Warning

NOTE: I warn you in advance, this will not be the happy-go-lucky of yesterday. However, I also promise to go meet up with some people today who will hopefully help shift my perspective.

I am scared. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want my chiropractor to tell me that the pain I’ve had in my side for a week isn’t muscular, it’s an inflamed kidney. I don’t want to question if it’s the daily injection of blood thinner I've been giving myself that’s causing it.

I don’t want to talk with the coordinator at Kaiser about “relocating” to Stanford for a bone marrow transplant. I don’t want to have to tell him that I haven’t had my bone marrow biopsy yet. I don't want to speak words like, I will likely stay with chemotherapy for 4 rounds instead of going the transplant route. I don't want my doctor to say words like "complications from each round."

I don’t want to have to feel scared falling asleep last night. I don’t want to have to tell the dark that I don’t want to die. I don’t want to think about this specter of cancer following me for the rest of my life.

I don’t want to be so reminded of how mortal I am, or how my body functions and currently malfunctions.

I don’t want to have to notice everything so acutely, or appreciatively. I don’t want to wake up and the first thing I say to be, I’m glad to be alive. I don’t want this to be the reason I say it.

I want to have the problems I already had – romance, finance, family, career. I want normal problems. I want normal activities, and normal griping. I want what I had. And I can’t ever again in the same way.

I don’t want to do this anymore. 

I don’t want to go in tomorrow and have them gauge some muck out of my skeleton to observe under a microscope. I don’t want to plead for them to stop because it hurts, like I had to last time.

I don’t want to feel so powerless to do anything except accept what’s happening. I don’t want to remember the phrase: The distance between what we want and what’s happening is proportional to our pain. I don’t want to remember that I’m upset because I’m not in acceptance of what is happening.

I don’t want to accept it. And yet, I have absolutely no choice.

I don’t want the doctors to tell me that I have maybe a 60% chance of having kids now – even though I wasn’t sure that I wanted them. I don’t want choices taken away from me that I haven’t been able to approve of.

I don’t want to be so fallible, and so human. I don’t want to be so weak in a human body that can betray me.

I don’t want to lose my vision. My eyes continue to do things that the doctors can’t really explain, but aren’t as concerned about anymore. I don’t want to hear solutions like a shunt in my brain to relieve pressure on my eye, or surgery to the muscles of my eye in order to fix these problems.

I don’t want to THINK ABOUT THIS ANYMORE.

I want to go to work. I want to go to the coffee shop. I want to go to art shows. I want to procrastinate, and leave dirty dishes in my sink too long and leftover food ‘til it grows mold in my fridge.

I want to talk about boys on the phone with my girlfriends, and squeal when one gets engaged. I want to go home for Thanksgiving like a normal person.

I want my hair back.

I don’t want to know that it’ll take three years for it to grow back. I don't want people to tell me what a nice shaped head you have.

I don’t want to know that each time I go through chemo, I’m going to get weaker each time I get home – so this, right now, right the fuck now, is the best that I’ll feel for the next 5 months.

I don’t want to know this.

I broke my foot when I was in 6^th grade, riding my bike home from Sunday school. I was on crutches for 6 months. I remember being embarrassed – I mean, I was 11, and being different at 11 is awful. I remember having to hobble down the 6^th grade graduation line next to the shortest boy in class, because I was on crutches so I couldn't stand by height like everyone else.

But, really, I don’t remember the length of six months on crutches. I remember a few stand-out incidents of that time, but I don’t remember it like it was “forever.”

I don’t want to know that I know that this won’t be forever. That “this too shall pass.” I don’t want to know that I know this.

But I do.

And it sucks, because it spits in the face of all my complaints and my self-pity. I’m allowed, I know, to have some of this self-pity. I know that I’m allowed any emotion I want to have. But, I know it won’t last either.

I’ll feel different. I’ll feel better. And then I’ll feel awful and cry again.

I do want to be thinking about bus stop boy again. I want to be thinking about earning money to save to move back East. I want to be thinking about art for a café show.

But, instead, I think about mortality. I think about how tenuous this is, and how if I don’t do exactly what’s in front of me, I’m going to die.

Instead, I talk with doctors about stuff I don’t want to know about at all, let alone have it be about me and not fictional and on House.

I want to read Harry Potter without the stain of tick-tock in the background.

I will feel better. But I needed to say all this, because it’s true. Because today is a day when I’m crying about my circumstances. Because today is a day I can’t see past the end of my own shit.

I need to say all this because it takes the isolation out of it, and helps me move through it. So, thanks. 

That 20/20 Thing.

