Cancer Meditations VI

Treatment ends with bell-ringing. Recovery begins in silence with the slow work of reclaiming what medicine broke. I’m standing at the edge of survival with a body too tired to celebrate.

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Before treatment: Cancer (imminent death)

After treatment: Potentially still cancer, anemia, hypotension, immunocompromise, enteritis, infertility, menopause at 34 (life).

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An alternative way to describe brachytherapy: Having a radioactive cactus inside of you for two days straight while constrained to a bed. Fresh trauma layered over old wounds.

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The padlock doors close, and the technicians depart, leaving me as a temporary nuclear site.

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I’m in a liminal space, I’m simultaneously stronger than I ever knew and more fragile than I ever expected.

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My treatments seem to be working. My heart goes out to those who go through this without positive results.

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I used to wonder why anyone would refuse chemo and radiation in lieu of more time, but I now can appreciate why.

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There is heartbreaking intimacy in radiation being placed in spaces meant for only passion and birth.

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I’ve learned to read myself in digits and decimals, rises and falls in hemoglobin, white blood counts, and neutrophils.

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I pray that this is it and I never have to go through this again, but I also surrender to whatever comes my way, knowing it will always be for the best.

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Parrot tulips have become my favorite flower, a living reminder that radiation can create beauty even as it destroys, that mutation need not only be tragedy.

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My senses are slowly awakening from survival mode as the world turns to spring.

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How intensely beautiful life is in the presence of death.