  imagine this.Humans get sick. We get well. We don’t, or can’t, look back much. We have a baby—we say we remember the pain, but we don’t really. We have another, and when we’re in labor again, we say, “Oh yes, this is what it’s like. Now I remember.” Same with grief, or love. We have the words, the thoughts, the muscle responses to the thoughts of the experience but we can’t keep the experience. We only had it when we had it.I’m having this cancer when I’m having it. Here is a picture of me with recent gifts: light sword, fuzzy hat, fuzzy socks, scarf with personally inscribed poems, red prayer shawl. I am in the middle of this, in full regalia.