It was this time, a year ago, that i scheduled a mammogram

I didn’t expect that to take over my year.

I had to come to terms with the very serious and compelling news that I had breast cancer. That kind of information gets VIP treatment. Almost everything else comes second to this new priority.

I resent giving up my priorities in favor of something that’s pressed upon me. My priorities are my own.

Cancer though, is different. This is my LIFE I’m talking about, in the teeth of a very serious disease.

It’s not something to bargain with. Except it kind of is. I made this cancer journey–well, the medical treatments to fight cancer journey–my own.

I was not willing to lie back and take it. I had to find myself and express that I was strong and a fighter throughout it. I kept exercising, and tried to eat healthy things.

Eating was harder than I thought–30 pounds gained.

I am very close to being done with these treatments. Done with Chemo and halfway through radiation I will get a scan in January that should reveal that the cancer cannot be found in my body

ok. what then?

I have to recover from this fight…from the poisons I have put into my body to kill the disease. It hasn’t left me unscathed. I have lost my beautiful hair. It’s going to come back changed.

I am NOT willing to be weak and tired going forward. But it looks like I will be for a while longer.

How can I shorten that time?

Because i WANT that energy, that stamina, clarity and creative expression. Why did I go through this if not for that?

I want to redeem what i bought with the suffering. I want to SPEND my life on the very best life has to offer.

i need a plan. I need to turn from the easy and the cheap to the precious and valuable.

Taking the time to think about what I value and set away from the cheap will help me spend wisely.

As I bask in the wind-down of christmas, and the ramp-up into the new year my perspective has changed a lot. My faith is stronger, but humbler too.

I hadn’t realized what a small thing i am in the face of the cosmos. There is so much that is outside my control.

And still, of the things that are inside my control, there are so many actions I can choose to take. I am small but mighty, and I can choose to be persistent.

Persistance brings down any barrier.

Christmas is almost here and I’m about halfway through my Radiation treatment. I’m going to get a second dose of radioactive iodine for the thyroid cancer, which will happen in February.

Mostly I’m comfortable and thinking about Christmas. I am happy to be with my family, and looking forward to seeing my family’s faces when they open the presents I carefully chose for them. 

And driving over every day to get zapped. This will last until the middle of January. I have been telling the medical people I want the kind of radiation that gives me superpowers.  Radiation has been around for a long time but it became a topic of popular discussion around World War 2. Remember the Bomb that everyone was racing to perfect?

The war was scary. The Bomb and the governments that controlled it were new horizons of horrifying—the stuff of nightmares.

Comic book creators took the concept and used it. What is this super powerful radiation people are talking about? It sound complicated and scary. Ok. Who cares about that part? Let’s focus on the part that’s powerful.

Everybody wants this radiation for its power! A new generation of superheroes were spawned. Superman—that fossil!—was from outer space.  But the power of radiation is still making superheroes.

I plan to hitch my wagon to that powerful energy. It is fun to say I want the kind of radiation that give me powers. And the part of me knows I can’t really say that’s true.

I want it to be true. I remember the TV Show The Greatest American Hero who had a superhero (old school alien powers, not radiation) that consisted of a super cape and an owner’s manual that got lost.

His powers were real and impressive. He just didn’t know how to use them yet.

My superpowers are coming to me in the same way. I’m beign broken down and rebuilt with the power to carry own and have more adventures.

Can I be bigger, faster, stronger than before? That’s not how I feel right now.

But can I be? Absolutely! There is no question that I CAN. I have to practice and earn it. I can undergo this treatment, use it to kill the cancer and then earn my superpowers.

The comicbooks were right. Anything scary can be turned into a superpower with practice. 

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.” 
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Video games have given us the archetype of the non-playing character. I’m the hero of the game, and I can take action, have adventures and consequences for what I do. The Non playing characters (NPCs) are in the game doing one thing, with no variation. 

Like, a troll, or a princess that must be rescued. They only have one job.

As I move forward in my upcoming radiation therapy, every day I am lying on a table and being hit with X-Rays—Don’t move! Don’t breathe too hard!—I am an NPC.  It’s their world I am in, an object to be pushed into the shape of their choosing.

Video games’ portrayal of the NPC is not new. It’s instantly recognizable. They surround me. Clerks in stores, other pedestrians as I’m walking the streets—so many people I do not interact with but who share a space with me.

But I want to be the hero. If I’m not the active player, who is?

That play I’m quoting at the beginning– Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead –is a play about two NPCs in Hamlet. They show up say a few lines and die in Shakespeare’s version. Tom Stoppard gave them their own play. Everyone is the hero of their own life.

Sorta.

Thoreau wrote
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation… From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.”

I don’t want to be a rodent. I’d rather be up and fighting the dragon.

There is a lot of background work that goes into fighting a dragon. Even the heroic knights in armor had to stand very still while their squires strapped them into the armor.

Heroism take a lot of forms. I am learning that to be the hero I want to be  I have to stay still.

Twelve months ago, I had a path laid out ahead of me. I had started a new job with its own amazing potential. My kid was growing into her social circle, me and my husband had a good connection, and I was going to finish writing my fifth book.

Twelve months ago I was blissfully ignorant that two types of cancer were growing in my body, ignorant of the long stretch of medical treatments I was about to endure. I shifted out of the tracks I’d been steaming down, and popped into an alternate reality.

I’ve blogged about this before. A recent global reality shift was the Covid19 epidemic. I am pretty sure every human being had ideas about what the next year was going to be like in January of 2020, and all of us were wrong.

Early example of a reality track jumps came for me when I was in college and found myself taking more than four years to graduate. I had taken two years out of college to prepare then live in another country. When I came back, I felt myself irreparably off track, far behind everyone else.

I sit here now, shaking my head at my shame-filled 21-year-old self. I know now that I was far from alone in taking more than 4 years to finish a bachelor’s degree. 

Yet I sit here, still sure that I’m off some proper track and this is some kind of lost year. My head is clearer as the chemo is leaving my system, and my drive and ambition are reawakening. These old friends are now impatient for me to get moving on accomplishments and adventures.

I’m eager to make up for lost time!

 Still straining to pick up the projects and dreams I laid down at the beginning of the year, I recognize what I didn’t when I was 21.

There isn’t a map that I missed, actually. There are broad possibilities that could be achieved. But my track is my own. Missing a possibility because I realized a different one isn’t missing anything. 

Since I missed possibility because I did a different thing, that meant the possibility was imaginary. This year was a lot of very short term plans, clearly knowing that I could not know how things would turn out from day to day or even hour to hour.

As a result, the volume is turned down on my drive to achieve. Yes, I want to barrel down a track. And I know I have limits. I’m grateful to be on a track and see what adventures will unfold.