I'm baaaaack......I thiiiink

I'm conscious. 

I saw my doctor today at her Lakeway office because that's where she works on Mondays. I guess people who live in Lakeway get much more beautiful views and gorgeous offices that look like something out of MOMA. It was swank. If I ever do chemo again I'll be sure to move to Lakeway and use this location. Or just probably jump off a cliff. 

Dr. Gorrebeeck, my mass-ologist, says I look great (which I'm sure is on a sliding scale of the word "great," sliding all away down to maybe about a 3.4 if you're thinking about like a balance beam routine at the Olympics or something.) But I'll take it, I'd rather look "great" to her then look like I'm on my way to the ER again and my blood numbers look crappy but in a way that's normal for someone 11 days out from a 6th hit of poison so she felt tepidly delighted about it/me. 

Side note - when I was lying on my floor at home in front of the refrigerator, on the non-pacific ocean of my floor, apparently my blood pressure had gotten so low that it was kind of cool and sexy in an ER textbooky way, so that the seven (!) paramedics hunkishly occupying our house got all excited. One kept pulling my eyelid to see how white it was inside because it was so spectacular. This one large dark handsome guy (let's call him Kent) kept saying "Hey!!! Guys, come over here - check this out it's totally white! Oh wow, look at this, it's a perfect example of (something medical something something)."  I missed the term as I was blacking in and out. Then another guy or two (let's call them (Dorf and Ian) would rush over, yank down my eyelid like a roller shade and say "Oh man that's really cool!" I was thinking to myself: "Oh goody I've always wanted to donate my body to science and now at least my lower eyelid can assist these delightful young men in their learning about loss of blood to the head!" Also: I can hear you and I can feel that. It was very dreamy as in like a dream, not as in awesome.

Doctoro also said I've got a large splash of anemia and some sky-high white blood cells, all of which she feels are rather normal for a blob of my type right now. 

Luckily she also said I could go back to driving, which is a good thing since I got to drive all over Austin going to three hardware stores looking for flexible surgical latex rubber tubing and funnels to help three 8th grade girls build a water balloon launching creation from hell for their algebra class. Two out of three stores were out....must be a popular item. Looks like giant spaghetti. 

I am fairly pleased with the end result of the water balloon hell thing that yes could indeed launch a water balloon over 100 meters. I remain unamused with the time management skills of teenagers and yes mine leads that parade of 11:59-ishness so I cast so aspersions especially. I just feel that redoing eighth-grade right now does not fit with either my personal aesthetic or mood.

And, as we were getting THAT particular little projet put to bed, I thought I heard a voice alarmingly like Violet's piping up from the backseat at about mile 50 of tube-searching, saying something like "Oh yeah I also have to bake film video do make create a fancy iced cake tonight for speech class tomorrow" and my mom translator translated this into "Yes darling that's nice whatever you say," which also means "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." Sorry can't take it all on. I am currently upstairs in my bed with the covers pulled up to my chin drinking a gin and tonic and speaking this blog into my phone. I know no cake. I bake no cake. I speak no cake. I cake no care.

Which reminds me, why did I going to the hospital last week after all? Since no doctor seems to really know what the cause of my fainting was, my intuition has secretly whispered it to my subconscious. 

I know. 

My body wanted a break from chaos so it shut me down. It turned on my off switch and caused me to discontinue cease and desist all operations and fall to the ground quickly and efficiently and CLEARLY so that I could be carried away to a cave to lay still for 48 hours. The body knows.

For the first time in six months, while I was in the hospital, I lay still. For a LONG TIME. I stopped. I did not move except to the bathroom. For 48 hours. I did not turn on the lights. I did not talk on the phone. I did not watch television. I did not read magazine or a book (alarming for me). I did not have visitors except for a few family members and even then only for a few minutes. Did not want any. I wanted no input. I did not wash my face or take a shower or change out of my backless pantsless gown. It was blessedly quiet and I rested and slept. I confess, this may sound very strange, but I liked it. I needed a break and I got it. I think my brain knew this and forced it to happen even against my own will. 

Now I'm back.

People keep asking me about the tests that are going to show if the chemotherapy was effective. One of the reasons I started writing this very blog was because of the mind fuck that it is to have cancer and have the scenario that I have which means that there is no way to tell if chemotherapy was is or ever could be effective. This is what I wrote about my first few blogs because it was SO FREAKING STRESSFUL to accept. Yes cancer cells went to my lymph nodes but only a teeny tiny amount smaller than a part of a grain of rice. From there, it didn't seem to have spread to my bones or my lungs or my brain, at least not in any way that showed up on any scans. So therefore there was no tumor in my body to watch shrink under the course of chemotherapy. So therefore there is no way to rescan my body and see anything that shows the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Nothing to measure. The whole goal of chemo was preventative, just in case one cell of cancer had been circulating around in my body. I don't know if chemotherapy was effective. My oncologist doesn't know if chemotherapy was effective. My radiologist doesn't know if chemotherapy was effective. My surgeon doesn't know if chemotherapy was effective. Not one of us will ever know if all of that poison that I just took into my body did anything at all or was effective or was even needed.  That made it hard for me to take because I know I was taking something that was making me very sick, possibly for no reason. But the fear of cancer was greater than the discomfort of a no-measure leap of faith, so I took the chemotherapy. And now I'm facing another surgery and radiation, with the exact same scenario: I have no idea if either of these or ANYTHING I'm doing is even necessary. Yet here I go. It's kind of a metaphor for life: WHY???????? What does it mean? Maybe nothing. 

I'm good with that. 

I don't know. 

So I've got my little appointment book and I've been busily making appointments with cardiologists, mammogrammers, my surgeon, my new radiologist, and stuff like that. I'm setting up the next section of this little journey. I'm busy for a second and for a second this distracts me from what we all know deep down: maybe it all does mean nothing. 

I'm heading out. To the next part of my Appalachian Trail, which blessedly will not include poison darts through my chest. Radiation lies ahead. 

I'm conscious.

That's all I know for now.