Joe and I are the same age yet often joke about which one of us is older. Even though my birthday falls thirteen days before his, I was a preemie and showed up an uncharacteristic six weeks ahead of schedule. I argue his parents had sex first, so he was already a bundle of cells well on his way before my parents shared that fateful bottle of champagne, rendering my mom so woozy that theirs was a diaphragm-less affair. What a lightweight! But at least that got me here.
It seems we’re all trying to be younger all the time, slow down time and feel in control, aren’t we? Wanting to skew things, line them up in the most positive light so we can feel better about our lot in life. So much we can’t control, but we do get to decide which dates we want to designate as milestones to celebrate when they come back around again.
No one told me when I got cancer which event is used to count how far out I was, how far away from that first flurry of worry. Was it when I found the lump? Or maybe it was when my surgeon removed it? Or the first chemo treatment or last round of radiation? When do I start counting so all that time I lost can start piling up in the rearview and my life ahead can be the focus? A while back I asked my doctor about this, and he sort of shrugged his shoulders, but said I could use my surgery as the counting point. Makes sense for it to be when that scalpel slid through my tissue and the little stinkers had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
It’s been a crazy five years, a herky-jerky crash course in collision. We’ve had home construction (which is still going on), we’ve had Covid (there’s now a vaccine for that), and we’ve had cancer (there’s a whole host of treatments for that). It’s the three Cs but we’re not talking sparkly diamonds, though there were cuts, inclusions and the clarity was far from flawless.
There have been glimmers though. Even though we’ve been kitchen-less since May, now there are cabinets in place and counters are coming. Covid has folded into our lives now as something we can manage with regular vaccines and occasional masks. My radiation department began sending me marketing materials which made me feel normal, like a regular person they got off a list.
My oncologist was rather blah every time I’d see him, yet I wanted some of this blank calmness for myself. I remember the very first appointment when he asked a female PA to join our meeting. Maybe we’d need a witness in the room should I started picking up things and hurling them against the wall in a tantrum one might throw if they’d, too, been branded a cancer patient. At subsequent appointments, each time he’d just look at me, tranquilly, and like an anxious child impatient for news some adult is taking forever to release, I’d ask, “Whadaya got? What else can I do to be sure I’m doing everything I can?” Surely he knows a perfect shift we can make in my repertoire so we can all finally be done here and begin to relax. I waited and I watched, and he calmly looked up like some milquetoast and uttered softly, “Live your life,” which would be his response again each time he got a whiff of my existential dread.
His manner was not terribly warm, which I found weird given the scary prognoses he has to daily dole out and treat. I have a friend who I recently learned had cancer who also went to him, and she dropped him to find another doctor. She said she didn’t like his style—maybe it was his low energy vibe, or that deer in headlights gaze I feel each time. But I don’t go there for the warm hugs, of which there are none. I go there because he’s experienced and smart and nothing like the alarmist, I wish I was not. It’s not the perfect doctor I’m after; I just want to be a typical case that follows a typical trajectory. But there is no typical, silly!
Today marks F I V E years since my surgery. I intentionally made space between these letters to let them breathe beautifully like I should do too. I’m halfway. Five more to go to get to T E N before he will stamp C U R E D in my chart (they don’t really have a stamp I don’t think, but it would be cool if there was one, and it made that sound when your passport gets stamped, and you excitedly press on toward the fun holiday ahead). There’s no recipe, no airtight prognosis. There’s no, “Here’s exactly what’s going to happen to you.” There’s no, “Sometimes it stays away in the short-term, sometime in the long-term, or it will come back.” No one knows, but time passing is a good thing.
It was reassuring when I noticed a limp my doctor had a few appointments ago. I certainly don’t wish that for him, but he’d had an injury and needed surgery. I was reminded that it’s not just me who’s the patient, and I’m not alone in getting older, and we’re all dealing with limps and lumps in the road. This, I find comforting, that I’m not so separate. He’s not who he was five years ago, any more than I’m who I was. But he’s much improved and his limp has disappeared. My oncology appointments are less frequent and my eye stopped twitching years ago. I’m still getting those marketing mailers asking for money, and finding them in my mailbox is as reassuring as the first time.
So, I suppose we can now simply circle back to the instruction: Live Your Life, and enjoy it right now together.