I guess I should tell you about the miracle-y things that have been happening during this time. There are two major ones, and here they are:

One: My Job

(It’s funny, when I was home sick with strep prior to going to the hospital, I emailed my boss about my home-sick-from-work status with the title of the email “I thought Job was a later chapter” – little did I know!) ;P

So, as some of you have been reading, I’d been unemployed since graduating with my Master’s in May. I’d been actively looking, thinking about moving back home, applying to anything and everything, with no luck for months. Then, I got the job I now have at the synagogue in Berkeley.

When I got this job, I was resentful. I was thrilled to increase my bank balance from $3.98, but I felt ashamed that I had worked so hard and arrived at what I considered to be an entry level position in the front office – somewhere I’d been many times before. You heard me gripe about it, be the opposite of humble about it, and generally kinda be a dick about having finally gotten a job when I so desperately needed one.

So, here’s the “oo ee oo” part. I got sick. I got really sick. I will be in and out of the hospital for the next 5 months or so, mostly in. So, I can’t work, obviously.

My boss’s son had cancer when he was a child, and his son is alive well, and just had a kid of his own. My boss has had empathy for my situation from the beginning, and as this started to go down, he said to me that they would have a temp in until I came back – that they would hold my job for me. …

At the time this was said, I still didn’t really know what all this cancer treatment would look like – how long it would be. So a few weeks later, when I now knew it was going to be 5 months, not one, and my boss came to visit me in the hospital, I hemmed and hawed – would they still keep my job for me, knowing how long it would be ‘til I came back? Should I tell him? Should I not and just hope for the best?

Well, I ended up telling him. And you know what he said? “I know how important job security is at a time like this, and your job will be here for you when you’re ready.” WHAT THE HELL? How are people so nice?

And here’s the miracle part – IF I had gotten a job with any other company, I can’t imagine that they would be a tenth the amount of understanding. I mean, a bottom line, deadlines, emails, someone needs to be ON IT. If I had gotten any other job, I can’t imagine that they’d hold my job for me ‘til I was healthy, let alone come visit me in the hospital as several of my BRAND NEW coworkers have, and the others who are planning to.

I couldn’t have planned this at all – and I was so pissed! So, hindsight is 20/20 and all that, right?

Although, there’s the part of me that’s like, um, hey G-d, you OBVIOUSLY saw this cancer thing coming, having set me up like a champ here, couldn’t we have gone a different route … but, it is what it is.

Two: My Apartment

I used to work for the property management company that manages my apartment building here in Oakland. When I worked for them in SF, they helped me get my apartment in SF, and when I moved to Oakland, they were equally as generous in helping me with my apartment here (which, by the way, is a 5 minute walk from the hospital at which I’m being treated…).

I left that job under not the most admirable circumstances, and earlier this year, I emailed my former boss to say as much and to apologize for not having been the worker I could have been. He emailed me back to say, yes actually, I could have handled that better, but that he “had my back” if I needed a reference or anything.

Later this summer, however, I emailed him when I was in my mania of “do i move back to New Jersey right now??” and I asked if I could give two-weeks’ notice on the apartment if needed, instead of a month. He emailed one word. “No.” And his assistant emailed me a form for the 30-day notice format ;)

So, I had no idea where I stood in his shit books or not when my mom called him early in October and said, basically, my daughter has leukemia and isn’t working, what can we do here?

Cue the “oo ee oo” once more. My former boss said … he himself had leukemia two years before. He asked if I’d applied for disability (if I’d have any income at all), my mom said yes. And he said, Don’t worry about it. Just keep me informed, and we’ll work it out.

…

What? In SF Bay Area? Rent is a “we’ll work it out”?? Miracle. He told my mom that I’d helped him out when he’d needed it, and true, I drove his dad to dialysis three days a week for a period while I worked there (although, I think I got more out of that one – I learned a lot in those conversations with that man).

My friend said recently to me that we get what we put into the world, and all the goodness that’s coming back to me is simply that. I’m just getting back what I’ve put into it.

It’s a little weird to think like that though, because my immediate thoughts are, it’s not like I am nice on purpose, it’s not like I’m keeping score of how great a person I am as I go out into the world. I just am how I am. So it feels weird to feel like, in a way, I’m being rewarded for that “just the way I am”ness.

However, I was contemplating that ridiculousness the other day, and I thought to myself, Molly, I don’t think cancer is a reward. :P

The bottom line of the above two amazing stories is the generosity of the human soul. It doesn’t really have anything to do with me.

I was talking with my current boss the other day about how many people are wanting to help and do things for me, but there’s often not much to do. I mean, I don’t really need much, except for some cards, and visits, and on occasion a ride to the doctor or a grocery run. But only one person at a time needs to do that. So there’s not a lot for people to do, and I feel that desire they have – to want to do something. To want to take some aspect of my own burdens away from me, because there are going to be many things that only I can and will go through by myself in this process.

