I feel sorry for people who eat in front of me. Inevitably, they feel some level of guilt no matter how much I assure them they needn't; I understand. I used to like potato chips and dip occasionally too.
This was the classic small guilt trap Charles fell into yesterday, trying to hide his chips and dip in the kitchen as he made his dinner. He didn't reckon with my nose, grown more incredible throughout this ordeal, responding to the genie finger of the dip's lovely bouquet. There was the expression of sorrow, the response of un-necessary, the usual give and take for me.
I have, over the past year, planned for a return to eating food, and held it out as a personal goal. I have been not-so-gently disabused of the fantasy of any return to normal eating though. In fact, I have been somewhat not-so-gently disabused of virtually every fantasy I've held important over the past year.
In planning for the next surgery, the surgical team's first response here is not encouraging. Yes, they may be able to close the big hole in my neck that has opened up, and yes, they need to remove the bone that radiation killed in my jaw, the sweet little transplant that withered in the pulsing rays of cancer killing.
Yet, no, there is no plate they can put in as a holder, and no one (including me) is excited to harvest the bone from my left leg to replace the dead bone. With no bone in the jaw, my mouth will eventually push down and crush my trachea, meaning I will never eat again through that hole, and never breathe again without this stupid tube in my neck. I won't speak, ever again, so the only way you'll hear my uniquely snarky voice is to imagine it plastered over the more radio ready voice of Ryan, the sound my Ipad "Speak It" program makes.
I could play the voice on my new phone, but right now it's a particularly breathy woman and I can't figure out how to change it.
All of this bad news came with the caveat that the surgeon had to consider how much to do for me considering that people with my metastatic profile had a 2 year survival window post cancer spread. 2 years! Some of which I've already used up!
Yes, friends, again there is someone calling time on me when I hardly feel as if I've started fighting. True, this time it's years instead of months, but still--come on. I keep telling these game enders that I intend to keep going and they keep smiling at me with that poor fool smile they save for people like me who are deluded. Yet I'm not! I'm not near ready to leave, and further, don't feel like that's even in the cards or present as an option.
if I only have 2 years survival, and I've already run 7 months after the ending of my first phase of treatment, shouldn't I start having some indication that I'm dying? I mean, really, is that too much to expect? Instead, I keep finding reasons that I think I'm going further, that I indeed will make it to my goal age of 70, accepting anything beyond that as purely gifted.
I keep seeing Spring or at least the possibility of it, and I keep smelling french onion dip (now made with greek yogurt which Charles assures me is quite good). It's not simply intent--it's truly the smell around me, and the sight I see.
I don't blow off the opinion of experts entirely--I could just be entirely wrong--but I'm not!
Charles was nice enough to remind me that I heard the opinion of one person, tomorrow I'll hear the opinion of a second. A doctor of my original team too and likely to agree with his colleague. I understand the importance of empiricism, without which I'd likely still be living in a Cotton Mather colony and burning unfortunately interesting men and women as witches.
Empiricism though does not explain what chips and dips do for me, what a hamburger means. It has no notion of the importance of seeing who my great-great niece marries, which I hope will require at least 15 more years to find out. I am curious about pop music--when will auto-tune lose its uninteresting hold upon us? Will it be 2020 or 2025? I don't know about you, but I can't wait to find out.
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