Marking the Day

Once again, I was brought to the brink of disaster and, once again, saved.

My doctor called me with the news that my results came back negative (which is positive news) – a fibro-something.  I prefer his technical explanation that it was “completely boring” (though the nurse told me I would have to have a repeat mammogram in a year to see if anything has changed and apparently now I am in a higher risk category). 

In the first few days after I received the good news, I felt alternately grateful and angry.

Grateful, because: 

I am doing fine, for the moment, after ovarian cancer, (which, my ovarian cancer specialist said,  will kill you), minus a number of organs and a serious case of PTSD.

My body healed itself after scares that I might have to have a nephroscopy bag or might lose a kidney because of my complication from surgery.  It turns out I didn’t even need further surgery. 

I  didn’t break any bones falling off my high bed at the yoga retreat even though I have osteoporosis.

This latest scare turned out okay.

Angry, because:

I have to be grateful not to have had two cancers in as many years and to not have a nephroscopy bag, etc. when no one else around me does either and they don’t have to feel grateful about it.

Others seem to receive congratulations for getting a new job or promotion but I get it for not having (another) cancer.

And, really, just because.  I had to spend another 6 weeks on tests and a biopsy (which was not fun, says the girl who thought the mammogram was actually okay) and had to wait, suspended in time, to find out if I was going to have cancer again or not. Because, to cope, I took Ativan again, and the withdrawal (decided to go cold turkey, just because I couldn’t make myself take another one of those pills) even after a few weeks is tough.  And just because.

I guess I really felt that somehow the world should change after I got the good news.  And it didn’t.  Just as when I was going through the tests and waiting for possibly life-changing news, I was expected to go to work, co-ordinate my children’s activities, cook the meals, after I got the news, I was expected to do exactly the same thing.  When I expected the world to somehow mark my news.

I told Jaime that I wanted to mark the event somehow.  He suggested a trip, which I would have loved, but I let practical considerations get in the way (though I am trying not to let those get in the way more often). 

Instead, I said I wanted to do a hike around Pink Lake in the Gatineaus in the early morning.  I love the Gatineaus and thought there would be something sacred in an early morning walk there.  My kids were not happy.  What?  A hike?  We don’t like hikes.  Early?  Why?  We don’t like to wake up early.  And when we do, we like to sit in front of the T.V.  Well, somehow, I got there buy-in, and by 8:00 on Sunday morning, we were packed and on our way to Pink Lake, even knowing to take an alternative route because of the bike race.  Well, wouldn’t you know, that alternative route was also closed because of Sunday morning bike rides.  We turned around and headed to Meach Lake instead.  When we got there, things looked okay.  But when we started the walk, about a million mosquitoes started to attack us, getting in our eyes and mouth and biting us.  Poor Amrita was getting the most bitten, though at least I had made her wear long pants.  To keep the mosquitoes away, Jaime swatted at his face and his glasses flew off, landing somewhere in the piles of leave, where we couldn’t see.  We started looking for them, getting eaten all along.  I finally spotted them.  We walked faster.  We ran, and ran and ran, all the way to the clearing and a lake, where there was a brief respite from the bugs.  At the lake, we stopped for a bit and I tried to really look and to really see and really breathe and really be grateful.  We saw butterflies.  We saw fish.  We saw ripple in the water. After a few minutes, when we were ready to do the run back, we set our watches to see how long it would take.  10 minutes.  We ran back in 10 minutes.  It used to take us 40 minutes to do the walk.

So the walk didn’t go exactly how we planned.  But for me, it was the beginning of being able to let this latest scare go.  The beginning of being able to breathe again.  The beginning of being able to think about my life again.  I don’t expect the world to change anymore. I marked it.  And now I can go on.

And my kids said it was the best hike we’ve ever been on!