My Wobbly Bicycle, 14

I can hardly see to type. I have a bug-eye patch over my right eye, a result of yesterday’s victrectomy---the floater-fulled vitreus has been sucked from my eye and the tag-ends of loose retina have been tacked down. My eye should be clear, when healed, and free of the risk of future detachments, at least as much as possible. This had to be done now rather than after the cancer treatments because the longer the detachment waits, the more permanent it becomes.I  have to lie on my stomach four hours a day, head down, to  put the gas bubble in its proper place. I accomplished this this morning by lying on my airplane horseshoe neckbrace and listening to IPR on my IPad. I am still having—unusual for radiation—a lot of nausea. Unfortunately, the radiation must strike directly at my stomach area. I have to say, nausea is one of my least favorite sensations. I am fickle as a pregnant woman about what I want to eat. I’m kind of tired of soup. But then, I ‘m tired of everything. I insisted on pizza last night. For lunch I ate chevre on Triskets, plus sugar snap peas. I want nothing. I must eat something. Baked potatoes, white and sweet, still taste pretty good.  My radiation team—so kind, so solicitous—a has put together a drug cocktail that we hope will improve things a bit, but makes me groggy. Still, I’d rather sleep than feel sick. Jerry brought me a bottle of Ensure a few minutes ago---the bottom of the nutritional barrel.Nausea is like losing your internal compass, your loadstone. I’ve trusted the silent continent of the stomach to grow its perfect garden of enzymes. Well, heck, I’ve trusted the whole body to do its job, part by part. The worse I feel, the more insular my mind becomes. the more unsure that any mechanism is doing its part without my constant attention. I see now how it is with the chronically ill. The mind curls up around itself, for comfort and protection. It begins to notice every tic, every wavering from the norm. A curiosity and a worry. Keep check.One has to make regular, deliberate forays out, to remember the world. Hello to my dear friends at AWP in Boston this week! I have no energy to imagine being there. Kelly and her family are off to London, to visit for a couple of weeks—then she may be back here. Jerry’s daughter Pam has just been here. We took a drive up Old Mission Peninsula—she and Jerry tasted wine while I hung around, breathing deeply to hold back nausea. It was good anyhow, to get out. Jerry’s daughter Amy is coming to visit. My son Scott is coming. This, plus all the sweet, smart, and homemade cards make me smile. And every friend’s visit matters to me. And writing. I can barely see the keys, yet here I am, enlarging the type so I can go on. I have a students’ work to get back to her soon.This bubble in my right eye will last about a month. Then my eye should be in good shape. I just go on, doing what comes next, which I guess is no different from what we do when we’re well. Take care of what’s in front of us at the time. I’ve spent my career taking care of one thing after the other, plowing through papers, getting manuscripts ready, doing what came next. What’s different is that I’ve become patently, strikingly, lit-up-in-neon-aware of how non-separate we are.Mushy is not my style. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be the cowboy, not the sissy cowgirl with ruffles on the skirt. In my family, I figured I’d better be tough.  I had a ray gun from a cereal box, one that shot baking powder. I saved for weeks to get it. Now I’m getting my ray gun and my cowboy outfit back out from mothballs.  That will be me  you see, outside the corral, reeling with nausea, but chasing off the wolves all the same. That will be me, looking after my beloved friends and family. Bonus: Wally's koan for today: "If there were no inside, would you still want to go outside?"