In a couple of days, I'll have my second follow up visit with Dr. Brigance. I expect by then to ditch the tube sticking out of my neck--and I have to admit I haven't hated it as much as I thought--there's something handy about a pipe that can spew that much phlegm that efficiently.
I won't enjoy the inevitable scar it will leave, but I'll wear it as a honorific of this experience. Hope to never enter again the same way, but I'll at least know that I can.
I'm watching my skin settle back and waiting to see where those scars will be more permanent and where they will be less so--public swimming and public tanning, of neither am I a likely participant, may be out as options. So, being upset about that would be like pretending I care who wins the Superbowl.
I'll keep elevating and working with the right leg, but I can walk on it fine: the foot still swells probably more than it ought to, and if that doesn't quit, I'll have to shop DSW for differently sized pairs of shoes. The special section: Hot Freaks and The Shoes They Love. Clearance! I get a variation on that email from them daily as it is.
Everything has gone well, frankly. Some of it so shockingly beyond well that I'm speechless. Hospitalization was incredible. I woke up on day 2 pretty much ready to come home aside from still wanting a nap. I felt, and have continued to feel, so good. Scott thinks that I lived with so much pain, and that of such a pervasive quality, that the lack of it is alone enough to elevate the senses. I'm sure he's right. I just--now--can't tell you how much that was: My mind won't think of it, or measure it. This is something about myself I love, and would have had no idea how to design--an ability to forget the worst because the measure of it alone is evil.
My home time has emphasized the goodness of naps and the realness of limits--that neither are failures of any sort. I've lost too much weight to be strong and I've lost too much muscle to compete. And there is no competition. I'm in the slog right now: gain weight if I can, stabilize as much as I can, get ready for the bruising of radiation and chemo dead ahead.
If you are tempted to see the hand of a god in my recovery, or a miracle in its speed, I think that's perfectly ok, but I don't agree with you. Oh, I am tempted at least in the miracle part--but I have to tell you that I think I've got to own this one. Agency is mine.
I can't deny I've worked like a hell hound to be ok, to keep my head on straight, to calm myself when they've wished to drill in me, shove a camera down my throat, pull a catheter out of my penis, stick one back in, sit me up, lay me flat, picture this, x-ray here--I've kept the center still and quiet.
Nothing has come between me and this vision: I start from 3500 Market Street and I run, at about 6.5 miles per hour, to the Embarcadero Building. It's a Saturday, so the Farmer's Market is in full swing. Once there, I buy a loaf of Acme Sourdough for later, but pastries for now, some olives, some of those strawberries! I find some organic butter and local honey. I buy the nicest salami I've seen in a long time. The hippies with the olive oil stand have a garlic and herb mixed oil that I have to have--like now. And along with about 23,000 other people I look out toward Treasure Island while Scott and I try about fifty types of junk chocolate and coffee and mille feuille, he having come from Crissy Field, a bit further but no more fun than my Market Street journey.
After this, there is life, and it is incredible. It's soaked with the peculiar sunlight they have in San Francisco--and I've found that if one is from there, you don't know how particularly good that sunlight is--it takes a Midwesterner who has lived without it for far too long to point it out. The slant and the color are astounding. This is the kind of sunlight that pierces you and uplifts, creating a song or a poem or an appetite.
I've done well because this is what I want, because nothing stands between me and the vision of what is right and proper. I deserve to do well because I'm willing to work and earn my normal badge. And I'll tell you what I predict next--when the radiation burns, I'll figure out how to deal. When the chemo creates a puke, I'll figure out how to refill my stomach.
And, I'm willing to say that it may go even better than any of us suspect. After all, I'm running this scenario and I'm willing to make it good.
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