So, I’m going to try to think on what people can do that’s concrete, that gives an opportunity to help and feel useful. Because this is what I said to my boss – these days, we rarely get the chance to help each other anymore. We’re all so independent, and I can do it on my own, that as a society and a people, that no one seems to need help anymore.

In a way, my being sick gives others the opportunity to help – to allow them to feel that good nachas (Yiddish) from doing something for someone else, just out of the kindness of their heart. Not for gain, or to check that score card I talked about. But just to help, because you can, and because you want to.

The capacity for human kindness shines very much in this portion of my story. Which, really, isn’t Job, because I’ve got a lot more support than he ever did. And I never owned any goats. 

Ain’t Dead Yet

Last night, I went to a Halloween party. Like a normal person.

I did fancy glitter make-up on my face, pretended my dress could pass as a 60s throw-back, donned my friend’s blue wig, and called myself a psychedelic stewardess (as they were called in the 60s, pre-politically corrected “flight attendant”).

It was amazing. It felt like normal. Like something a normal person would do the weekend of Halloween – get dressed up, go to a party. It’s something that has felt nearly unattainable for me after the whole cancer thing – normal. I danced. I danced a lot. I laughed, talked with friends, and it wasn’t about my cancer. Sure, a few people asked me how I was feeling, and if there was anything they could do, but for the most part, the people there had no idea the blue wig covered a shaved head. They just saw a girl at a party – and I am grateful for it.

Part of the anomaly of being so sick is that sometimes my health is what’s top of my mind, and it's immediately what I talk about when people call or visit. Sometimes it’s top of their minds, and they want to know about it. But … sometimes, I just want to know what the heck else is going on in the world. I mean, I didn’t even know the Giants were in the World Series. (Though, I remain partial to the NY teams, ahem.)

I want to know how your new job is, or your relationship, or what happened with that thing. I want to talk about something other than CANCER. It’s so overarching and undergirding that it feels hard to get away from, and just talk normally. That’s part of the “watching Ben Stiller movies” thing I was questioning yesterday – am I allowed to still have normal conversations, activities?

Thank G-d, as shown yesterday, YES. As I painted a star over my eye yesterday and asteroids on my cheek (despite a weird double-vision thing I have that the doctor tells me "will resolve itself”...) -- I felt like my old self. Engaged in an activity I love.

I do feel the guillotine though. I go back into the hospital a week from tomorrow, and it’s hard to not feel like my days are numbered. It’s hard to not get defensive in advance. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to do this 4 more times. And yet, this is what they know to do to cure cancer, or at least send it packing for what they hope is years, if not forever.

So, I try and remain present, if possible, but I know it’s looming. I have scheduled a bunch of self-care things this week, chiropractor tomorrow to realign all the sitting in a bed for three weeks issues; a masseuse that a generous friend gifted me on Tuesday to work out the rest of the kinks; Thursday, I’ll do work with a friend who's a professional at inner/spiritual healing to help work out the kinks from the inside as well.

It’s seems hard to try to live normally, and yet, as I saw yesterday, it wasn’t hard at all -- All I had to do was show up. – Plus, I kept the wig. ;)

Cancer.

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with Leukemia. And my whole life changed.

I don’t know what this change is, was, will be, but I know that I am in several ways entirely different than I was. The way, at least right now, that I see things are entirely new. And profoundly grateful. I almost died. And yet, I didn’t.

We each get this each day – I got this each day, prior to this happening. I got the chance to understand that life was precious, but I didn’t, really. I understood it, but to really feel it? Well, it’s different now,

and it brings up a host of other questions. Am I allowed to still watch Ben Stiller movies? Am I allowed to spend a day on the couch? Will I now stop stopping myself short on all my varied art projects, and allow myself to follow through on anything that I’ve started? I have no idea.

I’d like to think that part of this “change” – for lack of a better term for “life altering sudden tragic happening” – will indeed move me toward being more in my art, more in my life. I’d like to believe that part of this whole thing is a very nasty kick-upside-the-head lesson in not living for tomorrow. That I’m being given the chance to very acutely see that life is short and tenuous, and so I ought to embrace the talents that I have, and finally let myself explore them fully so that I might share them with you.

I’d like to believe that there are lessons here. Otherwise, what the fuck.

I’d like to believe that the Universe or my Higher Power couldn’t -- for some reason completely unknown to me – send me a postcard, or a dream, or a message on Facebook. That for some reason this lesson had to be learned hard, and fast, and therefore more gentle methods of smoothing a rock down to its shiny parts were not available to this massive Power.

