Oh, hello there. You’re still here? Paying attention? Wow. We’ve always been here you say. I haven’t been. Hiding under a quilt of anxiety and overwhelm. Partly on purpose, partly without warning. The lobster set in a pot of tepid water and before long it’s boiled him. It has been real. And disorienting. And frustrating. And humbling. The cancer worm opened the door for the pizza delivery man and invited him in for a slice. His mother in law and cousin were along for the ride in his van, so why not invite them in too. Quite a trio, the creepy pizza man, his opinionated mother in law, and their obnoxious cousin who moonlights as a bill collector. All doing the YMCA with the cancer worm. Inside my house. They made fast friends. I was soaking in a bath upstairs and came down to a keg party where no one thought to roll up the rug. A real slosh fest with me holding the mop. Sober.

This blog started as an idea for an outlet to share my cancer stories and updates. So many updates. One forum for creative expression and simultaneously a reflexive diarrhea dump of facts, feelings, and emotions. I had always wanted to write, hadn’t I? Yes. Yes I had. This was it! My chance to shine up this turd and make a good story out of it. All the while not having to obligatorily and monotonously update 50 people on my latest white blood cell count via text message. As the saying goes, we make plans and God laughs. I don’t know if it is God who is laughing, but my plans were shot to shit. So if you ever get cancer, do yourself a favor and try to just live (or survive) in the minute and worry about your memoir long after the dust settles. At the very least wait until your port gets taken out. Nothing like having a semi-permanent medical device protruding from under your collarbone like a nubby horn on a prepubescent billy goat. Staring you square in the face every time you look in the mirror. Don’t forget you have cancer today! Tawny, my trusted ’80s video vixen, Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome port device is still in. Staring me down daily. We are frenemies. I appreciate her no bullshit approach to being violated. Mad respect. But go on and get gone already, girl.

My last blog post was on July 15, 2020. Eight months ago to the day. I made three posts to this humble little engine that could before it abruptly ran out of gas. My Dad has this expression for when things don’t go quite right, ‘Slow ‘er down, she’s suckin’ mud.’ I heard that many times growing up and I say it quite frequently to myself as an adult. Cousin Eddie would have just said ‘Shitter’s full, Clark.’ While I had so much to say during this cancer tale, so many thoughts and feelings swirling in my head ready to jump out, conversations and humorous observational experiences to recount, I just couldn’t get started. Nothing flowed. I’m going to write today came out of my mouth practically every day, yet I couldn’t summon myself to do it. As the days piled up, the side effects did too – the physical ones that I could feel and touch and the mental ones that became the weight stack that tried to break me in half. Historically, I am the one that makes people feel better. But I felt worse. And with that realization came a sense of guilt I can’t really describe. In this world of oversharing, I actually did want to share – to encourage, to update, to tell all the caring people supporting me what was going on, to thank them, to tell them I was going to be okay…but the cancer quicksand didn’t give me room. To breathe or to write. Not every day was suffocating. There were days of prednisone highs, a thousand acts of kindness to be grateful for, smiles and silliness to see me through……but most every high predictably came crashing back into to the slop. Just stuck there, sucking mud.

In addition to being able to relate most situations in life to a Seinfeld episode, I hold dearly an addictive love of and deep connection to music. The melodies that move you, the lyrics that speak to your soul. I have a few go-to stations I’ve created on Pandora. One being a curated mix of Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, and Paul Simon just to name a few. The storytellers. Music was my solitude during treatments. Each chemo session starts with a series of ‘pre-meds’ – basically the meds that will hopefully make you barf less and eat more in the days to come. My favorite part of ‘pre-meds’ was the open up the port, lightning bolt to your brain, diesel fuel dose of Benadryl. The dose intended for my body to not instantaneously reject the poison that would follow. The dose that took me on the sleepiest rocketship ride to sheep jumping over moon. The nappiest naps I’ve ever taken. The sweet calm before the chemo drug storm. I was always sure to put in my air pods, turn on one of my stations and let that Benadryl drift me to a place where the lyrics were my life for an interlude. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, ‘Until you’ve seen this trash can dream come true, You stand at the edge while people run you through, And I thank the Lord there’s people out there like you’, Landslide ‘Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?’ Into the Mystic ‘Hark now, hear the sailors cry, Smell the sea and feel the sky, Let your soul and spirit fly, Into the mystic’. Music is woven throughout my cancer story. Music has become the dearest of friends that I will never be able to repay for it’s kindness. One song that has consistently shown up for me is Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Oddly relatable. Lighthearted and simultaneously deep. It has played at the strangest times this past year but always when I needed the reminder – I have choices. Indulge me and follow this bouncing ball…

The problem is all inside your head, she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover

I didn’t want cancer, I didn’t ask for it to turn my life upside down, but I could and I would give it the heave-ho.

She said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
I wish there was something I could do to make you smile again
I said I appreciate that and would you please explain
About the fifty ways

There were the days I knew I had this thing licked. There were the days I thought it would never end.

She said, why don’t we both just sleep on it tonight?
And I believe in the morning you’ll begin to see the light
And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover
Fifty ways to leave your lover

But I made up my mind to make it. And I did.

You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Oh, you hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

And get yourself free. I’m not totally free. Far from it. My next scan is in May. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. But I’ve just begun the work to address the mental toll all of this has taken. I want to take a high speed train back to the vibrancy I once knew intimately, but I have to clean up the mud first. And the pizza party. Thank you for offering to help. Every single one of you. Until our next story telling hour……