The Joy in Mudville

It finally reached 70 degrees in Bloomington, which is the sign that we've nearly completed our transition from Winter to Spring. There may be freak snow, a bit of frost across the grass in the morning, but we are on our way to 100% humidity and 90 degrees.

I have always found the transition of these seasons to be difficult; my body feels like it's been cut in two and moves in different directions. This year, I suspect the difficult transition has made me constantly tired, constantly sleepy, sluggish when I'm up and diffident to depth when I sleep. My trach tube is full of the--wait for it--effluvia and difficult to deal with...for some reason none of it wants to leave. This is a nice house, it seems to say, and we are in it to win it. This, and only this, is why I fear death by choking,

The next surgery has its schedule--April 15. You pay your taxes, I pay my cancer dues. I'm apprehensive about the recovery period, how I heal where they take skin for grafting, how I heal where they put a drain in my back from the muscle they pull around the body, how it will be once Krakatoa, my personal volcano, is cut out of me. I suppose this is normal apprehension, but it feels like prediction--bad omens circle me (I've been watching I, Claudius, on Huluplus, so forgive me the Roman reference).

Good omens, though, come in the form of my niece who proposes to visit with her Batman-obsessed husband, and children, and another of my nieces, and potentially her boyfriend. So I get to make a lunch for Easter, an Indiana throw down of chicken and ham, potatoes in some format, maybe some steamed asparagus or cauliflower. The Easters of my far younger days were spent eating...ham, potato salad, those oddly sweet little gherkins, black olives from a can. All of my basket's chocolate in one day, of course, and part of my brother's.

Now that I can't eat or drink normally, I enjoy seeing other people do it. I'm like a tourist at a luncheon party, one who has visited before--I know where the landmarks are, and on this trip, I want to see how the natives live. I'm fascinated to see what people choose to eat, how much of it, what works and what doesn't in the cookery. As a cook, I want people to love what I make, though not being able to taste it is a great disadvantage--but no more so than those people on "Chopped" who inexplicably make sauces out of the grossest combinations of ingredients and then don't taste it before the judging. That's either excess ego or excess stupidity.

I haven't thought much of my life post-surgery this time. The last time, the major surgery, I saw myself as returning pretty much to normal, albeit 85% tongueless. I rather thought I'd just be Mark again. I woke thinking I looked the same, I acted as if I was him. I never want to go through the experience of such a let down again. So I don't think of what will be, I think of what is. I'll still have the Scream Mask mouth, I'll still drool, I'll still have the neck hole, I'll still have the numb feet. I'll still be the Frankenstein, and for a couple of weeks, my chest will resemble his rather full cloth. There will be surgical staples (ugh, gross), and drainage and whatever vulgarity cancer can throw at me.

What won't be--a tumor that is potentially releasing it's constant toxicity into my bloodstream and it's errant re-programmed cells into my bloodstream and lymph system. For this alone, everything is worth it. This is the first real step to control, given that frying me like a KFC special and bathing me in chemicals week after week have gotten us just to the point where this is possible. Control means the balance isn't just me on the light side of the seesaw. It means 70 is more possible than it was.

After two years of fighting, I'm amazed. That every day has required me to act and think 100% to the positive side, to physically ignore that I'm tired, to try to be part of life as it swims all around me. The surgery offers the possibility of a second gear, a place where I can rest a bit. By rest I mean my mind, the true battleground of cancer--there's the possibility I want have to manically support myself and cheer for myself and attaboy myself every damn minute of the day--that I can daydream, and wander and think and plan.

Lately, I've been walking in mud, living in Mudville, napping hours and hours per day. My mind needs some refreshment, some visual stimulation, something that the 14th Century, a biography of Catherine the Great, binge watching (rewatching) the X Files, or reading about Indiana's weird grasp of discrimination don't offer.

The joy in Mudville is that I've nearly waded through it to the outskirts. Where the normal people live. And if they chase me off with torches, so be it. My creators, in their shiny medical castles, will always welcome me back. I'm big business, and a whole lot of fun to chop up.