Keeping Warm in the Cold

Hey y’all – happy new year! Hope everyone had a wunderbar holiday season and those in the grip of the current cold snap are staying warm.

Since my last update nothing too major has happened on the medical front. My tumor marker continued it’s “soft landing” and dropped to 17 as of last Thursday.  The RPLND and orchiectomy surgery is scheduled for 1/24 and I have pre-op MRI, PET-CT scans and pulmonary function tests this Thursday. We met with the surgeon last week who does excellent work by all accounts. Having some of the details of the procedure filled in and taking some preparatory steps has added some tangibility to the surgery which is a bit scary.   But it also feels good to be moving forward and on the healing path.  My hair is starting to come back – I even shaved for the first time in 4 months – and my energy is back.  I still have intermittent tinnitus, hardened veins in my arms and I have developed some slight neuropathy as numbness in my left foot (which is also losing toenails) but it’s not too bad and I am hopeful it will all fade over time.

KR and I were able to get away to Costa Rica for 10 days for some much needed R&R. We did yoga almost every day, watched 10 suns set, had a visit from a huge sea turtle during our little solstice ceremony on the beach, slept a lot and ate the best fresh fruit I’ve ever tasted.

The day we got there we walked to the beach to watch the sun go down. As we lay down with our feet in the sand pointed at the source of all life, surfers bobbing up and down in the long breaks, I found myself weeping. It felt like such a sweet wonder to be there, to be in love, to be free of the chemo, to unwind the buried coils of fear for a moment. We returned refreshed, reconnected, rejuvenated and ready for the rest of the winter.

On new year’s eve we had a bonfire. Many of us burned representations of obstacles or other elements we wanted to leave behind in 2013. On a 2×4 I wrote “cancer” on one side and “the illusion of and need for control” on the other. I have been trying to really plug into being able to be grounded in helplessness (which is not to say abandoning intention or action) and I suppose being under general anesthesia while your abdomen is wide open for 5 hours is a good opportunity to practice that state :).  I just read an excellent book that touches on this struggle: “Shadows on the Path” by Abdi Assadi. It’s a quick read but rich in useful, well-earned wisdom in a humble and humorous container.

Couple of things I wanted to share:

1) The song below, “Go Home,” by Lucius has been on repeat for the last month in a way I have not obsessed on a song in while. It’s a gorgeous recording but maybe it’s the refrain “I don’t need you anyway / I don’t need you / go home” and the way they sing it that captures so well how I feel about the cancer right now.

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2) a few recent poems:

12/26

i can hear the breeze tickling
the leaves, my love.
like a boy moving pebbles in his hand
a tic tac music in the wind

i can smell the weight of the air
filling every space, my love.
sweet burnt molasses smell
filled with expectation

i can see the breast of a thundercloud
heaving towards us, my love.
pregnant blanket pulling across
the sky to cover the green land

lie here with me
take this dry hand in yours
feel the pulse of blood
in my hardened veins
wait softly with me
for the show to begin

12/28

i see my self in the
empty space
left by
your shape

a curve of painful loss
a pocket of anger
an angle of need

my shadows bleed into yours

i want to map this landscape with you,
notate all of the parts that are
worn and burnished
like the head of a cane

spend a lifetime finding
the route home
until we can both see it and
stand at the edge of the wood
looking across the quiet snow
to that light-filled house

1/4

there are evenings when Venus
appears just above a western hill
before the sky is blackened
and filled with holes

she seems so alone and brave

almost as if one of
the houses on that hill
had jumped up into the sky and
hung there

or when my heart rises
into my throat
where it belongs