Feel the Burn

Parking in front of these signs makes me feel like I'm part of some sort of elite club. I've always gotten an odd sense of privilege from it, like I'm special, or something. Weird, I know.

Tomorrow, will be my last radiation, treatment. I'm really not sure how to process it yet, as so much is coming to the forefront. Today, as I pulled into the Cancer Center parking lot, I stared at the patient parking sign, and was surprised to find that I was almost ready to cry. Was it relief, sadness, joy, fear? I'm not entirely certain, as I've been feeling a mixture of all these things. The morning was bright and sunny, and while cold, it did not hold the bitter chill I had been expecting. As I traveled in my car, to and from, the whole sky seemed to open up. Something big is happening, something I cannot yet name.

It's difficult to remember life before cancer. It's hard to imagine what it will be afterward. I was already in the throws of massive change, being a new mother, when my diagnosis came. My world was already forever transformed, as well as my body and spirit. While I met the diagnosis with surprising calm, I knew the heaviness of it. People have asked me how I can handle it the way I do. Honestly, how else could I handle it? Perhaps it's because I've had cancer before. Perhaps it's my stubborn determination to fully experience things. I did it with my brother's death, and I've done it with this.

Maybe, once it all reaches hindsight, the meaning will change. Maybe it will look different from the other side. I've been poisoned, had my breasts carved off, I've been burned...the burning was awful. Chemo was a cake-walk, compared to fifteen years ago, but radiation was something entirely new. I have joked about my life as a microwaved burrito, but really...it was very painful for at least a couple of weeks. And of course, having my breasts removed was difficult, but I've gotten used to that. Besides, I'm getting new breasts, later. They will have scars stretching across them. Nothing can be done about that, but I've never minded scars. They tell a story...they are the stitch-work, sewing who we become together.

My mermaid, didn't surface, today. Today, I felt more like the phoenix, preparing to rise from the ashes of my former self. For the first time since this started, I felt a fire within. I felt life, I felt breath. Perhaps that's what prompted the lump in my throat. Tomorrow, I might actually cry, and maybe I'll cry again after that. When this is all done, and I'm threading my new existence, perhaps only then, will I be able to see it in its entirety. In the morning, comes the final burn. There will be a lot to do in my recovery from treatment, but there is still something final about it. It's over. It's really over.

This was actually after the redness and pain began to subside. My skin will be "tan" for a while, however.

"Did my time among the strong.

Some are here, and some are gone.

Did my time among the cursed,

praying that my brain would burst"

~Glenn Danzig

Liquid and Daydreams...

"Feed me, Seymour"

I have yet to meet a little girl who doesn't love mermaids. Of course, I was no exception. I wanted to be a mermaid, especially after seeing Daryll Hanna in the movie Splash. Over the years, I've met or heard of countless little girls named Madison, after her character, and sure enough...the mothers are always in my age group. There's something about the thought of just vanishing into the sea, that seems so freeing; like flying under water.

I used to sit for hours, or sometimes lie in bed, with my eyes closed but not really sleeping, and I would imagine what it could be like. The daydream I visited the most, involved waking up in my own bed, in my own bedroom, but the world would be covered with water. Everything looked the same, only instead of a little girl, I was a beautiful creature with a shimmering tail and flowing hair. I would swim out from under my covers, and instead of being confined to walking to the bathroom, or the living room, or the kitchen, I could just swim there...or, I could just swim out the window, never having to meet the pavement. I could swim over the house, or around it. I could swim to my school, but not have to go in. I could swim right over the top of that, too. Even though the world I knew was still there, being under the ocean made it more beautiful, more limitless.

I've got about nine or ten radiation treatments to go, which should only take a couple of weeks. Even though chemo made me feel worse, this is more exhausting, and the damage to my skin and muscles has become quite painful. The machine is large and strange-looking. It can be intimidating, especially when I'm having to lie perfectly still in a fixed position, as it moves, and rotates it's enormous head around me, getting way too close for comfort, much like a dangerous beast sniffing at a helpless creature, examining it from all sides, while making the decision whether or not to devour it. I recently named the machine Seymour. It's not as easy to be intimidated by something named Seymour. But then...Seymour has had many names.

The bed that I am positioned on, cushioned by a fitted “pillow”, moves up and down, back and forward. It moves me closer to the machine, and I stay in that spot until treatment is done. This takes about fifteen minutes. You can think about a lot of things over the course of fifteen minutes, or you can focus on a few. My treatments are in the morning, so often times, I'm sleepy. Even in my still and tired state, I remain awake, and sometimes...I drift.

I don't remember how many sessions I'd had before it happened. Lying there under the machine, I returned to my mermaid self. I watched Seymour turn and move and hover, and realized that if the world was covered in water, I could just swim away. The bed would not have to resume its prior position. It would not have to move at all. Even with the machine resting right above my face, I could just swim.

This daydream came to me in the middle of the afternoon, today. I was coming home from visiting my physical therapist. We had decided that my burns were too severe to be able to perform the exercises needed in order to regain full use of my left arm. On Andresen, as I was pulling forward through a green light, first in line, an SUV blasted through a red light, right in front of me. Had I not hit my breaks immediately, it would have been devastating. I'm sure I would have survived, but not without being badly hurt. The car would probably have been totaled. Managing to miss the collision entirely, as the irresponsible SUV driver sped down the road, I continued my journey, and soon the world was under the ocean, with beams of light peeking through the clouds, reaching down. Looking at the glow from above, I found myself somewhere between ocean and sky, remembering how I used to sit watching the robins in the back yard. How I had envied them. How I had longed to fly. It was then that I wondered, if there was much of a difference between flying and swimming. The freedoms seem the same, after all. I could dip, dive, twist and soar just as easily under water, as I could in the sky. Perhaps there is no difference. Maybe the ability to flow freely is not confined to a specific climate or shape. Maybe that's where the magic is. So many things happen to our bodies, and we find ourselves in the strangest of places. No matter where I am, I suppose there will always be that place behind my eyes, where I'm as free as a bird, and as graceful as a mermaid.

"I guess I'm an underwater thing, 

so I guess I can't take it personally.

I guess I'm an underwater thing,

I'm liquid running.

There's a sea secret in me.

It's plain to see it is rising,

but I must be flowing liquid diamonds"

~Tori Amos