This little cove on The Big Island is such a healing, gentle place. I am at the beach now, the sun is out, and the colors of the water are stunning — a soft sea-glass green, aquas, turquoise, then a deep calm blue and lavender farther out. The sand seems to glow with the warmth of the light. The vegetation is vivid green, and the flowers are brilliant. I plan to sketch palm trees today in their tall grace. Birds are singing; I think they are mostly house wrens, although there are three brightly-colored parrots near the cafe with their wings clipped, I believe. They seem to resent their captivity greatly and shriek like chimps. There are a few half-grown cats near the cafe also — probably from the same litter — and diners feed them scraps. I saw one of these graceful kitties on the beach last night from our lanai on the fifth floor. Maybe the parrots are watching those kittens grow up beneath their tree and getting nervous.

The water is quite warm and we go in almost every day, although I tend to list to the left from the effects of brain surgery. I can do a sort of frog paddle/breast stroke with splayed fingers. It feels good to swim and the cove is usually calm.

Of course, surviving cancer isn’t about not “giving up.” If that were true, we’d have a lot more survivors. Sometimes the body just can no longer deal with the invasion or we run out of medical options. One of the hardest things for me to consider is that I may have outlived my usefulness on earth. Hopefully some more physical therapy will help my hand. I am keeping up with my hand exercises here. My neurosurgeon said the brain takes a long time to heal. And patience — especially with myself — has never been my strong suit. So we will see how this year goes. Hope there are not too many errors in this post typed with one hand.

A couple of weeks ago I was told that I might only have 3-6 months left if I chose no more treatment. That’s when we decided not to postpone our vacation plans further. And we also decided go ahead with the laser brain surgery. Because in spite of all the problems in our world, it is still a beautiful world and I am not ready to say good-bye to the lovely outdoors yet. Or to my loving and beloved family and friends.

Lots of tears. Aaand on to the next procedure. I had the open-brain surgery last month which has left me with a very uncoordinated left hand. So now I’m keyboarding with one hand which is a major annoyance when you’re used to using both hands.

But of course that’s the least of it all. I still have a tumor in my cerebellum. The med team is going to laser it tomorrow morning (Gamma knife again) to try to buy me more time. Cliff has been a gem through all this — so supportive — and of course it’s always hard on everyone, including my two wonderful kids. It’s just way life goes sometimes. At least I got to marry a fine man and raise my children and live in this beautiful world.

I suppose I should be worried, but I’m not at all. I got two opinions from top neurosurgeons, and they both said this was necessary surgery and that gamma knife surgery is not a good option for these tumors.

So I really don’t have a choice, and I’m going for it. I may have some coordination/balance issues afterwards, but I’ll just do the best I can. Hopefully, with time, activity, and physical therapy, this will improve.

Also tomorrrow I’ll have my fourth brain MRI in a month…bam bam bam bam. Those things are loud. But they give important data, so onward we go.

So I am scheduled for invasive brain surgery on Monday at 4pm.

I’m not looking forward to being in the hospital again so soon. It seems as if I just got out. But I have had severe headaches lately and am unsteady on my feet, so maybe this will take care of the symptoms…or at least prevent the symptoms from getting worse.

I am expecting physical therapy afterwards because the surgeon is going to have to cut through healthy brain tissue.

Then I suddenly began throwing up and couldn’t stand upright. I drove to the oncologist for rehydration, and they wheeled me right over to the hospital and checked me in.

There is no cancer showing up in my body now, only in my cerebellum. It’s unusual enough that the med team was concerned it was a new kind of cancer. They are reluctant to go through healthy brain tissue to take a biopsy, but a biopsy is the only way they’ll know what kind of cancer it really is. Because of the risks to my motor skills (vroom vroom), they are going on the data they have, which is of course colon cancer.

It seems that a tumor or else some edemic necrotic tissue (from the gamma knife surgery last year) was pressing on my cerebellum, causing the symptoms. After four days in the hospital and a high dose of steroids to reduce the swelling, I was released. Hurray.

I’ll have another brain MRI this Thursday, then meet with a second neurosurgeon the following Tuesday. After that, I will have some kind of brain procedure (probably gamma knife again) to kill the tumors.

I’ll get some time to recover from that, which may involve some PT, and then I’ll be starting some chemo. It won’t be hard and heavy chemo, as I had before (twelve rounds every two weeks for six months). This time I’ll have a couple of rounds, then be allowed to recuperate, then a couple more rounds, etc. — more sporadic. The med team thinks the cancer is lurking in my body on a microscopic (i.e., non-tumor-size) level, and they want to go after it.

All this recent news made my husband, children, and me very somber at first. I wasn’t weepy, but of course none of this is good news.

But we are working through it and treasuring our time together, and now I am feeling remarkably peaceful about it all. I am painting, cooking new recipes, hiking, doing yoga again, enjoying my family and three loving pets, and I’m even doing a little knitting, now that our golden is a year old and not such a terror with yarn.

Regardless of our circumstances, there is always so much to be grateful for. I have wept many tears on our back patio, which is sort of a sanctuary for me. But recently just standing out there and taking some deep breaths of fresh, crisp winter air feels healing to me. It seems to clear my head and give me hope.

Escape Plan
Let me leave the sounds of this hospital drone,
Set myself safely on the path to home.
Ain’t got a car, but get me a hoss,
Lift me up and toss me acrost.
Together we will trot the trail
Through the crick, beneath the hail,
Ending up at my front door
Away from the medics forevermore.

Yeah, we have some ranching in our ancestry. And I may be losing my mind. But Audrey “double-dog dared” me to print this. I don’t really know what that kind of dare is, but I have two dogs, and I stand by them.

They thought they killed the nodule a year ago with the lasers, but apparently they did not. All that needs to survive is one cancer cell.

So I am ready to go ahead with the treatment that they recommend. I am also sending the data to my oncologist at Univ of Colorado Cancer Center for his medical team to review. He is my second opinion guy. He has a lot of resources there and does clinical trials too, although I am not ready for trials yet.

It bothers me that this stuff is down there. I don’t need stuff. For instance, the crepe maker I used to use when I was in my twenties has been idle since the children were born. The kids liked more middle-of-the-road food, not anything adventuresome. And when they were little, I no longer had the time or energy to make crepes from scratch anyway.

My older child is 29, so the crepe maker has been sitting down there for about that long. All these years, someone who loves to make crepes could have been using it. The crepe maker is going to charity, to a new owner.

There are many more things, no longer useful to my family. I have begun cleaning them out, and it is so gratifying. Getting rid of the literal junk in my life makes me feel like I’m getting rid of some of the emotional weight also. Because hanging on to this stuff — these things — takes energy.

It scatters me. Every day I walk on the first floor of our house, above all this stuff in the basement. I know it’s there, underneath my feet. I want it gone.

A couple of weeks ago, I braved up and took one of my girlfriends down there, daring to expose the mess to someone outside the family. This really helped me. She was very kind and didn’t act shocked. Facing my inadequacy and sharing it with a friend was what I needed to get myself going. She was also cleaning out her basement, and she understood. We were determined to do something about the “stuff” in our lives.

So now it’s down to the basement to face the spiders and dust … and to dispose of the unneeded paraphernalia of my life. These things will have a new life with people who do want them.