A Quick Note

This is an unusual post, for me at least, because I’m telling you about something that happened a couple of weeks ago. It’s also a post where nothing specific happens, but everything is changed. Here’s the story.

Saturday, January 20  Snowpocalypse 2024

We’ve been in a winter storm for six days. We’re the lucky ones– we have heat, power, and water– thousands here are entering their 8th or 9th day of none of these. Or, for some whose pipes have burst, there’s so much water that everything they own is ruined.

Photos of carnage have flooded local social media: huge, old Douglas Fir trees shattered by ice and wind, crashing to the ground, crashing into homes, splitting houses into two or three, smashing through a roof and missing a baby’s crib by inches, crushing cars. A woman who got to work by ice skating. A city bus, fat chains on its tires, tipped into a ditch. Videos of power lines arcing, exploding.

In the midst of this, I sign in to a webinar about what happens when lung cancer becomes resistant to therapy. Resistance is one of those pesky topics that keeps coming up, because Stupid Lung Cancer keeps figuring out how to sidestep treatments. I listen while tidying my desk; there’s not much new information here. What strikes me is the length of time some audience members have lived with Stage 4 lung cancer: 6 years, 9 years, 11 years. For all these folks, lung cancer has become a chronic disease. 

Why I’ve noticed this, I couldn’t tell you. 

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Thursday, January 18  MRI Day

The flow of events before Thursday (1/18) is a little murky. That’s probably because I spent Thursday in a lorazepam haze, in and out of an MRI tube, napping in a quiet corner in the hospital cafeteria until my appointment with Dr. Radiology, and then, at home, asleep in a chair by the fire.

We weren’t sure we would get to the test. My Dear Husband didn’t sleep well, thinking about if we’d need to put chains on the car tires. He was pretty sure that if we could get down the driveway, and then the block, to the slightly larger street that connects to one of the main thoroughfares, we’d be fine. But maybe not? We shrugged, then each packed a daypack with water, snacks, and our micro-spikes– basically, girdles of rubber studded with pieces of metal, to be pulled over shoes or boots. 

Of course, the driveway and sidewalks were a literal sheet of ice; the roads were slick and sloppy. Of course, we arrived without incident. Also of course, most normal people were still in bed, so we could have ridden elephants across the ice-scape and no one would have noticed. (Fewer people on ice-crusted roads do tend to do good things for public safety….) I wasn’t sure the MRI techs would even be there, so I held off on the lorazepam until I got handed my clipboard of paperwork. (Paperwork: It’s how medicine gets Done.) I gulped lorazepam before filling out a word. 

MRIs haven’t changed since the last one I had, so there’s no news there. And, there’s no real news to report on my brain– everything is peaceful in the land of the high subcortical right frontal lobe. 

What’s new is that Dr. Radiology looked me right in the eye and said something like, “So, want to wait a year for your next scan?”  

To which I replied, with tact and decorum, “No friggin’ way.”

She smiled, gave a little shrug. “Maybe seven or eight months.” 

And so we left. 

Saturday, January 19 What, No Party?

Did you notice I didn’t pause to say DID YOU SEE THAT RESULT??!!  Stable, baby, stable. Woohoo! You’d think I would call in a polka band and celebrate this acknowledgement of stability, of growing wellness. 

Instead, I’ve got a bug up my butt about scheduling. What is the big deal about moving a scan to every year instead of every 6 months? Not to mention that a few Puritanical demons popped up, trying to revive my sense that value comes through Achievement and Working Hard.  Aw, guys, we’ve done this work, I tell them. We’ve left these ideas behind…. Apparently not. But why?

I flash to the anxiety I felt after finishing my first course of treatment. Driving out of the cancer center into the unknown territory of “active surveillance” felt like driving off the end of the earth. (Jeez, how did Columbus do it?)  That’s there, sure. But that’s not all there is to the story. For now, though, it goes on the back burner. We’re going to Hawaii and I need to pack. 

Wednesday, January 24 The Big Island of Hawaii

We arrived yesterday. There is no ice here, but the ocean is wild— beaches are closed to swimming and kayak and other boating tours have been canceled for days. 

I’m amused that I find parallels between weather outside and in. There’s no way to escape that something’s nagging at me. All this wind and rough surf is as if I’m walking through my inner landscape. 

The Pieces Come Together

I’ve spent a goodly amount of the past three years grappling: What it means to have lung cancer. What it means to stop working before I want. What it means to know, more than most people, about my fairly likely cause of death. 

I was watching surfers somersault through big waves when it struck me: 

What if I’m not going to die? 

I mean, imminently. 

Or, for that matter, in 6, 9, or 11 years. 

Oh. 

When the harshest possibilities shift a centimeter, shazam— it’s as if a massive boulder in the bed of a fierce stream has rolled: the water changes course. 

No wonder those dumb demons rose up– if we were going to go through another big shift, they wanted to get in on the ground floor. 

(I should be talking about lava. Two of Hawaii’s volcanos, Kilauea and Mauna Loa, are still active— just not during our visit— and part of their history is that lava can flow a different direction with each new explosion.)

Apparently, a big rock has shifted in the stream bed. 

I wonder what comes next.