Mixed ability

It's been a mixed weekend - lots of amazingly beautiful beautifully amazing friends, hilariously silly girls, and some weird thoughts about yuck. And a cool dance performance.

A parable from my favorite writer:

The Witness (El testigo), by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

In a stable that stands almost within the shadow of the new stone church, a man with gray eyes and a gray beard, sprawled amidst the odor of the animals, humbly seeks his death as though he were seeking sleep.

The day, faithful to vast, secret laws, moves about displacing and blending the shadows in that modest place; outside there are plowed fields, and a ditch clogged with dried leaves, and perhaps some faint tracks of a wolf upon the black clay at the edge of the forest.

The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten. The tolling bells that call to prayer awaken him. In the kingdoms of England, the summoning of the bells has already become part of the evening’s routine; but, in his boyhood, the man has seen the face of Woden, the divine horror and exultation, the cumbrous wooden idol overladen with Roman coins and unwieldy vestments, the sacrifice of horses, dogs and prisoners. The man will die before dawn, and along with him will also perish, never to return, the last direct, eyewitness images of the pagan rites. The world will be poorer once this Saxon man has died.

We may wonder at events that exist in space, but reach their end when someone dies; and yet some thing, or an infinite number of things, dies and is lost along with anyone’s death, unless there actually exists a universal memory, as the theosophists have speculated. Over the course of time, there came a day that forever blinded the last eyes to have witnessed Christ; the Battle of Junín, and the love of Helen, died with the death of some one.

What shall die with me when I die? What pathetic or inconsequential form will the world nevertheless lose? The voice of Macedonio Fernández, the memory of a bay horse in an empty lot at the corner of Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur inside the drawer of a mahogany desk?

─ Translated from El hacedor (1960) by Andras Corban Arthen

Brunch
My doctor threw a brunch for all of her patients on Saturday (I know, right? Who does that?) complete with spanakopita made by her Greek uncle. I met over 10 women who are doing the exact same chemo regimen that I will be doing and that was purely relieving - I feel much better about the whole shebang right now. We sat around and shared stories - I mostly listened, as a "newbie" and got lots of tips. I heard some more tips from friends later that night as we drank rivers and wine and gorged ourselves on lasagna (the best ever, made by my chef husband - a James Beard concoction made out of cream and crack cocaine or something). Here is a brief list of tips for those about to rock Adriamycin:

Eat chocolate during chemo because intense sugar excites cancer cells and then when they are all excited and dancing around in a trancy daze, they attract more attention and the red devils in your blood can find them faster (who knows - could be)

Take a blanket - it's cold as hell in there

Dip your fingers in cold ice water to alleviate the neuropathy as the Adriamycin kills the nerves at the ends of your limbs - sounds entirely too high maintenance to me.

Take the anti-nausea drugs even if you don't think you need them. Well duh.

Cancer is what
I've always wondered what the purpose of cancer is. Or maybe purpose is not the right word, after all I kind of detest that whole "purpose-driven life" stuff or our relentless drive to find some kind of meaning in everything. Except there does seem to be one forward moving purpose out there and that is the drive for life to replicate itself. Reproduction. All life lives solely to reproduce itself - in this way we are servants of our species, our bodies just big containers walking around until nature drives us to mingle our DNA with another individual in order to advance the species. Some scientists think that DNA runs the show and that we are just witless vehicles. Birds do it. Bees do it. Bacterial do it like they do it on the Discovery channel. All of those naturally selected natural selections were done in service of the perpetuation of life. Mutations keep things going. A little fish is born one day with a bit bigger fin due to some freak of a chromosome in mommy, and voila, he is swimmier and eatier and fatter and happier cuz he got the skills to catch those fast big lunches. He gets the chick fish and passes on that DNA. Etc. on and on. It's those MUTATIONS that actually make the small changes that add up to evolutionary improvement. Nature is just fine tuning her organisms. Even the lowly strep bacteria is forever mutating as it swerves away from the avalanche of antibiotics we squirt at it from the hose of modern pediatrics. Cancer is a mutation. Why? Is it a Darwinian plan to weed out the weak? Or is there some goal that those cancer cells have - do they "want" to live? Why? What could a big old lumpy tumor accomplish? I really do wonder.

When cancer strikes a part of the body, a cell, it makes that part of the body grow and replicate too fast. So breast cancer makes ductal breast tissue cells grow too fast, so you get too many of them. What if we could leverage this cellular growth to grow boob tissue for all those ladies who want to augment their smaller boobs? Just a thought. Anyway, so what? The extra fast growing cells don't actually DO anything "bad" - it's just that if too many of them clump together then they get in the way of stuff like a lung breathing or a heart beating or a brain thinking.

Nature seems super damn smart. So what is the cause and meaning and purpose of the cancer mutation I wonder. Even if it's a reaction to an outer cause like radiation or poison, why? Like scar tissue forms around a wound - it's hard and thick and protects that area of the body - it has a purpose. A fever - heats the body to kill germs - it has a purpose. Cancer cells - I wonder what purpose they have in nature? Or is this pointless? I think it is.

The other weird thing is - cancer is not from "out there" - it's from inside. It IS me. I am made out of it, it is made out of me. It's from my cookbook, my body's recipe - no one else's.
 
I keep thinking of "let the mice in" when I hear the word Adriamycin. I will be taking the mice in.

Hangin out
I spent much of the weekend simply hanging out with friends - Kris, Rebecca, Mona, Leila, Margaret, Diane, Susan, and others. Margaret and I giggled our way through several gin and tonics a lot.

Children of the corn
Here is Fiona applying cat-eye Cleopatra make-up on Rebecca. My girls are my cure.

 

Violet just yelled "f(x) is the Y, right?" and when we non-listening adults did not immediately know the correct algebraic answer on the instant she shouted "GOD! I thought you were math smarticles!"

Here is a video that illustrates my life with Violet:

And another:

Dancer
Today we went to a mixed ability dance performance on Town Lake on the Lamar bride. My salsa bringing friend Susan was a performer and invited us. We saw 25 or so dancers of all abilities - some in wheelchairs, some walking in crutches, one blind, some fully leaping and spinning - with live music and guitar. We sat out in the sunshine and watched them as bikers and runners rode and ran right through the middle of the performance. Are we all not mixed ability? We are. Thank you Susan for inviting us. She is the one on the ground in the teal shirt, leg in air.

 

 

 

All of these things I am doing, going to a dance, going to a movie (Gravity - yes it was wonderful), having dinner with friends, playing make up with Fifi, dancing with Violet and Mariah, hanging out with teenaged silly girls, being with Margaret - make me feel totally healthy and normal. Maybe I am totally healthy and normal.

 

Plan

Chemo starts this Thursday

Will be 3-5 hours each time

Will be every 3 weeks for 6 times

Will be followed by lump surgery #3

Then radiation for one million weeks

Then a trip to Colorado

I will become a drug fiend for a few months - hope some of them are fun drugs

I am fine and ok with this

I bought some cool skater caps at Zumie's this weekend - hope it's a cold winter

Percentage of people who do chemo that do not lose their hair - 25

Percentage of people who take the mice in that do not lose their hair - 0.000