Not much continues to happen. This is good for my well-being and my sanity, but it doesn’t make for good reading. I’m reminded of the cancer only when I’m in the hospital for therapy and during the two days afterwards when I carry the balloon pump with me. In between two sessions, I ignore it. This has two immediate effects. The good thing is that I’m relaxed and free of worries. The bad thing is that I don’t think and read about it nearly enough. I don’t know much more about colon cancer than I did before I had it and cannot contribute intellectually to my treatment.
Last Saturday, we baked Christmas cookies. This was a big thing when I was a kid. I remember long days in a hot kitchen full of flour and the smell of baking. It was always fun. Each batch ended with me and my sister licking out the bowls of unused dough. If this sounds like a recipe for bellyache, we never got one.
My mom’s memories might be different. When I asked her two weeks ago whether she wanted to run our baking operation, she unambiguously declined. I don’t blame her. As an adult, I don’t enjoy baking nearly as much as I did as a kid. I made a couple of different doughs, rolled them out and had the girl cut the cookies and decorate them. She did it eagerly during the first round but lost her enthusiasm quickly. In the end, I spent hours in the kitchen by myself. Now we have four large containers full of cookies, but who’s going to eat them? The children seem to have forgotten them already.
On Sunday, I took another early-morning trip to London, much like four weeks earlier, except this time I drove towards Oxford and not Cambrige. I taught at a course, did some Christmas shopping, talked to colleagues at the synchrotron, and drove back so late that I didn’t have much time for anything at the airport. After crawling through security, I walked to the gate and boarded right away.
While I was gone, Flucha and the kids decorated the house. The Christmas tree was invited back in after surviving a year on the balcony. There are lights everywhere and many crafty little things that Rulos can never resist. Every day, something shatters on the floor or is ripped to pieces by little hands. Only my pyramid and smoking man remain safely out of reach.
None of this has anything to do with the reason I started this blog. This post could appear on my other blog without any changes. This is good because it means I’m doing well, but it’s also strange. Before I started chemotherapy, I imagined unimaginable suffering. Nausea, bleeding, loss of appetite and hair, a drop in white blood cells correlated with possibly life-threatening infections – none of this has yet come to pass. My blood isn't any worse than at the beginning. The heroics of fighting cancer that I anticipated with a writer’s eagerness for agony in the service of a good story, so far they’re a dud.
It’s not as if there were no side effects. My fingertips tingle whenever I’m out in the cold, but it’s not bad enough to keep me from cycling to work. There’s some blood in my nose. Unfocused discomfort in parts of my anatomy that are best left unexposed publicly is a nuisance. A frequent urge to urinate with nothing to show kept me up a couple of nights during the previous chemo session. This time, they symptoms were much milder, and I slept through all nights, but I’m dreading their recurrence.
On Monday, the fourth chemo session starts.
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