We have a timeshare at a condo in the Windermere valley, and we have a week coming up. For obvious reasons, we haven't used it for a while. Charles is itching to go. He really needs a break; this hasn't been easy on him either. So I ask the doctor if it is possible for me to go. I am really supposed to stay within a 45-minute drive of a hospital right now, but I have been pretty stable, so the doctor agrees that I can go. I am really nervous, but willing to give it a try. In order to fit it between hospital visits, we are going just for one night.
The drive is a beautiful one, and usually filled (for me) with nostalgia because of all the summers spent there as a child. Twenty minutes out of the city, my back is sore from sitting. "Why don't you lie back and close your eyes?" my husband suggests. Trouble is, my back is still too curved. I can't uncurl my spine enough to get my head onto the head rest from a sitting position. I can feel every crack in the road as we go over it, jarring me. I try not to cry from pain. Three hours later, we reach our condo. All I can think of is that I will have to do that all again tomorrow, on the way back. Charles gets me settled on the couch for a nap while he walks to the village bakery for a coffee and pastry, and when he comes back looking a little more relaxed I know that it was worth the journey.
Slowly, things improve. Every night as I lie down, Charles tells me that things will get better tomorrow. Hang in there, I need you! he says, and kisses me on the forehead before turning out the light. Most days, he is right, but it is a slow road. All summer, I try to get stronger. We go for short walks around the block, using my cane or my walking sticks. Managing 1 km is a milestone, and I am exhausted but happy. My hair is starting to grow back, and this time it is black, grey, and curly. One of the nurses says that often chemo patients re-grow hair that is curly. She calls it angel hair.
My friend Alana comes in the late fall to visit. It is so good to see her! I have been dreading the anniversary of my diagnosis, but we decide to celebrate making it a whole year by going out for dinner. For me, it is an act of independence and survival. I wrap my head with a festive, sparkly gold scarf and put on some lipstick. In the restaurant, people stare and then shift their eyes away as I lurch through to our table, but for once I don't mind the determined invisibility of the disabled, thrown over me like a cloak by my fellow able-bodied citizens. I even have my first post-treatment glass of sparkling wine to celebrate. With my super-sensitive taste buds it doesn't taste great, but I drink it anyhow.
Improvement must happen everyday, but it is hard to see on that scale. Month-to-month, though, I can see improvement. I am a bit straighter, a bit stronger. A bit more able to accomplish the small tasks of living that most people don't even think about -- getting out of bed, brushing one's teeth, bathing on one's own. Being able to reach down a box of cereal from the cupboard. My insurance coverage for physiotherapy runs out, but I hire one to come to my house every week just to make sure I am improving. The drugs I take make me anemic, and many days it is hard to move and breathe at the same time. I lie on the couch, reading or watching TV.
It is possibly too many episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" that scourge of daytime TV, that spark the desire to celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary. It gives me a goal, something to plan and for which to get stronger, and "Take 2 @22" is born. We decide to have a party at the hotel where we were married. Planning it takes up lots of my time, choosing a dress, the menu, getting out invitations. It gives me a purpose for which I am grateful. It makes waking up in the morning a little easier, knowing I have something to accomplish and about which to dream.
For Charles' birthday in March we decide to fly to Victoria to celebrate, as it is a "milestone" birthday. My friend Susan lends me her condo on the harbour front. The trip is really stretching my boundaries. I am scared of being so far from home, and it will be my first time on a plane in a long time. I now wear a medical device, and I don't know if air travel will affect it. I am still not very strong, either, and I am worried about getting on and off the plane. But I manage it, and the simple act of leaving home for a few days and returning alive gives me more confidence.
Many of my family and friends are planning on coming to Calgary in August for Take2@22, and I want it to be a good party. I plan the food and the ceremony, and hope the dress I ordered online will fit. It arrives and I try it on, with help from Charles so I don't fall over. It is made for a tall willowy goddess of a woman, probably around 6 feet tall. I am meanwhile a shrunken version of my former self, having lost at least two inches, close to three, in height to land at around 5-foot-four. In other words, the dress needs to be taken up by at least eight inches. Still, it's pretty, and I think I will continue to get straighter in the next few months. My neck is stiff so it's hard to look in the mirror to see it all, but Charles tells me I look beautiful in it.
I have learned that beauty is more than how I look. I know that sounds odd and somewhat poetical ("beauty is in the eye of the beholder"), but around the time I lost my hair for the second time, while I still couldn't really move or pick up a glass or brush my own teeth yet, I realized that the people who loved me loved me not because I was pretty on the outside. They loved me bald, skeletal and make-up free just as much as if I was still healthy and made up to look like a model. In fact, they might even love me more. Now that I am able to apply make-up again, I find I don't bother much. I have nice skin, and even though I don't style my hair very often either, I just appreciate having some. It's still curly, and I have been to the salon to have its randomness cut and shaped. My sister drives me, that first time, and helps me when I can't lean back far enough to get the shampoo rinsed out of my hair, leaning back in the chair by the stylist's sink the way I didn't even think about before I got sick. My stylist, Patrick, and I have a good laugh when he tells me that the hair on the back of my head is growing faster than the rest. "So what you are telling me," I joke, "is that I have a natural mullet!"
August 7th is my wedding anniversary. It was my grandmother's birthday. She died a number of years ago now, but that's why we chose the day originally. Take2@22 is planned for August 6, the Saturday night to allow for guests to take part more easily. I am nervous and excited. I hope that I can make the walk from our room to the viewpoint where the ceremony is supposed to take place. I am running on a lot of adrenaline, which I am finding can help when you are low on red blood cells. With a little help, I manage to get into my dress and am thrilled when I discover that my hair is long enough to hold the delicate ornamental comb I ordered. Everyone is at the viewpoint as we walk in. It is cloudy but the rain holds off long enough for the ceremony to finish, and for all of us to get back inside before it pours. It poured twenty-two years ago, too. They say rain is lucky for a bride. I have to agree. Twenty-two years ago I managed to pick out someone who loved me enough to stick with me through the hard times. When we dance to the same song we chose for our wedding, I am clumsy but it doesn't matter. Take two.
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