On Thursday, May 8, Mary Rose had her seventh chemotherapy treatment, the seventh of eight. What began as a process fraught with worry and even dread has become almost routine. The usual check in, the blood work, the exam, all ritual now. We work on our computers, make calls, have lunch and manage our lives while the machines hum and whir and the medicines drip and other patients come and go. It is amazing what you get used to here in the new normal. The tumor continues to shrink, the oncologist is pleased, the date for surgery is set. The steroids flow, she rises, she falls, she finds her equilibrium again.
We calculate the numbers as they stand now:
14 days from chemo 7 to the final chemo 8
The tumor estimated to be 2.5 cm or less, down from 6-7
3 weeks from the final chemo until the surgery
3 weeks to recover from surgery before radiation can begin
6 weeks of radiation, 5 days a week
7 months from diagnosis to the end of treatment
She is close to completing the first and perhaps most trying phase of this journey, so close that it is hard (for me at least) not to feel impatient, not to want to crunch, compress, obliterate the hard math of time and treatment. Can we finally just get in there and kill the fucker? Have we not been here long enough? Can we move on please?
No. The numbers do not yield, so she endures. Still working full steam, making dishes for school events, chaperoning a field trip, the usual weekend bustle of Oona’s dance class, trips to the library, play dates and even cooking when she can squeeze it in. As if the cumulative effects of chemo were not enough, on top of everything else she has been battling a persistent cold for the past two weeks. Believe me, the moinker of “Supergirl” is well earned.
Beyond the numbers we know are the calculations we cannot or choose to not yet confront, hovering around our more pressing cares: survival rates, percentages of recurrance, mitigating factors, the months, the years before she can define herself as cancer free; complex equations that will one day demand to be solved. For now, a more simple math is our concern. Addition. Get through today. Add tomorrow. What does that equal?
Time accumulates and we move closer to chemo number 8. Some days she feels the weeks of treatment catching up on her. Some days she feels something close to her old self. Sometimes the “what ifs” and the “whys” intrude. Some days are unrecognizable from the days that came before all this. And sometimes, in response to some kindness, some gesture that is the least of what she deserves, she feels something that is so indicative of her grace and spirit that it leaves me speechless.
Lucky.
