Image: today’s parking ticket from the Winship deck
And now, a small concluding narrative that I didn’t expect.
Today is the last day of July; tomorrow, the first day of August when I’ve scheduled an email to my friends and neighbors and community members inviting everyone to three events this fall. I’m back to hosting and bike riding; I’m back to to-do lists and emails; and a full calendar and workable frame.
Another thing that happened today: my “final” doctor visit of treatment, wherein my radiologist, a kind and quirky magician, strolled in and said, “This is the appointment where I get to tell you that you’re cured. I don’t get to do it with everyone. I’m really happy I get to tell you.”
I was immediately overcome, and I couldn’t figure out why. I knew the narrative on my PET and CT scans from three weeks ago were mostly good, though I was reading a stormcloud of wanting into one or two sentences that I didn’t need to. Both he and my nurse practitioner from the chemotherapy team said “your scans look great.” They asked me what questions I had, and told me that they would see me in three weeks.
There was more, small details like whether my taste buds would normalize (they could, but it might take a year), where my sometime-lightheadedness is coming from (some circulatory system function in the neck that is often damaged by radiation and keeps blood flow from increasingly quickly when I get up from sitting or standing), whether my eyesight decline over the past six months is radiation related (according to the radiologist, it isn’t).
But as I moved through these details, my thinking stuck on other things. Like how momentous it felt to drive into the Winship parking deck for a “last visit”; like how for all of these appointments I had friends and family with me, but for these one I decided to do it on my own; like how difficult it was to even say this sentence to my doctor: “Everyone probably tells you this, but you’re really good at what you do. I appreciated the humaneness and kindness a lot.”
He asked one question that stumped me. “What could I have better prepared you for when we first talked in January?” A bunch of things ran through my head, but I told him that I’d have to get back to him on that. There were things I was not prepared for, but I don’t know if it would have been good for me to have been told those things, so I didn’t want to give him any advice before I thought it through. For an hour two today I was living in my feelings, something I don’t often do. In fact, something I work hard, mostly unconsciously, to avoid. The feelings were complicated: thankful (for this to be over), hopeful (to be returning to life with a new perspective), conflicted (about how many people today received different and tragic news today under that same roof), freshly sad (about the amount pain you can see around you at Winship).
It’s a lot, this journey.
I’ve been listening to a novel, and it’s coming to a close today, called I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger. It’s an apocalyptic and sea-faring story about resistance and grief and community. Today, as I driving home from my appointment, I heard this hopeful line and had to play back the audio when I got home to write it down because it feels so appropriate:
“That was the day I remembered the future . . . long walks might be out there, down unknown roads . . . questions to ask, birds to hear, and stars to watch . . . all day the future pulled at me . . . I said nothing of it to anyone, but noticed it everywhere.”
That felt accurate for me today, and I wanted to capture it as a coda to my treatment story. Thank you for following along.
