The neighborhood is quiet again. For six weeks during the summer, there’s a camp across the street. The kids are quite … audible from about 9AM to 4PM. It’s delightful, really, the sounds they make, their shrieks of laughter and chatter. Now, it’s easier, again, to hear birds but the noises of childhood are all gone. Probably that’s not true in most neighborhoods but ours is an older population. There are few children here and their giggles are muted. 

In her poem “Don’t Hesitate,” Mary Oliver writes, “Joy is not made to be a crumb.” She tells us to embrace the joyful moments we come upon because they are few and unexpected. Isn’t that a child’s laugh? The smell of the bread my daughter is baking? When my son teases me and we chuckle because I called Deadpool Spiderman? I can’t wait for an end to cancer to experience joy because there might not be an end to cancer but if we don’t seek it out and celebrate those found moments, there will definitely be an end to joy. 

It’s cycle 8, the last cycle of chemo for now. And it’s been full of delights – vomiting, attacks of unproductive nausea (if you know, you know), cold sweats, dizziness, and lots of unspecified gastrointestinal delights. At least I know I’ll have a break soon. 

My nails have started peeling but thankfully, my hands and feet are not. Yes, that’s a pretty common chemo thing – peeling appendages. Ken struggled with it. His feet especially looked like dried alligator skin. Nothing seemed to help him. I’ve been more fortunate and more responsive to my daughter’s entreaties to please use the body lotion people have so kindly sent me. It’s working; so, thanks, everyone. 

It gets tiresome, you know, to constantly think about your own wellbeing. We’re all mostly oblivious to the functions of our bodies until those parts are not quite working. Back aches, stomach upsets, sore feet are all experiences we’ve had and moved on from, not giving them a thought. But in the midst of an extended health event, everything is about what’s working and not. And after a bit, it’s annoying to be constantly spotting problems. 

One morning, I woke up thinking “I feel sick.” Then, I sat up and had terrible vertigo that did not end when I lay back down. Closing your eyes works (in case you ever experience vertigo). After a few moments, the dizziness was gone but the nausea stayed. I have to eat to take my chemo pills so I had a glass of milk for breakfast and an egg for dinner and nothing in between. Tiresome, you see what I mean? Who wants to constantly be thinking about whether they feel okay? 

Recently, I was shopping at Costco with my daughter – we had run out of milk which is a catastrophe in our house. We were discussing the merits of a clearance storage item when I suddenly felt very wonky and started to cold-sweat. My worst nightmare is to have a health event at Costco and there we were, health-event underway. I sat on one of their display sofas for a bit, visited the bathroom for reasons you can imagine without further explanation, sat on the sofa again, and then decided to wait in the car where I could direct air conditioning on my very sweaty brow. 

Alas, that was not to be as the car had a very dead battery. Yes, that’s right. A 90 degree day and a dead battery – so, back I went into Costco to sit on that convenient sofa. 

My daughter made sure I was okay on the sofa, did all the food selecting, checked out, and loaded the car. I took on the easier task of jumping the battery with our lovely battery charger (having one in the car is so unnecessary until your battery is dead!), with her providing the essential moral support because I was really going through something as we like to call it. On the way home, she even put up with the frigid car temperature so I could cool my very sweaty self. And then she put all the groceries away while I lay on the sofa. One of the silver linings, I guess, is having the opportunity to see my loved ones shine in my rather dark place. 

Next week starts my long chemo break. I’ll have scans in September and visits with my surgeon and oncologist in October. I wonder what our next steps will be.

Much love.