September 4, 2022
Time
There’s not enough time. The thought drifted through a haze of sweat. I was on my indoor bike in the glorious (not) basement, starting the second of two challenging rides. Indoor because of outside ozone levels. Two because each was short-ish. Challenging because, well, it’s time to up the ante. While we were on vacation, my DH nudged me into training mode with an uphill route we rode for several consecutive days. By the fourth time, I was able to reach the top of the hardest stretch without whimpering.
#progress
Why am I outside doing hills day after day? Hard rides inside? There’s not enough time.
So say the statistics about lung cancer. A surface reading of the stats would have you believe the chances of living 5 years or beyond might abysmal. 99% of the time, I ignore these. (See this post for more on statistics.) (And see this blog, by my friend Dann Wonser, a 16 year stage IV survivor [I hate that term, but as Foucault says, language fails….]) Somehow, when it’s time to schedule scans, the bleakest picture about lung cancer suddenly looms.
A few days ago, I was on hold for 45 minutes waiting to schedule my brain MRI. This was fine, since I was finishing some cupcakes (see below); hold makes multitasking a breeze. In the midst of camping, I got a phone call from the brilliant scheduler of CT scans, telling me the definite date of my next one. Here’s the picture of incongruous: sitting in a camp chair in the midst of a scrub pine forest, tackling a pb & j that’s oozing jelly, and listening to someone in a different time zone rattle off information about the next time I’ll get my booster dose of glow-in-the-dark. (Still waiting for that to happen, BTW.)
Scan anxiety (AKA scanxiety) is real. Different people experience different kinds, with different ways of coping. (More about that here.) I tend to land in the realities of lung cancer like a paratrooper behind enemy lines, disoriented, a little bruised from an abrupt landing, afraid of…well, any shadow that twitches. After the bruising awareness that, yes, I have lung cancer (surprise!), and no, it’s not going away today, and yes, I have scans coming up, and yes, they might show disease progression, I hide under the bed for a while. Why not see yourself as one of the few who will live beyond the five year marker, someone asked. Because “hope” is not the same as delusional thinking, I want to say.
Look, I’ve heard account after account of lung cancer’s inexorable grinding down of the body. Here’s the big thing, though: I know the docs can keep me alive for a long time if progression occurs. I can live a rich life. That’s why I take refuge in research: new discoveries, likely responses. Knowing a range of possible responses, of the new clinical trials appearing almost daily? That’s confidence. With confidence, I don’t need the false courage of “hope.” I have belief instead. In the face of belief, scanxiety fades.
I don’t know for certain how much more time my lungs will function at normal capacity. (This normalcy is what Dr. Lungs calls “remarkable.”) Hence, hills. Hence, the slowly increasing mileage. The uncertainty sometimes forms words: There’s not enough time. (#spoileralert –>This is actually true for everyone, even people without cancer.) Hence, ice cream. Bike rides. Hiking. Reading. Hugs. Laughter. A really good cup of coffee. You get the drift.
Vacation Notes
Rule 1 The indisputable rule of camping is, the exact moment in the middle of the night that you feel you have to go to the bathroom, you must get up and go. Otherwise, you spend the rest of the night pretending to sleep and the next day you are a big grump.
Note 1 Every route in Cape Cod is uphill. Take a bike path north, it’s uphill. Turn around and take it south: still uphill.
Note 2 Willamette Valley Corollary: Every road in the lush farmland of the Willamette Valley has a headwind. Ride north: headwind. Ride south: headwind.
Note 3 Every destination, every new circumstance is an experiment. Arrive, check which way the wind’s blowing. Is it still cancer from the north? Yes? Damn. Sometimes I dream I can dodge it. But on Cape Cod, it was still cancer from the north. That took (yet another) dose of acceptance plus, a pinch of grief.
Note 4 I still love it all: the pine smells, the light, the swell of dunes covered in scrub pine and oak (and poison ivy– 44 kinds of it.) The distant wash of the ocean in the distance during 2 a.m. forays to the bathroom. Even being startled awake by the unearthly howl of coyotes. It’s just that the me that had known that place from 10 years old through my own daughter’s babyhood and beyond, the me of the layers of memories, was a skin that didn’t quite fit.
Final Truth This “new normal” stuff is not for the faint of heart….
Now, home, I’ve stepped outside, put my finger to the air. The wind is from a new direction, but somehow, it’s still the same. Today it’s cancer, from the east.
This being established, I move into my day.
Thanks for reading. Here’s hoping that, most days, you have the wind to your back.
- Clock: Willgard Krause on Pixabay
- Uphill: Eric Perlin
- Poppy: Kerstin Riemer
- Coffee: by StockSnap