three weeks in...

yesterday i took some time to reorganize my paperwork from the hospital. i keep everything in a big binder, divided into segments such as charts, chemo info, and second opinions. it had probably been at least six months, closer to a year, since i last opened it. i filled in my calendar - week upon week of routine chemo treatments and beautiful, clear scans. abruptly, 2/2/10 arrives and there it is again. there's the reason for the reorganization. i take the progress updates and now, pet scan report and new chemo info, and use the three hole punch to get the sheets ready to nestle into the binder. i find a little sense of joy in slamming the handle to make the holes. i file everything away and flip the pages upon pages and feel the breeze they generate. as the pages flutter past my eyes i see only tidbits of my entire story over the past three and a half years - names of doctors, signatures of nurses, impossible words that somehow are all too familiar to me now.

finally, i sit and read the pet scan report from three weeks ago - three weeks?! it feels like a lifetime. i have had some time to readjust my routines, but really, life feels upended and so disorganized to me. there is a plan, but there isn't, really. but there it all is, on paper. exactly where the cancer is. words no one should understand, but i do - there it is, in my pectoral tissue on the left side. there it is in some soft tissue in the rear of my abdomen. there it is in my rib. there it is in all those lymph nodes. it is a map of me, and i cannot believe it is in there. amazing, really, amazingly frightening, unsettling, and almost unbelievable. but, believe it.

i shut the binder and slide it back into the bag in which i carry it. this exercise serves as a reminder of why i feel so off balance lately. over the past two years life has settled into a routine, regularly interrupted by drugs, but even those interruptions had become routine, part of life. life. life. and now, something new. side effects making me the patient i never wanted to be again. tired. appetite-less. no wonder it all sneaks up on me from time to time, taking my breath away. i've had just three short weeks to digest it all. that is nothing.

but today, i hopped on my bike, on the trainer, and spun my legs for twenty minutes. it is the first time in a long time. it felt great. and it has done wonders for my mood. i feel like i won a bit of life back. a bit of the routine. we'll have to see how this week goes, whether my depleted white counts will be high enough to warrant another round or if i have to wait another week. roll with it, the unrest and disorganization. but keep doing little things reminding me not all has changed.

(photos from last weekend's day trip to new york.)