Surprises, 6 Months into Chemo, Unranked
Facial-recognition logins don’t work without eyebrows and eyelashes
Sleeping with a chemo pump and cholecystostomy tube-and-bag pinned to my nightshirt is not impossible
A stomach, gallbladder, liver, and common bile duct will pay the pancreas piper for its will to live however it wants
“Covered by Medicare” can mean you pay $1.50 a month for some medications, and over $1,000.00 a month for others
Eye-contact from passersby is largely binary: alarmed stares or quick avoidance; dogs will still engage
From (unpurchased) searching alone, Amazon knew I had cancer before most of my friends did
Sweet Natal-plum blossoms and fragrant sage along the sidewalk = all the matter that matters, sometimes
Skin becomes crepe paper; forearms mottle with red and purple scrapes from who-knows-where
Indeterminate internal organs squeeze themselves after a meal, like udders being milked
The word pancreas derives from a Latinized form of the ancient Greek: “sweetbread”; along with the thymus, sweetbreads are edible organ meats, usually from calves
Until you shave your head pre-emptively, you won’t know how many – dozens! – of cowlicks your head holds; the word cowlick derives from the swirls and redirections of hairy calves’ heads, after their mothers lick them
Physician comments around imaging scans like, “Because of your unusual anatomy” and “Never seen that before” just, well, surprises: all the things I never knew about myself, my own body, until a quiet cluster of cells finally turned up its amp
Pancreatic cancer can grow for 10-20 years before onset of symptoms
My 90-year-old mother could well outlive me; outliving any of her children would gut her
My modest retirement funds will probably last long enough after all
Rather than consider all this a “side-track” from my retirement plans, like friends say empathetically, I think all this is my track
Both music and the background hum of traffic feel nourishing when I can’t stomach eating anything
Binge-watching immerses me in other lives and times; this week I snapped out of the 1880s’ Gilded Age and landed in the 1980s of The Americans; the characters and relationships aren’t so different
Recursively, I wonder about the blurry mysteries of birth and death, lifelong gut feelings, knowings, fears, recognitions, memories and imaginings, and whether any of those are so different from each other
Surprised to feel so palpably, keenly, all the people who are thinking of me, from various time-zones
Semi-surprised to feel palpably, keenly, how hard this local mass of “abnormal” cells is also fighting for its life
Thanks for reading. Hugs and plum blossoms,
Muffin
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