As we enter a New Year and look back, the passage of time is inconceivable. I hope we all get through the new year  content and ununscathed, or as content and unscathed as possible. As for happy, what does that mean?

Here it is: I am stuck at the crossroads of words and life. Of Robert’s  (The “Husband Journey” which began with The Mother-Daughter Journey) and my own health (Blogging for Breast Cancer).

Let me try to sort it all out here.

I recently had the wonderful distraction of having family stay over for a couple of days. It took a bit for us all to acclimate to the situation; the sleeping arrangements, and living together.

On the first full day, I had an ocular migraine in the morning which left me wonky. (I had all hopes that this new drug, “Qulipta” would be the final, solving element in my life with migraines, but I guess I have to assume that stress, be it good or bad, plays a part, and the brain reacts.)

A few hours later, Robert’s nursing home called to do a FaceTime call. I hadn’t “seen” him since his birthday a month before and even though I contacted the administration I knew that during holidays, not to expect anything: There are labor shortages in healthcare.

Colette, my favorite aide, set up the iPad and there was Robert, looking off to the side, possibly at my image in a box on the screen, or possibly at his own image. Even though it was fortuitous that I was with family and that we could all speak with him, try to stimulate a conversation, he was virtually unresponsive. He would usually recognize me or my voice and despite my several attempts, he continued to stare at whatever he was staring at. Then finally, I asked if he was tired and he said yes. I asked if he wanted to listen to music and he said yes. My nephew and I propped our phones opposite one another so he could view his (great read →) Mahler Symphony #4 on (great listen →) Youtube.

And then I lost it.

Yup. Just lost it. My soul opened up with one helluva gut-driven cry and there I sat for what felt like an endless time as Mahler’s music soared and the soprano sang about a child’s vision of heaven. I lost it. With a family wrapped around me trying to hold me together.

Mahler had a creative drought and a huge bout of alleviated constipation (literally!): he was suddenly unplugged and the cork popped and let the muse in. I must have been holding in so much for a long time that during my big cry there began a strange rising of sewer water in my basement (!) It was by luck that I found it by taking out the garbage and noticing that there was water collecting under the cars in the driveway and it hadn’t rained. The sump pump began to go off, that was the key, the front of the house was filling up under-ground and the sewer trap water rose to the bottom of the meter room. The stink of misery permeated the whole damn house. I lost it, again, and maybe that was a good thing. I’d like to think that I became unplugged. In effect, my entire world became unplugged. The house was crying and purging itself along with me.

When Robert’s iPad had to be collected by Collette, I said to her, “please take the iPad into the hallway, I need to speak to you.” And when she did, I told her that I had my own health issues, that I had many appointments, that I have been concentrating on myself and that I may not always be around when they call me. I am not sure she understood what I was telling her, but for the past two years, these health issues were going on with me, these strange, Covid-era episodes of surprises and ambushes of health.

The Friday after my family left, the day after the Liberty Sewer guy paid us a visit at 8:30 PM and pumped out the mess of tree roots that had been causing the clog, I had an MRI. It was the third time in about two years, I knew the techs by name. Don’t forget,” I said to Chris, “move me slowly, I get dizzy.”

By the time I got home, the report was in the app on my phone. I refused to look at it. Reports can be so technical that you think you should run out and get a cemetery plot. But, having a report within reach is also a terrible pressure.

I ignored it.

Saturday morning, December 31, 2022, on a holiday weekend, my surgeon called.  She left a message for me to call her emergency number and she would call me back in between events and family, and a pickleball lesson. I left her a message but didn’t hear back on Saturday, or Sunday. I didn’t speak with her until this morning.

She began the message with, “I have good news.”

You have to understand that having spoken to her last week, having conferred with an oncologist, that the good news would most likely be that they didn’t find anything more this time around. However, there are other factors in play about that dot-sized cancer that was found accidentally: The treatments hanging over my head. The treatments that will need other treatments to counteract them.

The phone call this morning:

The  update on January 2, 2023: “Good News” was the preface so as not to upset me.

This morning I spoke to the surgeon, and yes there is “good news,” that the area of cancer appears to be gone, B U T there is noticeable activity in the left breast, a ton of nonspecific nodules. And, even if I were to take the drugs (aromatase inhibitors—which are not easy to deal with and cause other problems, there is N O guarantee that the drug would suppress all of these “papilloma” I have been getting over the last couple of years: I might still need more surgeries and I must still have to be checked every six months.

Thus, life would become a continued crap-shoot; it has been more than I could handle. 

I/we have decided that under these circumstances, I would have a mastectomy/reconstruction. I was told that the procedures would be a lot easier than when I had this done eighteen years ago (when the surgery was twelve hours and it took about a year to recover and to feel like myself).

Each element of this post is linked to some kind of issue during the passage of time, where major changes have occurred; here I go again, I seem to be writing about the same thing: It’s what people do when they can’t make sense of it all, roll the details over and over again. Examine and fiddle with the possibilities.

Now that I have brought you up-to-date about my last visit with Robert and my recent health dilemma, I am going to tie this blog up with a story from the past.

In 1974 I was a young widow. I had just moved to Queens, to Robert’s neighborhood. He was divorced. The moment I had learned about Steve’s death, I called Robert, the only person in the neighborhood whom I knew. Within a short time, there he was at the door with turkey sandwiches and The New York Times.

I had no expectations of re-marrying or getting involved with anyone. I had been through my late teens, to my mid-twenties going through hell with someone else: A young man whose body betrayed him.

During that year of loss and change, Robert and I used to invite one another for dinner and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. When I was at his apartment, I marvelled at his record collection and the incredible wall unit he built while an architecture student, to hold his hundreds of record albums and books. The Westminster chime clock that sat atop its mantle-like crown sang every fifteen minutes: It is now broken and hidden in a niche in my house. But, that furniture he designed and built is still in the livingroom and so are the books and records.

The other night I was watching a show that had a retro soundtrack. There I was again, weeping on the couch, this time to Judi Collins’, “Who Knows Where The Time Goes.”

It is the song Robert and I danced to in his living room, never imagining, then, that almost fifty years later, this is where we’d be.

 

This post is part of my series, Blogging for Breast Cancer. The index link is here.

It is also part of another series which began with care-giving for my mother, and then my husband.

📌The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey
The previous post is here
The next post is here

 

 

.