This blog post is going to be more on the serious side. It’s difficult to write (and may be hard to read), but I decided I really do want to write about this.
I finished my cancer treatment. Now what? During treatment, I was pretty much just focused on getting through the treatment. We had to figure out where to have the surgery, we had to get out there (Boston), we had to get into the system, get set up at Emily’s house, get records sent, get seen by doctors, get more tests, get the surgery scheduled and get it done before the hospitals were overrun by COVID patients and quit doing elective surgery (anything that is scheduled, including cancer surgery, is considered elective).
After the surgery I was basically incapable doing anything, or even thinking very hard about anything for awhile. The chemo treatments were rough. All through that struggle, I hadn’t really thought a lot about my long-term future.
I am relieved to be through the treatment stage. Now that it’s behind me, I’m starting to look forward. But I’m not fully and unconditionally celebrating. That’s because the likelihood that the cancer would come back is actually fairly high.
I haven’t mentioned the statistics before, although some of you may have googled it because I have given you specifics about my diagnosis before; Stage 3 colorectal cancer, T3N1. It appears that I’ve got about 60% chance that I’m completely cured of this cancer. And about 40% chance that it will come back within the next few years.
Average statistics are strange when applied to an individual. For me, it’s not 60/40. For me, it’s either going to come back or it isn’t. If it does come back, the average survival rate is very low. Maybe like 5%. All together, my current chances of dying within the next few years of cancer is about 35%. So dying soon is not the most likely outcome, but it’s actually reasonably likely. One in three.
Generally, I think it’s healthiest to assume the best. Most of us live most of our lives as if we will live forever. But I also think that it would be smart of me to put some thought into the question of – what if I only have one or two good years left? What if I won’t be here in 5 years? What would I do differently? Should I actually start doing those things now, while I can? Something that’s 35% likely to happen – seems like it might be wise to do a little planning for the possibility.
I don’t have a bucket list. I enjoy doing fun things in life, but I’ve never felt like I had to see Paris or the Galapagos Islands, or had to try sky diving. I also don’t have a big career goal or other life endeavor to finish. My children are grown and doing well.
I coach a few clients, and they are important to me, and I feel like what I do is meaningful. But the clients come and go. They work with me for several weeks or months or a year or two, they make progress (almost always they do make progress), and then they go on and do other things. There’s no endpoint or big project completion for me; the clients just cycle through.
I like camping and hiking, sailing and kayaking. I like meeting friends for lunch at cute little cafés. Outdoor patios have been my favorite for decades, long before COVID changed our opinion about eating indoors with strangers. I like music concerts and botanical gardens and walking on the beach. I like sitting in my own backyard with friends and family.
Prior to cancer I had planned to meet a Bay Area friend in Palm Springs and then we were going to go to the Bay Area together. I had planned to spend some time with Laura, getting rained on and looking at early spring flowers, just like we did the previous year. I had been thinking about visiting northern relatives in the summer. I also had wanted to make it out to the Pacific ocean, which is at its best in late summer. Late summer is also when Laura’s huge, old fig tree goes bonkers and I had wanted to make it out to Laura’s house to help her dry and preserve her yummy figs.
I don’t have ambitious goals. I’m not even sure how to write a bucket list. Before I die, I want to…what? Stay at a bed and breakfast in Taos? Hike in the Gila mountains? That doesn’t sound bucket-list-worthy.
I’m thinking maybe:
- Make cookies more often.
- Throw out that dish soap that I hate the smell of, rather than continue slowly trying to use it up.
- Buy that ridiculously brightly-colored braid rug that will look good absolutely nowhere.
- Order East Indian take-out more often.
What kind of bucket list is that? Maybe I should just pick something that sounds bucket-list-ish. A trip to Barcelona sounds good. Or Phuket? I don’t know. I made a joke about the Seychelles recently. Would it be worth two days of travel each way? Probably not. Plus, COVID. Can’t travel. Nobody’s even letting Americans into their country, for good reason, because we’re too dumb and stubborn to wear our masks and social distance and quit going to parties and shit. So whatever.
I sort of want a puppy. But what if I’m not going to be around for very many more years? I’d be saddling John with a dog for the next 15 or more years, and he’s going to want to retire and travel.
I’d like to spend time with my young nieces and nephews. But what if I’m not going to be around very long? Spending time with nieces and nephews is an investment in the long-term future – which I may not have. Plus, COVID. Can’t travel. Although I did promise Emily’s kids I’d be back soon. I certainly expected to be. But what if? Oh god, what a thought.
Should we go ahead and move closer to family now, even though it’s really not a good time buy a house right now? (And where is “closer to family” anyway?) The Bay Area? Should we buy the “dream house” now, at what is probably the peak of the market, and leave John in debt to a house he wouldn’t even want in a few years? In theory we could rent, but try to rent a house in the Bay Area with two dogs right now. It would take divine intervention. Plus, if I’m going to die, I want a private pool first, damn it!
One of my favorite authors is Jhumpa Lahiri. She writes mostly about what it’s like to be from India, living in the US. There’s a short story I read a long time ago, that’s come back to me recently. I don’t remember the title at the moment. But it’s about a man’s adult children struggling to accept his second wife.
When the man’s first wife died, he went to India to find another wife, and brought her back to the US. His new wife was of a lower education level and class, and his adult children treated her badly. They remembered their own mother; educated, beautiful, graceful – everything this lumpy country woman wasn’t.
The new wife missed India. Her friends back in India thought she was amazingly lucky to have married a rich man and moved to the US. But she was very lonely in her big, beautiful house in the American suburbs, which had been built for the first wife. When the first wife had been diagnosed with cancer, her husband built her the beautiful house with a pool, and she enjoyed it for a year or two before she died, swimming every day for as long as she could.
That story really stayed with me all these years, not because of the first wife’s cancer and her desire to have a beautiful house with a pool before she died, but because of the second wife’s loneliness in the wealthy US suburbs, far away from her friends and family and communal lifestyle in India.
At night, in my dreams, there’s almost always a lot of people around, friends and family gathered for some sort of vacation or event. There’s kids, and there’s dogs, and there’s chaos. There’s people needing to borrow cars to run errands, or borrow forgotten clothing items. There’s things that need fixed, like broken floorboards or fences to the keep the dogs in, and people like John trying to fix them. And neighbors stopping by with food or gifts, or maybe having found a lost dog or wandering toddler.
And almost always in my dreams, I have a baby. If I don’t have a baby myself, I’m taking care of someone else’s baby. Although most recently, it’s been my baby, not anyone else’s. The last couple of nights the little guy, a two-year-old toddler, has been a challenge. Last night he was eating carpet fuzz. And pleased with himself. Stop it! Geez. I cleaned the carpet fuzz out of his mouth but there was more, and next thing I knew, I was pulling cotton batting out of his mouth, in a long rope, as if I were pulling it out of his intestines. (Hmmm…that sounds a bit like a reference to the cancer.)
They say that dreaming about babies means there will be a new endeavor, big project, or new phase in one’s life. That sort of sounds hopeful, but no matter what happens, I’ve got a new phase in life coming. It may be a wonderful new phase, or it may be a short and very difficult new phase. All I know so far about my new phase is – he’s busy eating carpet fuzz?
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