On Fear and Vampires

So, I didn't spend my birthday in the hospital. It was actually kind of celebratory and nice, in a low key way, thanks to my sister, who really brought the festivities (and the birthday dinner) to the table single-handedly. Everything was ok.

Everything is ok now, too. Probably. But my counts are just staying weirdly low. Lower than they've been in months. I keep telling myself that chemo is just endlessly strange. And that if I were heading into a relapse the doctors would catch it in my labs (which are weekly again.) But..I don't feel confident. Even the fact that they're having me come in weekly again seems like a reason to worry rather than an encouragement to leave the worrying to the professionals.

The goal is: hold it together, breathe, and remember that there's no point in worrying about something like that before it happens. You can't change it. The worry is a waste of valuable resources. Oh, I hate being scared. But I'm not having much luck at reasoning it away.

An interesting side-effect of fearfulness turns out to be reading ridiculous fluff. Seriously, I ended up reading The Vampire Academy the other day. I'm always up for escapism, but swerving all the way into tween vampire trendiness seems like overdoing. Here's the thing though, it can be a real challenge to find reading material that doesn't have a cancer ambush in the plot. The Actor and the Housewife: cancer ambush, The Friday Night Knitting Club: cancer ambush.
It seems like the go-to way to give your story weight, give your protagonist tragic baggage, or even trim your cast of characters. And so I read Vampire Academy, where there may be a blood disease of sorts, but nobody's holding a mirror up and reminding me of my own worries.

I guess I would probably be safe with the classics of Literature, but honestly, I think the situation calls for a little something frivolous. Also honestly, I don't think I have the mental focus that would require.

Someone point me to a book list guaranteed to be cancer free. Surely one exists.

I'm fighting the urge to make some horrible joke playing off of blood counts and vampires. People don't know to be grateful when you successfully restrain yourself from inflicting that kind of thing. There's no reward in it.

Two Years

This time two years ago I was sitting in a hospital bed. I'd been having weird health problems, inexplicable debilitating pain in my hips, exhaustion, and a low grade fever that just lingered and lingered. I went to the doctor, and then went for blood tests, and then got a call from the hospital where the labs were done, as I was driving home, saying I needed to come back right away, and to check in through the emergency room.

The doctor I saw there painstakingly avoided saying anything about cancer, but somehow, I picked it up from the way he was talking, or something. I was admitted, had a bone marrow biopsy, and was diagnosed w/ acute leukemia and transferred to a different hospital with the right specialists. And I had another bone marrow biopsy, done badly, which as torturous. They shouldn't hurt that way, but didn't know enough to protect myself. And so I sat in a hospital bed by myself, and tried to adjust to the idea that I would be receiving massive doses of a variety of chemotherapy drugs, continuously, for the next three years of my life.

I was just about to turn 25, and had all kinds of plans for the next few years. Instead, well, I have made it two years, and that feels like a pretty solid achievement sometimes. I am so tired, and so sad about the part of my life that I lost. And so scared, sometimes, that I think I could drown in it. My counts have been dropping for weeks, so now I'm back in that severely compromised state where I'm not supposed to do anything or go anywhere for fear of catching a fatal cold.

But hey, with any luck, I won't spend this birthday in the hospital, and that's something. No really, that's definitely something. And I'm counting down to finishing this chemo protocol in months now.

Pegasus, by Robin McKinley

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I received an advance copy of Robin McKinley's new book, Pegasus. I've been reading slowly, trying to stretch the story. I already know the end is a cliff-hanger, and that the conclusion to the story will be a while in coming, as book two still has the author banging her head on her desk, and won't be out until this time next year. But I also know it will be worth the wait, because this is a delicious and magical story. It wraps around you with an intimate and honest narrative voice that makes the fantastical elements seem very real, a voice that I think developed at least a little bit because Robin McKinley has taken to blogging with similar honesty and grit about her own life.

Her blog and the book have some strong points in common: whimsical details, keen observations, and a admirable narrator who is uniquely herself. The story is truly original, and the pegasii are not generic mythical creatures, but believable beings with an intricate and fascinating alien culture. First person narration is tricky, and I used to think that you had to sacrifice beautiful writing if a book was done in the first person, but I am proven wrong by Pegasus, which is beautifully told and as finely wrought as anything the Pegasii themselves might make. The story is a gift, and I feel privileged to be reading it.