May is not January

I woke up this morning to the realization that we were actually almost 6 months into the year 2007. It's May, for crying in the beer. Aren't we still in January? And barring that, okay, I'll admit it might be February, or perhaps March. But MAY? Where did the time go? And, no, I don't write that phrase without noticing it's normally reserved for time spent doing pleasurable things, like the phrase, "My, how time flies..." And, yes, there is a certain amount of bitterness there.

Okay, so let's examine "The Case of the Missing Six Months" (Will it become "The Case of the Missing Nine Months"?). How the heck did this happen? It's not as if I'm not paying attention to dates; every month brings some: birthdays, anniversaries and other events that need remembering, bills to be paid, meetings with students to be arranged and attended, doctor's appointments, and many other, near daily date reminders. Clearly, I have been marking time. January was surgery, my parent's visit, and my niece's birthday; February was the start of chemo and Valentine's day; March was our anniversary, a visit from Joey (Spring Break), a trip to Phoenix to visit with Mike's mom who was passing through with a friend, Mike's 50th birthday, and more chemo; April was Mike's Taiwan visit, my sister's visit, Easter, the Pima County Fair, more chemo; May has so far marked Allyson's wedding, the end of term, Joey's return for the summer, Mother's Day, a friend's daughter's and two nephews' birthday, and more chemo. So. It does seem that six months have passed and that I have noted that passing in a number of ways (and many more not mentioned here).

But why, then, did I wake up bewildered at the passage of time? I ask myself, "What have I been doing?" Oh, right. Let's see what the common denominator is in the list above: start of chemo, more chemo, more chemo, more chemo. Hmm. This doesn't seem like a good way to pass time. Why not on a beach under an umbrella holding a drink in a coconut, or exploring foreign cities and dining at night in outdoor cafes, or going to a wildlife sanctuary or a petting zoo, or getting a root canal, say? All of these things would be undeniably more pleasurable than filling one's veins with poison every three weeks, even the last one.

Okay, so this is what I've been "doing" all this time. I put quotes around that because despite trying to keep up with students and their work, which I think of as actually "doing" something, I don't really feel like I've been doing anything and I guess I'm looking for where these six months have gone. Don't get me wrong. A lot of research shows that cancer patients who think of chemo as friendly, do better than those who don't. So I spend some of my time thinking of the poison as a rapids-like stream running through my veins, seeking out all the nooks and crannies where cancer cells hide, and Zap! Zap! Zap! When I'm feeling my worst, I see the Good Guys - cells I think of as shaped sort of like Mr. Potato Head or the Planter's Peanut (with gloves and shoes and hard hats) - both constructing and holding up walls that keep The Stream away from all the other good cells and direct it towards the bad ones. The worse I feel, the more I see the Good Guys sweating from their efforts, shoring up walls that are trembling and buckling, but still holding. And the Good Guys always cheer on The Stream. A bit ridiculous, but it gets me through. That doesn't feel like a whole heck of a lot of "doing" though.

So this morning at 5:40 AM I asked myself if the Missing Six Months case could be solved with a simple answer. First, I realized that the real passage of time for me is being marked on a sort of "When will it end?" calendar and the answer to that is "Not yet", and more philosophically, "Not ever". I don't think I can just wait for the end of treatment so I can pick up my life where it left off in December, ignoring what I've been through in between (which is pretty much what I think I did the first time around). So where did the Missing Six Months go? Simple. They haven't been missing at all. What I've been doing is living my life - albeit not in the way I'm used to, but living it nonetheless.

I also realized that I knew this - dang it - but I just forgot for a minute (or several weeks). You'd be lucky to find a single picture of me from the last time I had cancer. It was an event that I wanted to put behind me in every possible way. But, okay, I wasn't lucky and I got hit with it again. But this time, I'm beginning to understand that having a life-threatening illness is actually a part of life for many people, and I am now one of those people. So, here's a picture from our recent trip to Victoria Island, that shows me living.