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I’m taking a watercolor class this morning. I don’t like school. Cancer has been hard, but school was my first trauma. Charlie gave me some drawing advice: “Remember to do as many details as you can”.
Mom said I’m going to love it. A Saturday morning watercolor class during breast cancer treatment, a middle aged woman trying (again) to paint— it’s so cliche.
If I walk in and smell the menopause, I’m outta here.
L
Audubon Center 2020
St Joe 2021
Another October.
Last year, during the diagnosis, I wasn’t sure there would be more Octobers. You can see it on my face, I thought I was possibly leaving my kids. In the days following the diagnosis, we walked the soggy beach, my camera thumping against my hip, tears in my eyes. I tried to steel myself for the treatment to come. I was so sad for the new reality facing my family. Even if I didn’t die immediately, I knew this experience would affect them, change the dynamic of our unit, alter their childhood. And I wondered if Paulie and I might splinter; better unions than ours have failed under less. I don’t ever want another of those Octobers.
I had my infusion on Wednesday this week, the 13th. Exactly one year ago to the day that I had my heart-crushing “Cancer Team” meeting. I was so hopeful for that meeting. The three weeks prior had been barrage of tests and biopsies, and at each appointment always the same promise of the Fantastic Cancer Team approach. The Team Meeting is when I’d meet my oncologist, my surgeon, the radiation oncologist, even the physical therapist. All those wonderful experts there to see me through this thing.
In those frightening, unsteady days, I clung to that meeting.
Paul and I held hands in the room, anxious and yet still hopeful. We were getting the best possible care, the best approach, the Team. Then a sole doctor walked in, sat down, slid the Kleenex box across the table, and said there’d be no other team members joining us. The air left the room and left my body.
And with it, my hope.
That is how they told me I’m stage IV. I’m only now, a year later, as I emerge from the fog of treatment, absorbing how cruel that was. And how it damaged me. I’ve been obsessed about the IV, haunted by it, I can’t let it go, I can’t integrate it.
Because, here’s the thing. They had not yet done the bone scan or brain mri. But one pesky lymph node chain in my neck had glowed on the PET. That one fucker crushed my entire outlook. I wish I had known that meeting day that it was the only, little thing making me IV.
In the torturous days that followed, I had a bone scan and brain MRI. Both were completely clear. In some staging scales, that means I’m stage III. And most importantly, it means I have no disease outside the region, except for those neck nodes.
Had we known that on Team Meeting Day, I might have actually met my team. And I would have been spared some agony.
Of course, I did eventually meet them as my treatment shifted gears when the chemo was so successful. I was not at all amused having to tell them each individually my story all over again each time. Gee, if only we’d had that Team Meeting.
So, here we are again in misty October. I’m still fearful, but also cautiously hopeful. The family is intact and resilient, if a little hooked on doughnuts. I’m still here, it’s only my boobs that aren’t.
Marking time can be a delicate and dangerous thing for me; as another season passes and annual events return, my emotions range from contentment to despair.
Felix once asked me, at about the age of five, the meaning of “bittersweet”. After I explained it, he said “Oh, I know that feeling.” And I know that he did, my old-soul son.
This October holds both the anniversary of my diagnosis and the birthdays of my loves Paulie and Felix. My loves are so beautiful. The leaves are golden, the ground is damp, and the very air is bittersweet.