The Matrix

A big ass needle goes into my port before treatment. (a port is a surgically implanted device that deliverers my chemo into the main vein in my neck and down to my heart)

The joke is that every Wednesday I get plugged into The Matrix because really that is what all of this feels like.  I am now living in some alternate universe that doesn't seem anything like mine.  I have a port in my chest that gets connected to a machine that drips the highest legal dose of chemo.  It's at least a 5 hour process and I have to do this for a year.  A YEAR.  Being in The Matrix is the only way I can describe the fog that hovered over me during the first 3 weeks after my diagnosis.  I couldn't process the simplest of thoughts or tasks, I knew I had this wonderful life somewhere I just couldn't access it.  Someday when I am ready I will write about those first few days.  Thankfully, the fog is starting to lift and I am remembering to eat and clip my daughters fingernails.

The day that I found out that I had cancer should have been one of the happiest days of my life, it was the day we got the keys to our new house.  We had saved and scrimped for 3 years to buy the perfect house.  It was going to be a bit of a stretch financially but we are young, healthy, hard working, and wanted to have a house we could grow into.  Instead of being overjoyed I began to think about how I could give the house back.  Was it too late to say never mind?  We had just wired every penny of savings into escrow and now I had fucking cancer. Talk about timing.  Until then my whole brain had been consumed with the house buying process, I couldn't wait to hang curtains and swim in our new pool.  It's all I thought about, I had spent every night dreaming about where every piece of furniture would go.  Man was I passionate about that house.  So passionate that I would have divorced my husband over which wall the TV was going to hang on.  If he didn't like it then he didn't have to live there...I wish I was joking.

Fortunately, there is an amazing thing that happens the second you think you might be dying.  You instantly and involuntarily prioritize your life.  Who gives a crap where the couch goes?  It's this amazing gift that cancer handed me.  Now all I want to do is be in my house snuggled up to my husband, with or without a TV.  Okay, who am I kidding I totally have to have a TV.  As foggy as I felt I was clear about one thing and that is this: very little actually matters.  Reading my daughter "Duck on a Bike" for the one millionth time matters, having Netflix dates with my son actually matters.  I had convinced myself that ridiculous things like paint colors mattered, maybe as a way to entertain myself or maybe to make me feel less guilty about how charmed my life actually was.  The point is, IF I get to come out of this and be okay, if I get to live the rest of my life truly aware of what really matters then I am one lucky bitch.  And for that cancer, I thank you.

My dancing partner.