Winter Solstice

The calendar says today is the Winter Solstice but I am sure the longest night of my year happened some months ago. I could probably go back through all the missives here and pinpoint a more exact time and date, but why bother? This cancer blog is getting boring which is, after all, the goal. No news really is good news. I think this will be the penultimate post.

My November test results all came back clean. “Beautiful” was the word Dr. R used, which is as good as it gets in a world where people are loathe to use the word “cured.” There was much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Mom and I celebrated with turkey and cosmos.


After the holiday, I was lucky enough to fly back to the Caribbean to finish out the year in warmth and sunshine. This morning I’m writing from St. John, having just returned from a two-week sailing trip from the U.S. Virgin Islands to the Grenadines. The voyage, originally planned for last spring, was scuttled by chemo, and worries about fever (and not the John Masefield kind). Delayed but not denied, it was all there waiting: the friend with the boat, the 800 miles of blue water sailing, the tropical winds, the fleets of dolphins and oh, the star-filled heavens. I cried when I saw the sky.

With new saltwater adventures, it’s hard to think about illness. Looking through my year’s worth of notes, I find a few hilarious aspects of cancer I wanted to write about but never got around to, no doubt because some compelling rerun of The West Wing was on TV. Things like:

• Visa or MC? (That call I got the night before surgery, during which the unidentified caller told me what time to report to the hospital, and asked whether I would be paying my $5,000 bill by Visa, MasterCard or personal check.)
• Chemo Brain (Is it my chemically impaired faculties that make it impossible for me to remember I’ve put water on to boil for tea until all the water is gone and the pot is burning up? Or am I just genetically programmed to be a coffee drinker?)
• Pharmacology (Who knew there were so many people in my life with such an acute interest in medical marijuana?)
• Mirror, Mirror (Hair, Part 3) (So I still don’t recognize myself. But whoever she is in the mirror, she’s got great boat hair.)
• Little Victories (I am pleased that I made it through radiation without any permanent markings. Tattoos should be something sexy and exotic you get on your ass, not some blue dot smack in the middle of your chest. The question is: Why did I have to push for the markings to be on a mask instead of my body? Why did I have to find this alternative through my own research instead of the doctor presenting it as an option?)


I’ll save the Big Victories for the next post. Gotta go take advantage of what’s left of the daylight.

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