Approaching the Bell
Dear friends,
I lay in my hospital bed, watching the dewy drip-drip-drip of my final 24-hour chemo infusion in the last cycle of six. Four months from the date I went to my primary care doctor thinking perhaps I developed late-in-life asthma and just needed an inhaler.
Tomorrow, I will walk to the center of the 20th ward and ring ring ring that bell signifying that I accomplished something big. I completed an aggressive treatment of chemo that left me without hair, put my ovaries to sleep, showed me the meaning of bone pain, and also added to my reserve of resiliency. It feels equally surreal and real. It feels a little premature (wait, don’t I need the PET scan proof that the cancer is g-o-n-e gone?) It also feels hopeful. A chime that will echo in the pericardial place where cancer can no longer survive.
I have many more things I wish to share with you in the near future. Right now I’m asking myself to stay resolutely in the present moment. Fanning myself through hot flashes.Excited for my body to settle into a new stasis over the next few months.
As ready as I am to leave this hospital without a “see you in two weeks” from the nurses - I will miss each one of them dearly, fiercely, profoundly. They know me so uniquely. I mean…they know more about my bowel movements than I wish anyone knew about my bowel movements. They’ve also coaxed me through pain and nausea. They’ve shared parts of their stories and families with me. We’ve changed each other, and for me, I can confidently say, for the better.
Over the next couple of weeks, I will be recovering and re-entering the next phase, and I hope to continue sharing the small moments with you. Four months ago, I stood like a shivering featherless chicken, nude, while a nurse gave me a sponge bath. Tomorrow, I walk out of those sliding glass doors, no tubes dangling from my body, free to take a real bath.
This, my friends, is why it is sometimes silly to get hung up on a five-year plan. This was not on my vision board. And yet, I am who I am supposed to be and who I am becoming because of this experience.
I love you and will write soon.
With love and a bell chiming hope,
Nutmeg
