Last summer, I convinced myself that we dreamed up the cancer.
A’s hair was growing back. He’d stopped taking chemo-related drugs. There were no more appointments. The follow-up PET scan was behind us. He went back to work and eventually settled in. We were planning the summer and the fall and living our lives again.
And cancer?
It didn’t really happen. It was a dream in exquisite detail, really, with all the medications and the moods and the nausea and the trauma and the visitors and the help. But it wasn’t real. How could it have been real?
This is in no way the same thing, but from what I’ve heard and read, I gather this is also the way people react to deaths. You forget that it happened, or you don’t believe it, you pick up the phone to call someone or you shout to the person who should be in the next room… and then you remember.
In this case, my reminder was my partner, who’d been through cancer treatment, telling me he needed to schedule another appointment. There’s no indication anything is wrong, okay? This is just routine follow-up. But you know what? There was no indication anything was wrong before, unless you happened to feel a lump on A’s upper inner thigh. And it took even A a while to think that that might be a problem. Externally? Nothing.
So. We’re in the car, and I’m driving, and he tells me this. I’m getting in the left lane, a few minutes from home. And I’m crying. Not loudly, not even audibly, but the tears are coming, even though nothing is happening, even though it’s not necessary.
“Necessary”. Ha.
And in my head, this is what’s happening:
I’m upset about this. Why am I upset about this? The cancer wasn’t real, right? It was just a dream. Who am I to be upset about this? A’s here next to me.
And then: I thought I had more time before I had to think about this again.
And still: tears.
Today, as I write this, we’re nearly a month past a follow-up CT scan that found no signs of active lymphoma.
I’m not a religious person, but every time I think of this, I want to clasp my hands together and thank some more powerful entity for making this so.
A month ago, we were anxious, pre-scan. We were reliving it. Remembering last year. Imagining what our lives would look like if the cancer was back.
The evening of the appointment, when we found out it wasn’t, we were incredibly grateful. For that night and maybe the weekend that followed.
And then we went back to our lives.
And the cancer went back to being a bad dream.
This Glass Has Water 