Dear friends,

I don’t know what to write about with an update. I had chemo on Tuesday (that’s five days ago). Since then I have felt

• • grateful
  • angry
  • hopeless
  • exhausted
  • pained
  • happy
  • train-wreck-sized fatigued
  • lonely
  • lucky
  • and all of it, sometimes, all at once

Going through my relatively short round of chemo is awful. I am exhausted. Basic tasks wear me out. Disabled and chronically ill people use “spoons” to talk about quanitifying the energy one has to get through the day. It’s a way of naming the need to be economical with movement and activities, knowing that basic activities of daily living can be so hard. I, for this brief chemo moment, feel so much solidarity with people who are exhausted just by living in and tending to an ailing body.

But also, when I’m not at my chemo lowest (I’m coming out the other side now, which is how I have the spoons to write), I feel hopeful again that I’ll be strong on the other side of this. I live in the double consciousness of being mad and how shitty I feel and also aware of how much easier I have it than most. I only have to do four rounds of chemo — I am almost ashamed, facing a friend who has more than twice that ahead of her. Neither of us deserve this, but I certainly don’t deserve a shorter, easier path. And I’m grateful for access to great doctors, and the internet, and a computer with which I reach out to them on the regular, check my labs, ask more questions. We bought a new bed when I got my diagnosis, and I love my very comfortable bed. 

I’ve been thinking about my grandmother, who had breast cancer in her 70s. I still need to check in with family — I was a kid and not paying attention then — but I think she endured a mastectomy and chemo, too. If I’m knocked out to the point of hopelessness, how do elders make it through this? It reminds me to be grateful for my, still, relatively healthy body and resilience.

And I’m grateful to still love food. Chemo messes with your mouth and gut. All that epithelial lining, those wiggling tentacles that digest and move food through the length of our guts, they are susceptible to the chemo poison, too. Most people feel nauseous with chemo. My gut has slowed down, but not my appetite. People bring us steaming dishes of very good food. But I am devouring all the food like I’m starving. Like I haven’t eaten in days. I imagine my gut-brain feels the existential threat of cancer and has responded like Cookie Monster. MUST EAT, my body says. And the food is so, so good. 

It’s hard to write about loneliness. But cancer plus intense caregiving makes it so, sometimes, I feel like I’ll never again have a life outside of self-injections, chemo drips and Lucas’s increased care needs. Obviously that’s not true, but you know, feelings. Cancer plus intense caregiving can feel like living in a parallel universe, where I can see but can’t touch the life everyone else is living. I am overwhelmed with love and appreciation for Burke, Lucas, and Ida. I couldn’t ask for a better family. And it is impossible for any three people, no matter how great they are, to be everything for anyone. My heart needs to feel like we aren’t alone in this, even when we have to do so much of it alone. And so, I think, I am writing a simultaneous plea and a thank you. The texts, hugs, treats, emails, care packages, cards, offers to take Ida, to bring food, to send playlists, podcast, the offers of rides, grocery runs, walks, calls, poems… Sometimes these aren’t even the things we need, and sometimes I can’t even respond, but all of it bolsters me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And please.