fear, blood, life

the last two weeks have been
hard.
a return of the thin taut fear.
color bleeding out of the days
as the blood seeped out of val’s nose
thinly
and we watched it,
counted the blots, counted the kleenex,
counted the minutes.
i think it was two weeks ago that we were
lying awake, wondering how much
is too much blood.
and we wound up in the lonely hours of the morning
calling for help, talking to an advice nurse and
driving the dark empty highway to the emergency room,
where eventually, frighteningly,
val passed out, was revived, was transfused,
was propped up and sent home.

the rains began.
the political ads fell out of the sky all over the sidewalk like leaves.
and here we were, a couple weeks out from the sixth and last chemo and
nothing was better.
val was exhausted.  flattened.  her numbers didn’t come up.
she kept bleeding.
we lay in bed and watched a lot of the simpsons
and reruns of the daily show
and val’s nose.  which bled.  every day.  every night.  the house filled up with bloody kleenexes.
that’s what happens when you don’t have platelets.

and then she began to cough.  not a lot, but
coughing is what took us here the first time.  coughing is scary.
it could be good: it could be the body expelling bits of tumor.  right?
or it could be
not good.

it is not so easy to engage with life when
you are exhausted and frightened.
and you are not an expert.  so you watch
every tiny flicker, wondering
is this one important?  is this one a sign of internal mysteries on the move?
what will keep val alive if not
our vigilance?
standing at orange alert, ready
to staunch the flow, to call for help, to race to the hospital if
necessary.
how do we know necessary?

talk about exhausting.
it is hard to maintain perspective
in the midst of focused bodily myopia.

so the coughing took us to the CT scan, and a weekend of waiting, on one breath.
then monday a series of short conversations by phone with various members of the oncology team.
and hanging up afterward, huddled at home,
we took the small dry fruit of their words
and squeezed them for their juice
and chewed on the rinds,
trying to understand:
a dark spot on her bronchial tube?
cancer receding or cancer advancing?
everything we thought we understood (which isn’t much)
popped like a puffball this week and left us
breathing shallowly
all the little spores of confusion and possible bad news,
our relationships with time,
with life,
with body,
shaken.

we went tharn.

then

yesterday val arose,
breathed deeply,
emailed the doctor.
and the doctor wrote back a new set of words
with a few crucial adjectives:
scans overall look good
A few specks here and there are okay
I am hopeful that this means that the tumor is continuing to break down and be disposed of, out of your body.

I am hopeful.

I am hopeful.

I am hopeful.

hope came
back, came rushing back in to the starved places in our bodies
and we fell down crying.
feeling returned to our tingling hands and hearts, we could feel our feet again,
we stood back up.

breathing.
letting the coughing happen without spasms of fear.
coughing to let the tumor out.  let it fly away in blood and dust.

we slept.

and today we met with our other oncologist, the one
who is shyer and kind and straightforward
and we were able to ask all of our questions.

with cancer there are no answers with solid edges
but there are good indications and likelihoods.
and the likelihood is that val’s cancer
continues
to
recede.

her body is rebuilding itself slowly,
now that the hardest-hitting drugs are drifting out of her system.
her platelets are still very low.
so today’s treatment (of the trial drug/placebo and its support drug)
was postponed.
and instead tonight they juiced her up
with some new platelets,
fresh from some other
lovely living body.

and as her body wakes up its own sluggish juiceworks,
remembering how to make red blood, and platelets,
and reawakening the immune system, then next week
she will receive the treatment.
a fine thing.

tonight i put up strings of white lights in the dining room.
watered the plants.  listened to lush music,
ate soup and played with the dog.
val made music with her bass, with friends.

suspended time resumes its flow.

we live.

deborah