I'm starting 2015 pretty much where I left 2014--in the Infusion Center at Premier Healthcare. I couldn't think of a better way to start; here, I have warmth, support and good memories of results I didn't expect from treatment. I'm better at the start of 2015 than I was at the start of 2014. Although I've lost weight recently, I'm still 26 pounds up on last year. My vitals are steady, and I have managed to not break anything, fall down, or otherwise screw up a good thing.
I spent NYE in my chair, with my electric throw, a schnoodle intermittently jumping on me for love and then bouncing over to Charles for more of the same. Rally is nothing if not practical--do not risk wearing out one set of hands when you have two to use.
This is, too, the start of gearing up for a surgery in the Spring, this time to excise what's left of the chest tumor, resect with some left side musculature and then graft with some skin from my thigh. I am under orders to eat and gain weight, as much as possible. It's rather hard to harvet epidermis when the thigh is not somewhat fattened. Like a calf in the desert with those wandering exodus Jews, apparently.
Surgery, while not fun, does at least provide the promise of knockout drugs, and let me go on record and say that I understand why Michael Jackson liked them so much. I usually wake from surgery like a baby staring at a white sheet. Nothingness happened to me during that twilight, nothingness upon waking. I come out of a refreshing sleep feeling, temporarily, way younger than I am.
If I'm not entirely sanguine about this impending experience, it's the worry that I won't heal as I should--this patch of skin was heavily irradiated and still, to this day, glows redder than any other spot. The skin that is here can ulcerate quickly and unpredictably, though with proper care, it does knit itself back together. I will take that small bit of optimistic healing to heart.
I made no resolutions for 2015--I'll let events show me how the wind blows, what I need to learn, how to act, what to do. I would though take the words "optimistic healing" to heart--to look forward to patching oneself together in the best way possible. But obviously healing isn't just a physical thing, the soul needs it, the heart needs it, the brain wants it.
I've been accused of being depressed in the past as if that was a weapon to be used against me, proof that I couldn't handle what was happening to me on my own. I defy anyone to live through what I have and not experience moments of depression--hell, when I see an empanada and realize I never ate enough of those, I have a moment of depression. I have one when some one talks to me and my hands are full and I can't answer. I will, for all the long glorious life I look forward to experiencing, have them. Why? Because I'm normal.
Optimistic healing works best with a dose of reality, and that's not a bad one. I'm not happy all the time, things don't always work out, not everything is care bear in Marktown. I don't expect that from others. In honor of optimistic healing, though, I will: refuse to wallow; refuse to read bullshit "woe is me" posts on Facebook from people I know to have jobs, places to live, and not just something to eat, but a huge variety of things to eat. My message? Life can suck, so suck it up; not over share the grossness that occupies a goodly portion of my life but focus on the way everything looks beautiful to me when the vile is cleaned up and gone. I will say this: there is nothing sweeter than a clean dressing and a clear nose.
The lesson of 2014, to me, was how much gold the dross is hiding. With a mere wiping of the eyes it becomes obvious that healing stands behind trauma, that a pervasive beauty is only poorly scrimmed by a gauzy ugliness in events. We live, we fall we get up. There's nothing new here, just a 54 year old dumbass going back to the kindergarten of life to figure out what survival is, what it will look like, how it will be.
And, as in real Kindergarten, survival has naps, all kinds of them, schnoodles (though a particular one), charleses who drive one to chemo and commiserates when needed, friends who insist I lunch with them so we can spend an hour or so cracking on one another, gossiping a bit, laughing a lot, and the wide open spaces of tomorrow, looking to be filled with joy, no bullshit, and a healthy dose of me.
Welcome 2015! I've been waiting for you.
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