Apologies

Restart.

Sleep.

Or even: 

Taking another break. 

Any one of these could be decently accurate titles of this post. It’s been a bit of time so a) sorry for that and b) been spending most of that time sleeping. Also watching Dr. Who, but sleep and a sleepy time life is what I’ve been disappearing into lately. It’s good for me? This is what I have posited earlier and I don’t think it’s too much a stretch to imagine that sleep is helping me, that resting up ain't a bad deal, healing me from the exertions of the day etc etc. But it also feels like something more, like I’m sucking my sleep out of the marrow of sleep and all I want is more sleep. Maybe I absorb around 8 to 11 hours of sleep a day and I wake up craving more. Perhaps I am trying to make up for all the sleep I lost the first time out of the hospital when I kept waking up at 7:00, perhaps it is the cumulative exhaustion of my body and now that I am able to sleep I can’t stop. Who knows, but I do love the sleeping.

Part of me though, well... you know the whole sleep as a metaphor for death thing, ergo I seem to be practicing it or for it a little too much. The phrase "there will be plenty of time for that later" keeps popping up in my head. Without the bubble of chemo I think more about death, my own death more. Not obsessively so, hell, I spend a lot of my time awake in a blurry state as I lie on the bed waiting for sleep to come. Relaxed and comfortable, I mean if you imagined my life as a torment of dread you'd be pretty far off the mark. And even the contemplation of my own death--it's more like thinking, "hey I could die this year" than a profound reflection upon my own mortality--does not always come with dread, rather I think of the cancer death sentence the doctors pronounced upon me as a marker, borders that define who I am now. Maybe before you can think of them as borders you want to transcend, you have to see them first. I don’t know really… I guess this is a long way around to talk about some good news. Well, semi-good news until I can get back on the chemo again. 

The good news as expressed in numbers:

59.6

11.4

These numbers are tumor markers, the first was when I first entered the hospital as this all began, the second comes from the days after my chemo. I guess this is what Y sensei means when he says the chemo has been working well against the cancer. I don't know what tumor markers actually are, and what they mean when you translate them into real world things like life, and does it mean I will live longer? My guess this is something they can't answer. Certainly not beyond generalities with plenty of caveats thrown in. For now I can take that lower numbers equal good for me, higher numbers bad. And the 22 it has climbed to during these six weeks of no chemo equals bad. Equals urgency, let's get strapped into my bi-weekly chemo visits, power port stickings, carrying around my chemo bottle for a couple days. All of it: because the chemo is working.

As I said before this is the news I wouldn’t have wanted to hear when I was in the healing throes of my chemotherapy. I think this is why getting out of the chemo bubble can be a good thing, so I’m free to contemplate this cancer death sentence of mine. It makes me realize how much I want to get back on chemo attack so I can knock this thing down a peg or two. I don’t want to say beat it, it’s too early to think of that. This is Year One after all, beating cancer is what, ten years, twenty, thirty? An ongoing process. That’s too much to contemplate for now. A little at a time. Eke out the months for me, knock down the pegs for the cancer. Worry about the big picture when it comes up.