Since Yesterday

Yesterday I got the results from the CT-scan I had a month ago. I had asked the oncologist to wait until January to tell me the results because I didn't want the holiday spoiled. In 2008, I spent New Year's Eve in the hospital cancer ward, getting my first chemo treatment over to the next day as it took 13 hours. I really didn't want to even think about that over Christmas.

 

This Christmas wasn't too cool, either, because the house is a mess, all the living room furniture is in the dining room and stashed in inconvenient places. I have to sleep either on the sofa bed where the springs stick into my body or the futon which is hard as a rock. Needless to say, I don't get much sleep and what I do get is painful.

But it's okay. I can live with that.

 

But this time of year, thinking of the chemo and how awful it was and losing my hair and being unable to get around...not fun. And perhaps some of the reason why I couldn't sleep was because I was remembering how close I was to dying and how utterly inconvenient that would be.

And how it would feel to leave my sweet husband and daughters and my whole family...everybody. To be a nothing.

To be dead.

Not fun.

 

Well, anyway, the results weren't bad at all. No cancer...not at this time. It has been seven years of worrying about it returning and that won't stop, but for a little while, I'll not think about it too hard.

There are other things wrong--the sugar, the lack of sleep, the lack of breathing when I sleep, some kind of emphysema in my lungs, diverticulosis, spinal degeneration, being overweight...and the beloved gallstones. It is enough to make me feel doomed, but not as badly or as desperately as it would be if the diagnosis had been for cancer. Strike three, you're out!

 

It just isn't something you can shake off. Like PTSD...you can't "get over it". Maybe you could actually call it PTSD, as I have fought two battles and come out alive. There are so many people, some little kids, who haven't made it. And I wonder...why me? What have I done to deserve to live when so many others, so many nice people, honest and religious and happy and parents and little kids, perished in such an ugly way?

 

Maybe I have something else to do, something that only I can do to contribute to the greater good.

 

If you believe in fairies, clap your hands and Tinkerbell will live.