Fan-fuc&ingtastic

“I don’t want to die right now” I said with my head curled up in my mother’s arms “I’m not in the mood, I’ll do it later.”  I tearfully lamented this morning about the unknown future and the taxing task of going back into treatment. And then I took a deep breath and mom laughed and said “that sounds like a song, would you write that down.”This morning I was having a not so teeny tiny cup of feeling sorry for myself. Despite reading in the Sunday paper about oil spills and immigration woes and a brief but studied walk with my eyes across the obituaries, I lay on my side, hands by my head in the cozy upstairs room of mom’s house and had a good solid cry. I let it all out.Earlier today, I looked at one of the only blogs I’ve ever seen that belongs to a friend of a friend. She is remarkably talented, viciously productive, a charming writer who takes wonderful pictures, writes books and is happily married to a male nurse I’ve met in the hospital who is extremely kind and enjoys making movies about Keiko. I kid you not. Her blog is beautiful and well made and a happy read. I wondered as I sat in the bed with itchy red skin how my new blog about cancer land during early midlife would resound. Would it make people feel crummy maybe or depressed and/or sorry for me and my situation. Be that as it may, I just need to write things down as I brave (with the help of my family,friends and dogs), the path of the unknown that lies ahead.Chemotherapy starts this week for two days, and then I have a month off before the next treatment. They can’t say how long I’ll be in this routine because it depends on how I respond. Word is that this is not a terribly hard round of chemo - that my hair most likely won’t fall out and it is administered to me as an outpatient so I won’t have to shack up at the hospital. Good news.For today the plan includes playing the guitar for at least one full hour and going out into mom’s garden to see the number of slugs that climbed into the empty tuna cans of beer she left for them overnight. When I was a kid she used to take out slugs with salt but letting them slurp their way to a happy ending with a six pack of bad beer seems to make her happy. Yesterday for the first time in many years I helped pull some weeds in the garden with a mask on my face and gloves on my hand and it was fan-fuc&ingtastic. I had forgotten how centering it is to dig in the dirt, how good it feels to work in the yard.If you want a little pick-me-up go see my friend’s friend’s really amazing work at: http://www.rosylittlethings.typepad.comWritten 5/2/10