From Gills to Gossamer (AKA The Year That Wasn't)

“We lived to die another day.”
--Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List

It has been almost a year since a doctor in the Caribbean told me I might have an infected gill. It was funny at the time, this idea that after so much time on the water, I might be turning into a fish, or a mermaid, so funny, in fact, that we were still joking about it even when it turned out to be cancer. Hilarious.

Looking back over the past 12 months, I am quite sure that had I stopped laughing, I would not have survived. I am also convinced that had I not documented it, I would not believe any of it happened. The truth is so awful and unbelievable, the story, post-by-post, such a fragile web of surreal detail, it could disappear in a gust of wind, or a quick swipe of the hand. Poof. Gone. A year that never existed.


I am right back where I was in late 2007, on the verge of figuring out how to make more time for writing and sailing while also paying my bills on time, yet the calendar tells me hundreds of days have passed. I’ve missed births and graduations and birthdays and deadlines and God knows what else. I keep saying I feel like I’ve lost a year of my life, but the point is driven home over and over as I reconnect with people I think I haven’t seen in a year, but really it’s been two. Weird.

I look at the photos on the blog and I am also quite sure, happy snapshots notwithstanding, I wasn’t smiling for most of the last year, but hey, who wants to take (or look at) pictures when you’re feeling sick, or weak, or bored, or tired or frustrated? Photos of bald girls getting radiation are creepy enough.

Here are the two most common reactions I got to the blog during the course of the year:

1. I read your blog. It’s so honest.
2. I read your blog. What’s really going on? How are you REALLY feeling?

This makes me think I’m a failure as a writer. I like to think it’s all there, the grim realities and vast range of emotions in between the jokes and funny stories. I tried to be honest and observant, both inwardly and outwardly, and still keep a sense of humor. Perhaps you can never fully tell the whole story.

My surgeon friend, complicit in the Cancer is Hilarious attitude, admitted halfway through the ordeal that she thought a positive attitude was a form of denial. She may be right, especially in circumstances in which the patient is gravely ill and treatments so devastating, they promise only Pyrrhic victories. How on earth do you get through each day when your prognosis is bad and you are almost surely going to get sicker and sicker until you die? I know people who are facing that right now. I don’t know how they do it. I only know that I am not one of them, and never was, and for that I am thankful.

I had dinner with a friend the other night who had a cancer experience this year similar to mine, i.e. a scare, but with a good prognosis and, so far, successful treatment. He said he felt almost embarrassed by all the support, and people telling him they were praying for him. I know exactly what he means.

Sir Ernest Shackleton, the famed Antarctic explorer and captain of Endurance, is quoted as saying that optimism is true moral courage. In that spirit, I like to think that my decision, for example, to color my hair after my first chemo treatment—just in case it didn’t fall out—was not so much, say, vain as positive. Optimistic. But certainly not courageous. Courage is a word for the people with cancer, and their loved ones, who are forced to stare down death on a daily basis. I am in awe of them.

People called me brave but I am not brave. I am fortunate. I got diagnosed with “the good cancer,” had the Cadillac of treatment and turned out to be the Chemo Queen. (“They poisoned her body, but the girl kept eating…”) I am not 100% yet and still have some minor complaints, but they are just that: minor. Treatment sucked, but it worked. Today I am cancer free and, as it turns out, not even in early menopause after all.

I go back to see Dr. R again in February. He is not the committed relationship I have been longing for, but he is the one I get for now. He has promised to be in my life for the next two to five years, at least. In other relationship news, I expect the chemo vs. sex ratio to improve dramatically in the New Year, if for no other reason than I don’t expect any chemo in 2009.

I expect all the follow-up news to be good. There is, therefore, no more need to write about this. I have more important things to do, like regularly update my status on Facebook. Also, I need to find a (paying) job, and write my book. I think there may also be a few oceans I haven’t seen yet. I may start a new blog (do you see the mental procrastination on the aforementioned already starting?) and if I do, I will post the address on this site. But I don’t expect any new posts here in 2009.

There are so many people to thank for getting me through this year. They range from my Mom who took care of me and cooked for me and worried about me every day to one of my girlfriends who kept calling and offering to come over and clean my toilet because she didn’t know what else to do. I can’t possibly name everyone, and I won’t risk leaving anyone out. If you are reading this, you are probably one of them, so let me just say, simply, thank you. I am overwhelmed by the vastness of my support network and deeply touched by the depths of generosity I have been shown.

I am lucky now to have spent the month in the Caribbean, first on a 15-day sail to the Grenadines, and now back on St. John where I will welcome the New Year with lots of good friends… far, far away from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. I am ready for this gossamer tale to fade away, banished to the place reserved for bad memories. I’m ready to stop being the daughter/sister/aunt/niece/friend with cancer and go back to being the daughter/sister/aunt/niece/friend who sailed across the Atlantic in a 30-foot boat. (With no engine.) (And no head.)

I still look in the mirror most days and don’t quite recognize myself, but perhaps that is more a product of five years of extraordinary change and experience, a time period which, despite serious illness, heartache, job insecurity, financial pressures and grief, has been the most rewarding time of my life.

In the movie The Bucket List, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two terminally ill men racing against time to complete a list of things they want to do before they die. The one that stuck with me—far more interesting than the parachuting and traveling and mountain climbing—was: Witness something truly majestic.

I am blessed to say I have done just this, not only in the vast and beautiful skies I have gazed up into in the middle of the sea, but also in the shape of the many, many people who have loved and supported me through the whole crazy journey. Which continues.

Here’s to 2009.

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