There were emergency vehicles blocking one lane on my route yesterday. My first response, you may have experienced this yourself, was annoyance at the delay. The road is limited access so I couldn’t even zip off to a side street and go around the problem. As we all merged left and crawled closer to the first responders, I realized –because they were right THERE in unavoidable plain sight — that one of them seemed to be doing CPR. (My momma used to tell us not to look at accidents. As a young girl, I disregarded that advice and expect, more than 30 years later, that

I will never erase the image of the dead motorcyclist lying face-up on the road, blood pooled around his head.) Seeing the paramedics bustling around, all I could think about was that this person’s loved ones had no idea that their spouse, friend, parent, sibling was lying on the ground, on the side of the road, surrounded by people trying to save his or her life. It’s possible that I won’t ever know the outcome and I’m not, TBH, sure that I want to. I can imagine a happy outcome but I won’t be able to erase a bad one from my mind.

I have a note from early March in my phone:  “Dear cancer, you may have robbed us of our peace but you did not rob us of our identity.” What does that mean? Is it even true? Sometimes I wonder if this is really our new normal or if we’ll ever get there. Our journey is so very new – we finish round 6 this week — a drop in the chemo bucket for sure. Is there a time “after” cancer? Once cancer takes a seat at the table, do we ever get to show it the door?

We’re struggling with increasing symptoms and the worry their existence generates. How do you distract yourself from a life-threatening illness when it is continually present? Discomfort, bleeding, visible tumors — these are hard to ignore. There are so many other intrusions introduced by cancer. I don’t mention them much but they are decidedly present and unforgettable, including the yellow waste container for disposing of medical waste generated during pump removal (there’s so much waste).

For me, as difficult as chemo is, I think the hardest part of cancer is not being able to get it out of our heads. I dream about dread and awake to dread. It is not restful. Ken actually has fairly pleasant dreams. He says waking is the awful part. For just a moment, as his eyes open, all is good. Then, he remembers and is jolted by overwhelming sorrow.