Home

We got home Saturday late in the day.  What a pleasure to be in familiar space, quiet replacing the buzzing and beeps of the ICU, welcomed by some cheery banners and cards.  I was wiped out and have had varying degrees of “chemo-brain” the past few days – moments where my CPU seems to be operating at 63% or some easily accessed piece of knowledge of memory is out of grasp.  

But all in all I have been feeling good!  I have not had naseau or vomiting, no rashes and my appetite remains healthy.  I have been a little backed up but that combined with some fatigue and haziness is minor compared to what many suffer during chemo.   Sunday we went to a wedding in Brooklyn in the late morning for a couple of hours and it felt good to be in the flow of life and in the glow of such a beautiful event and warm hearts.

Yesterday I went in and saw the magnificent Dr. Feldman and got a shot of neulasta which stimulates my bone marrow to create white blood cells.  It can sometimes come with intense bone pain but so far I haven’t had anything too bad – just a couple spots where it feels like i got bruised.  I got blood work yesterday as well and my white blood cell count (19.1), platelets (333), red blood cell count (4.65) and creatinine (0.9) all look good so far which puts me in a good starting position for the next 5-6 days when my counts will drop.  They also tested my main tumor marker – HCG.  This is the hormone that allowed me to test positive on a pregnancy test when it was at 236,000.  Yesterday it registered 342,000!  This is good news.  Not only am I even more pregnant but it means that the chemo is working and so many of these rampant tumor cells are dying and exploding that they are releasing a large amount of the hormone.  It is an expected spike which will, hopefully, be followed by a long ramp down to zero.

I remain in a state of momentary emotional flux.  There are just so many feelings to sit with and so many opportunities for the mind and the heart to jump from one to another.  And while it is wonderful to be home and be in a place of peace it has been hard to take the reality of my cancer home with me.  The hospital was foreign enough where a part of my brain allowed for the chance that it might not be real, that it was dream space.   Now I am home, in this beyond real place that we created and there is a whole new, uninvited modality.

Part of the shift is re-imagining this place, our home,  as a temple of healing and not a project to be completed.  Being out in the woods, home is  naturally suited for renewal and rest but I have to reprogram my view to not see the punch list, to not imagine project x, y, z and simply be still, turn inward, come to quiet.  Luckily I have two veteran instructors in the art of extensive rest.  Sophie and Lily have devoted years to laying around, cultivating Yin energy and have agreed to initiate me into the ways of taking it slow.  Here they are at work:

Thanks to the Howes and KR for setting up the new bedroom/recovery room:

KR sorting out my meds – continuing to be the whitest light of all in this temporary gloom:

thank you everyone for all of the supportive notes, messages, love, light – it makes all the difference