I am in the MRI tube again.
"Wonder if anybody has ever tagged one of these. 'For a good doctor, call...'."
I've been through this before: lying still for longer than I'm used to, scanned by every scanner (the ultrasound revealed I wasn't pregnant), sending teams of trained professionals back to the board to devise new ways to scan.
"That was space ships fighting construction workers. Space ships win, of course, but then they just start fighting each other."
I'm one year removed from a little tiff with my body. It tried to kill me (the 1% malignant part, at least). We're cool now.
"Spaceships, construction workers, an extra terrestrial invents his planet's first telegraph machine...," repeating to myself what I've just heard. "Now the construction workers are back and they've got lasers.... Still, they lose."
So this is what "having" (had) cancer is: visiting the doc every three months for the next four years. Sitting around getting angry at commercials. Stuffing things back in my head until I can find somebody to talk to. Meowing at my cats. Thick, wavy hair instead of straight. Hair, in fact, growing back at a maddening pace in annoying places.
In fact, this is mostly what it is, considering I went through the routine (surgery, recovery, 3 sessions of chemo) for a grand total of maybe four months.
"We are what we consistently do," said a great thinker.
I am not the cancer. I am the recovery.
All you have to do is look up to see people defining themselves, and each other, through negatives. But it's too easy to construct yourself from the things you hate, and it leads to very little actual building.
A friend once told me, "Some people spend their whole lives just becoming." And that's okay.
Jamming alone enough to learn new scales on my guitar, growing a garden that produced actual food, learning about hockey while watching the Blackhawks win - this, more accurately, is what I've been up to.
I am not falling behind, out of life. I can find life anywhere.
I hop out of the tube and tell the MRI techs I can see myself out, waving. They have work to do.
Actually, I'm on my way to different part of the hospital. Another pint of blood keeps another phlebotomist employed.
But just as I take a seat next to another pile of Home and Garden and Entertainment Weeklys, a mother worries her way into the waiting area, gazing helplessly at the sign above the desk.
"Where you headed?" I ask the boy in tow, who I'm face-to-face with.
"Diagnostic imaging?" he asks me, searching for meaning.
I hop up and tell them to follow.
"Don't think I'm insane," I say. "I'm an off-duty volunteer."
I'm not. (Well.. I've signed up, but haven't started yet. Officially.)
Does having dealt with some cancer make any of us better, stronger or more brilliant?
Shouldn't everything?
Filed under: hospital
Tags: Blackhawks, cancer, cats, chemotherapy, doctor, garden, guitar, hospital, lasers, malignant, MRI, patient, recovery, surgery, survivor, technician, volunteer, waiting room
