Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Ticket to Ride

Tomorrow it will be a year to the day that the whole mess of mammograms, pap-smears and pelvic exams began this Miss Cancer's Wild Ride. Don't think Huntsman has a fastpass for chemo, radiation and surgery. But they do return phone calls, and yesterday I got a pretty good one. I had a CT scan late Friday night to see if the cancer had spread into my left hip that has been giving me quite a bit of trouble the last month or so, which was one of the major signs of the original tumor. A lot of pain, limited mobility and really no apparent reason for it to be hurting so much. They still have no sure idea as the CT scan shows NO NEW CANCER!!! No sign of fracture, no growths, just my enlarged left kidney and a left hip that hurts day and night, but no new cancer. Did you get that, no cancer. Have to go in to the Huntsman rehabilitation for a hip brace next week, see if that helps. The thinking is that when they had me in stirrups for the ureter re-implantation they either dislocated my hip or there might be some vascular necrosis. Vascular necrosis. Literal dead leg. Makes watching "The Walking Dead" all the more apropos, and I will relish every ghoulish moment with wicked twisted glee.

Thinking, reading and watching the world (and my body) is so different now. Post cancer. What I would have just chalked up to Ehlers-Danlos pain in my hip has to be scrutinized with a different filter. The Cancer filter. Is that pain just a regular pain? Is that new? Nah. Should I tell myself nah? What do I ignore and what do I worry about? Careful, too careful, not careful enough? Emotional pain is different as well. Shifting from accepting choices made in the past are no longer living in my present, yet knowing those choices could mean the actual end of my life.

I went to the State Fair last week and Blues Traveler was playing. Watching people that are no longer as young as they were when they first fell in love with that band shake their asses and boogie on down, made me so thrilled, and alone. I was proud of the woman that forgot herself completely and danced up and down the aisle, which made for a better show than what was on stage. The best me party in town. Yet while I was there, I was ten different places as well. The other BT concerts I went to with Neil, the concert we missed when John Popper broke his leg and instead of our trip to Denver we went shopping and that was the weekend I got the true love of my life, The Bun. I heard how much their music had changed and I thought how much I had changed and with the choice of loving someone, I put my life in danger.

Cancer is a wild ride. So is love. I'm not going to buy the regret ticket.



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The Bun

The Bun
If you don't like rabbits, you can suck it, shove it and then go soak your head.