halftime

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so,
here we are again.
leanne is in the recliner,
lydia is on the couch,
leanne’s childhood friend jen, who left her husband, 18 month old and 6 week old,
just made us crab cakes.

today was chemo day #3.
halfway to the promised land
filled with the regrowth of hair and of our life.

we saw the doctor today.
without much fanfare, he showed us the petscans and said,
in monotone, that he was tickled by the results.

we are too.

let me explain:

the black parts are actively dividing cancer cells,
(with the exception of her brain, her two kidneys midway down, and her bladder…
which are just areas of activity, and they’re supposed to be active.
and we’re glad they’re all active…and we hope they stay that way.
yours would be active too, if you were one of those thinking, peeing, blood filtering types,
which you are.)

so, in five weeks of chemo,
the neck is sleeping silently,
as are the dots on her vertebrate,
as are the tremendous tumors all around her abdomen and pelvis.

and what you can also see, of course,
is the heart. why it was fainter
when the cancer was strong,
i don’t know.

but here it is now,
making its mark,
like it did on the fluoroscope
so many weeks ago.

————

lee and jen listened to 80s music
and talked about old times,
while i thought about newer old times:
the past six weeks.

six weeks.

sometimes it feels like it’s over already.
i know it’s not, but it feels like it.

——

i’ve worked with survivors of rape before.
one of them, when asked if she was over it, said:

rape isn’t something you get over.
it’s just not the first thing you think about when you wake up.

i think what we’ve gone through, what we’re going through,
is going to be like that.

————-

it feels as if she had tetanus or rabies or pneumonia,
and the doctors said: well, sure, it’s not good, but we’ll just give you a few shots and you’ll be fine.

and they gave her a few shots.
and she’s fine.
there’s a violation of life, yes,
but one day we may not think of it
upon waking up.

we may not think of it at all.

it’s not the cancer story that many people know.
and it’s not the cancer story that i’ve known either.

none of it.

not her age,
not her pregnancy,
not her jumping from stage 1 to stage 4,
and not her recovery.

at least not like this.

and so we’re telling a new kind of cancer story here,
as each cancer patient is doing.
and these new cancer stories will add to the old ones,
and in some ways push them aside, maybe, or give hope, maybe,
where there was not hope before.

we are the stories we tell.
and we can become the stories we hear.

they are all true,
so long as we tell them,
so long as we listen.

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