I’ve been out of the hospital for a week now, and I will go back in next Monday for another round of chemo. This will be the 2^nd in a series of, likely, 5 treatments. The words that I’ve had to learn over this month scare the crap out of me. I don’t want to use words like chemo, nausea, pain meds, pneumonia. I don’t want to hear “How bad is the pain on a scale of 1 to 10,” or, “It’s time for your shot,” or “Well, we expect this.”

I’ve oscillated since I’ve been out of the hospital between those few stages of grief – anger, grief, acceptance. Often within the same minute. When I was in the hospital, there wasn’t time for anything except acceptance. This is happening. Period. Go with it. And, despite what you may think, it’s really f’ing busy in the hospital with people coming in and out at all hours of the day and night, throwing information or medication at you. There’s not really time to process, space to absorb and consolidate what has been happening to me.

And so, being home now, I’m getting the chance to experience what I couldn’t while basically holding my breath for 3 weeks. I’m getting to realize the enormity of what happened. The slow, marinating, seeping reality – I almost died. The nurse told me that I had 49% leukemic cells in my blood when I came into the hospital – WITH STREP THROAT – and that if I hadn’t come in, I would have died within two weeks. I would have gotten a bleed, likely in my brain, and I would have just died. No one would have known – no one would have known why. Relapse? Suicide? Understanding this fact has begun to lead me to know that I need help in holding the space for all this – and yesterday I contacted a cancer support group.

AND, I have to tell you, I don’t want to be someone who needs a cancer support group – I shouldn’t have motherfucking cancer in order to need such a group. A month ago, this was unfathomable.

This morning, I read my last Morning Pages entry from the week before I went into the hospital. I haven’t written morning pages since then, I was too sick, and then too hospitalized. And so I read them, and I see myself talking about how my throat really is starting to hurt. About how I went to the art store Flax and got new pens and a notebook and talked to the woman in the back about different types of pressed paper – hot press versus cold, what would be good for the art I want to do. About the café I’d emailed with the month before about putting up a show in their space, and how he wanted to do November, but I simply wasn’t ready, as it was the end of September at the time.

I’d written about the clothing I’d bought for cheap at good thrift shops, and the flying lesson I was scheduled for, which ended up being the day I went into the ER. I wrote about being excited, about art that I would make. About missing my family, and wanting to go home for Thanksgiving to see them.

In some ways, it feels like reading a journal from junior high, it feels so long ago. And yet, it’s all still me. And that’s something that I want to take away from this too. This process is going to be HARD, challenging, painful, difficult, and yet, I’m still me. As I was writing my first Morning Pages this morning since that last entry, I was inwardly elated to see my handwriting hadn’t changed. That major facts of who I am have not changed. That things that were important to me then, “before cancer,” are still things that are important to me now. – art, family, adventure.

I’ve been blasted with some of the nastiest chemicals, shorn down to the barest slices of my body ... but my handwriting is still the same.

I could go into the ways in which gratitude has become this sort of well of tears behind my eyes at all times. I could talk about how just waking up this morning feels like a gift. But I don’t want to today, really. I could list the thanks and the inundation of love and support and care, but that’s not what this blog is about this morning, at least. It’s not a love fest, it’s just a truth fest. About where I am this very day, at this very time, arguing and stamping and shaking a fist at the sky with WHY in the m’f’in hell couldn’t you have made this a little bit of a gentler lesson? About how I feel like I’m some sort of icon now, with people telling me all the time what an inspiration you are, when I’ve had diarrhea for 3 out of the last 4 weeks. I’ve asked people what on earth that even means, an inspiration to what? What have I inspired in you? What am I inspiring you to do? I haven't done anything except lived.

I get to be bitter about it. And I get to be amazingly thankful to get to be bitter about it – to be alive enough to have emotions enough to get to scorn about it.

It is surely true, the love and support I’ve gotten. And yet, there’s a part of me that feels angry that I even have a situation in which to receive such love and support. I know people love me. Couldn’t I have had my 31^st birthday at a restaurant with them, instead of in a hospital bed? Couldn’t I have learned to get out of the way of my own creativity and drive and lust for life in a different, gentler way? Couldn’t I have gotten to see my family by flying East for Thanksgiving, instead of them flying West to hold my hand while my hair falls out?

I’m grateful for this blog – this tempestuous blog that gives me the chance to be honest in every way. Which I want to use to springboard to something else, to write in another venue, maybe one that’s paid. I’m glad that I get to write here, as someone told me, as I speak – that if I write the way I talk, they said, I’m surely a great writer. I don’t know how much that is true, but somehow the cancer lets me see it a little more clearly. And perhaps begin to accept it. I want to explore my talent more – because there simply is more there. I want to push into it, and I want to share it.

I swear I would have gotten there without this whole cancer thing, but I guess I really didn’t have a choice in this one.