Friday, January 14, 2011

Days of Absense

Hello, my dear and patient friends.

You must surely have thought that I, after creating this blog and writing only a single post, had immediately grown lazy or bored and simply wandered away into cyberspace. 

I assure you, this is not the case. 

During the second week of November, 2010, in the time it took the kind and resolutely noncommittal mammography technician to answer my chipper, bravado-filled question, "have you ever seen a caffeine cyst get this big?" with the statement, "we're sending you upstairs for an ultrasound now," my life changed forever.  In the surreal, reeling hours and days that followed my mammogram and ultrasound, I underwent a barrage of tests, each more invasive and unpleasant than the last.  By the end of the week I heard the words that no one should ever have to hear in this life - "your breast cancer is infiltrating ductal carcinoma."

So there it is.  I had breast cancer.  I wanted to blog.  I really and truly did.  There were moments when I stalwartly, even defiantly, sat down at my laptop to mull over posts about the cold, still air of the forest in which I went walking that day, or about the acrylic painting of daffodils I'd planned in my head while waiting for my mammogram and trying to pretend I wasn't wearing the ridiculous cape-thing I had to change into beforehand.  But then the enormity of it all, the absolute, numbing coldness of realization would wash over me again, and my mind was wiped clean of all thoughts but one:

I have cancer.  I have cancer..?  I have cancer?!  I have cancer!!!!

The days went by, then the weeks, and suddenly it was Surgery Day.  And then I was in the hazy hinterland that was Recovery.  And then, though I wanted time to slow down so desperately that I would have made a pact with the devil, it was Chemo Day.  I was sick and scared and outraged...but I had also, because of cancer, made a new and beautiful friend, a kindred spirit who's been through it all just ahead of me, and has given me more love and support than I could have imagined or even thought possible.  She is the gift that cancer - bastard that it is - has given me.  And there has been my family and my partner, and Harry Potter, and chocolate and candy cane tea and ruby red grapefruits to get me through.  Life is actually going on.  How...surprising.  How amazing.

Now here we are.  It is the second week of my chemotherapy.  I still have my hair, though I can sense, like something on the wind, that I will lose it soon.  What feels miraculous to me now, though, is that I wanted to write today.  It's been a long time.  What's more, I was ready to post about what has happened. 

I must stress, however, that Transforming Tradition is not going to turn into a blog about cancer.  You know why?  Because I have already kicked cancer's ass.  That's why.  I'm cancer-free, baby!  This chapter of my life - and it was only one chapter, mind - is already closing.  One page is turning, and I'm ready, with a white-hot intensity that could slice through titanium, to create the next.  I'm ready to dust off my watercolors, break out my brushes, unfurl a smooth, new piece of Canson paper, sharpen my graphite, and start drawing already.

Let's get to work.

1 comment:

  1. Bravo to you, my dear! So glad to hear your 'never-give-up' spirit in your brilliant words.

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