I don’t have any new cancer to tell you about, but boy this is going to be one helluva night for our country
Here we go.
I am settling in to watch the election results for the first time all day.
Sarah I just returned from Sedona.
The nurse who took my weight and vitals was very poker faced
when she said “We do have your PET scan results. Dr. K will review those with you.”
I was trying hard to read her, but couldn’t. She was
a true professional.
I was jabbering because I was nervous and when I’m nervous I tend to talk (and write) more than usual.
Blood pressure was good. I asked. Because I was nervous chatting.
“Good,” she said. “Very good.”
“Better than when I was heavy,” I mentioned to Sarah who was sitting in the blue chair beside me.
“Heavier? What are you 115 pounds? Soaking wet?” The nurse replied. “Can’t imagine you being truly ‘heavy’” (reader, I have been and may someday again, be overweight. Just like virtually all human fucking beings in America. And to anyone reading who is dieting or torturing themselves about their weight what I would say to you is this: there is nothing fucking scarier than weighing yourself every day and every day disappearing by the pound — not because you’re trying, not because you need to lose weight, but because your body is really run the fuck down — so please. And please don’t be an ass to adults or children about weight shit and STOP TELLING GIRLS THEY HAVE TO BE THIN LIKE A GODDAMN BALLERINA BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN FUCKING GIRLS UP FOR WAY TOO LONG WITH THIS BODY SHIT. STOP.) Anyway, don’t want to get too tangential, but I’ve been thinking about having to live inside a mortal body a lot lately (obviously).
(Enjoy your extra pounds. You might need them. Just take care of yourself.)
Pulse was 166 — not good, but I had forewarned her I was “scared out of my mind.”
when my medical oncologist came in smiling
flapping my PET scan results against his leg I felt the good
coming in slow motion and then he said,
“Scan looks great. No new disease. The treatment is working.”
Folks, not gonna lie, I ugly cried.
Like open mouth, gasping in air, head in my hands, shoulders shaking ugly ass cried. (Which, in a mask, makes one hyperventilate a little.)
Then I told him that Sarah and I were moving to Tucson in the next few weeks, but that I would keep him as my onco until I got all set up with a new, good one in Tucson. And here’s the thing, that most of my friends & family already know, I LOVE my oncologist. I like him as a doctor AND as a person. I trust him and think he’s very smart and he’s also funny and has an amazing bedside manner that is like PERFECT for me: not TOO “touchy feely,” but also not totally “hands off.” And not afraid to drop an F-bomb in my presence. I love him. He’s fucking great, but the rest of it . . .
Even today there was a fuck up with my Xgeva infusion and the assistant was like “I’m trying to find out when you last got Xgeva at St. Mary’s” and she was talking about Milwaukee, a place where I received cancer treatment TEN YEARS AGO and where I NEVER WAS TREATED WITH XGEVA BECAUSE IT DIDN’T EXIST AS A DRUG IN 2011–2012 . . . or if it did, I only had stage ii cancer in 2011. And it wasn’t in my fucking bones so why would they have been . . . forget it. Bigger things to be concerned about right now.
Like how the television is showing me that as of 5:15 mountain time, Trump is up in the Electorals or . . . wait now they’re telling me something different . . . Maybe everyone is just so fucked up on fear right now we’re all incompetent at our jobs.
Anyway. I’ll be up with you, America, but I am going to try to sleep tonight. The kind of good, deep sleep a person has after a PET scan that looked at their whole damn body and didn’t see any cancer, just some occasional weirdness that all bodies have. (Seriously, all of us have weirdness in our bodies. I’m talking physically, not emotionally. You’d be amazed. If you ever get cancer (and I hope you never do) you learn all this wild shit about how weird the body actually is.
I’ll be awake with you, America. For a while at least.
And I hope tomorrow morning, our country waltzes in flapping the election results against its thigh and grinning because it’s JUST THAT GOOD.
More life.
