Hooray! My white count was 1.1. I needed 1.0, so I just squeaked by. I had my last chemo yesterday. It took two tries this time to find a decent vein. The first time the needle went in, but some scar tissue probably blocked the chemo’s flow enough to cause pressure and discomfort, so the nurse went to the other arm, the most battered one, and managed to find a good spot. Although today there are little sore nodules all along the vein.
I’ll continue to have blood tests for three weeks, and today I go in for a Neulasta shot to boost my white blood cell production. I’m in the “chemo phase” now, which means I’m hopped up on steroids, ready to run five miles and lift weights, and will be this crazy for three days. Usually, the great fatigue and malaise begins a day or so after that. But saying “usually” makes no sense, since each time has been different.
This being the end of treatment, there was some hugging when I left. And my oncologist spent some time with me, talking about the future. You may remember his dire prediction if the cancer came back. He didn’t mention that again, and frankly, I know one person who had a recurrence that seems to be successfully treated a second time. Oh well, who knows?
What he said to me, paraphrased by me:
1. Walk out of here and forget about me, forget about this place entirely. Do not spend your life worrying. You’ll no doubt start to get anxious before each checkup, but until then, eat ice cream, get on your paddle board, forget all this.
2. Okay, you say you’ll have a cloud over your head, but each year that goes by, the cloud will be higher up and lighter. One day you’ll hardly even see it. (Lovely of him to say this.)
3. You can exercise as much as you want. Go ahead and get tired if you want. Just rest when you need to. If you can only walk a mile and you want to walk two, do it in increments. (Okay, Jerry, you can get off my back now about “doing too much.”)
4. It seems that women who have a spiritual practice, a religion, do better with all this. If you do have something, you may find a much-renewed interest in that. (Little does he know, I’ve had a passionate proclivity all my life. I’ve studied Christian theology, been a church elder— the first woman and youngest—an active Episcopalian, and now, as things have evolved, a Buddhist practitioner and sangha facilitator. ”Renewed” goes on every day, not just in times of crises.)
Speaking of every day, today is beautiful as only northern Michigan can be. Summer is short, so every perfectly warm and sunny day strikes like a gong in the mind. It’s hard not to be aware, when we know how a day like this will pass, shortly, and for that matter, how short life is. But we’d shoot ourselves—or in Jerry’s and my case, pack our bags for South Carolina—if we loved only summer. It’s the sharp turn of seasons, the swimming and kayaking, gradually or not so gradually, giving way to high-piled snow, a glittery rolling landscape, sharp edges blunted, bright even on dull days.
I love to walk around our neighborhood, especially in summer, when the flowers are out. I love the cracked sidewalks and each different house, all old, some beautifully restored, some ramshackle. I cannot leave them alone. I remodel each one, I offer (mental) suggestions to the owner about how to improve the façade, what paint colors would work better. This isn’t very Buddhist of me, my desire to alter things, but I don’t care. I just watch my mind do that and watch its delight in doing it. I spend so much time with the small details of my poems (and prose), editing with as much precision as I can, so naturally, I’d say, this tendency spills over to other aesthetics. What line-break, what verb, what paint color, what flowers, will improve the aesthetics of this situation? 
I’ll report next week on how this last chemo phase is like or different from the others. I’ll also talk a bit about what I’m working on. Oh yes, the galleys for my new poetry collection, No Need of Sympathy, from BOA Editions, are ready. If you know of some place or someone who would like to review it, I can have a copy sent posthaste, or as haste as the USPS is capable of.