The Very Next Thing

Well, it's official. The very next thing I am going to do is ... live with wild abandon. I'm going to eat as much ice cream (my current junk food of choice) as my beleaguered appetite will allow. I'm going to ride my Jazzy right out in the street so fast that the breeze blows back my hair. I'm going to talk and laugh and cry (Josiah has nothing on me!) and sing out loud (and believe me, I have nothing on him!) and dance (also quite scary) even if people are looking. I'm going to plan a summer vacation that we cannot afford and then worry about the grim financial details later. I'm going to venture out to town with my giant scalp tumors sticking up on my head like horns and my arms bruised and battered from the many i.v.'s (with the bandaid-shaped tape residue still marking the spots of torture) in my ill-fitting clothes that hang from me because I've dropped weight so quickly.

For some reason, I am deliriously happy ... okay, not delirious. Let's not use that word since people still like to double-check my mental acuity following my episode last week. (The kids like to give me math problems straight from their algebra books to make sure I'm really "all here" again!) I am unreasonably, undeniably, unalterably happy for absolutely no reason at all. I find myself grinning from ear to ear at the sound of a bird or the sight of an early spring daffodil. I watch the kids as they go about their daily routines and marvel at the wonderful gift of motherhood. I cried with joy when I was wheeled back into our messy home (always a sight to behold after a hospital stay). I laughed when the dryer tore up the minute I got home, smiled through three hours of last-minute Science Fair Project repair last night, and woke the kids with singing at 6 a.m. when it was time to do the school routine.

You see, I feel like a woman who has been given a second chance -- a reprieve, if you will, from the executioner and his dreadful song. I know I have terminal cancer and I can't walk and I look like a freak show, but I'm ALIVE and out of the hospital and here again in my crazy little world full of kids and bills and a messy house and algebra homework and a full calendar and worn-out appliances. This world -- my world -- is exactly where I long to be when I am away from it. And I'm NOT away from it. I'm here, and I want to savor every beautiful moment.

This does not mean that I'm not going to fight the cancer any more. Quite the contrary. I'm going to fight with everything in me to find a way to slow it down or maybe even stop it someday. I will admit, however, that it is going to be very hard for me to submit my poor old body to chemotherapy again. I wish there was some other way ...

Still, after seeing the effect that my coma had on my family, I am more determined than ever to battle as hard as I can. If I had any pseudo-noble notions about eventually throwing in the towel and "going gently" toward my terrible fate, those were torn from me forever by the stricken looks of fear on their faces when I woke up. For their sake, and mine, I must keep fighting and hoping -- and living.

:-) Sharon