Answers

Yay. Infusion just called me back. I’m to go in on Saturday at 2, for a consultation. I’ll know more about this whole process then, than I know now.

I show up on Monday at 9:30, for what’s scheduled as a three-hour appointment. They’ll hydrate me via IV for two hours, and give me the meds for 20 minutes. So each appointment really lasts 2 ½.

I asked if I’d have trouble driving home (in case I need to); she didn’t know. There’s a set list of side effects, but reactions are individual.

My appointments the rest of next week all start at either 9:30 or 10; I didn’t write down which was when. We didn’t schedule further than that; they want to see how I do.

I don’t want to get morbid about it—but knowing that I have five more days of “normal,” before my body feels radically different for a year, feels very odd. I don’t even want to do anything extraordinarily physical; I haven’t had any emotional energy for weeks. (If I lay still even now, I could sleep.) I have some reading and writing that I have to do. I still want to go to Alameda on Friday—and if I have some time when my papers are done, I might leave a bit early and spend some time in Berkeley. Might take a walk later today, when it cools off, just to feel my muscles move.

I don’t feel like cramming a lot of activity in, though. I’ve been staring at this for so long, I just want to get started.

When I was newer in this neighborhood, and had first heard of the trial I thought I’d be taking, I was fine with the idea of the harsher segment—so I would get sickness and health really wired into my body, and so I would never forget the gifts that the diagnosis gave me. I miss that innocence now. The harsher wing, of that false understanding, was the standard treatment; and it’s what I ended up choosing. It has nothing to do with remembering to be thankful for life—and everything to do with loving this life (on a level deeper than emotional) and wanting dearly to preserve it. I’ve been rewired in ways I’d give back if I could; I breathe fear now, and am never without it. What will it take, to reconnect me with joy?

You’ll say time, and you’re right. And I know that I may have cancer inside me; I equally well may not—and if I do, it’s certainly not immediately fatal. I just never, ever, ever want to be back here.

It’s the uncertainty that gets you. Every damned time. That’s why I’ve been so stressed, when these health professionals’ answers change. I have enough unknowns in my own body. I need my doctors to give me consistent information.

It really can’t be that hard. Can it?