Every journey is easier once begun.
So I think to myself and say to myself as I cross another threshold in the architecture of oncology.
CT, bone scan, ultrasound, labwork, biopsies.
If I enter and traverse all these rooms, I will reach the penultimate: treatment more unpleasant than the disease itself at the current moment. Of course, the disease, untreated, would most likely kill me. Still the thought of imbibing poison in order to kill a potentially lethal assassin within is not at all comforting.
As I breathe deeply, as I enter and then leave each examination or consulting room, as I memorialize each “Last” before I become too sick to enjoy anything, I remember when I did all the same things as a fifteen-year-old requiring a bone marrow transplant for Hodgkin lymphoma. All the rigors of tests and results. All the advice from physicians. All the last dances, the last walks, the last meals, the last goodbyes, the last afternoons in the sun.
Now at the age of 53, testing positive and about to begin treatment for breast cancer, I once again listen to the music, dance without fatigue, feel the sun on my skin, and enjoy a meal without nausea or vomiting.
How good it is to be alive. And that is reason enough to suffer and to risk. To endure in the hope of a better tomorrow, even a tomorrow that seems like a long time away.
