As a writer much better than me once began a famous novel, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I don’t know much of the story beyond this, because A Tale of Two Cities is one of the few high school honors English required reading pieces I didn’t finish, even though I am a goodie-goodie. (Sorry, Charles Dickens.) I didn’t follow the stories of London and Paris during the French Revolution, but the book had a good opening line, and I feel like it has applied to my life the last year.
I have a picture of me from last July, smiling, floating lazily in a pool. Upon closer inspection, you can see that my pool float is actually a poop emoji. I feel like it was a visual representation of the time. I’d been going through a lot of crap and I was trying to stay afloat and upbeat. For the most part, I think I succeeded. By then, I had received PRRT and was feeling better than I had in months.
One year ago, they told me I had about a year of wellness left. I look back on that post and realize I couldn’t predict what was in store the next year. Last year, I seemed like a different person. I was so naive, in some ways. I was so worried about missing the Game of Thrones finale. How could I have known it would be so disappointing?
I had been hoping for more time, but almost exactly one year from my first PRRT, I started feeling sick again. My time is up. A year passed so quickly. When I had my first treatment, I felt like my life had been turned upside-down. I felt betrayed and alone and after months of being hooked up to IVs and feeling constantly sick and like a burden, I was ready to die.
Then I was given the gift of a year. At the time, I was in a haze, sad and defeated. Now that I’ve tasted life again, I want more time. Death is coming for me again, and I’m not ready. I recently tried a chemo drug that made me feel worse, and now, almost as a last-ditch effort, I’m getting one more round of PRRT, at a half-dose, now that my blood counts have finally come up a bit. I think it will buy me some months. And then, that’s it, I think.
The PRRT is slated for this Friday. I just have to stay alive and keep up with my potassium and pass my blood test tomorrow. Then, when (hopefully) I get the treatment, either: 1. nothing will happen, 2. my blood counts will drop and I’ll feel worse or 3. I’ll feel better. I need to feel better. The stakes are higher this time, because I want to live as much as I can while I can. And there’s nothing after this, it seems. It’s just a precipitous drop back into illness. I am scrabbling at the sides of this cliff. I’m clinging to the face of a rock with dirt-stained tear tracks on my face, begging for just at least a few more months, as my fingers lose their purchase and rocks pelt me from above.
People who love me are confident I have more time. I am less confident.
I find myself saying probably what most say when death comes. It could probably be engraved on most tombstones: Wait, I’m not done. I had more to do. I’m not ready. Just give me a little bit more time.
You can’t tell that I’m dying now, because I’m trying so hard to keep living. My mom recently visited for a week, and she said that she couldn’t tell I feel so sick.
I asked a year ago: What would you with one remaining year of life? I know the answer now, for myself. I tried to cram the rest of my life into it, the years, the decades I feel will be stolen. I worked. I wrote. I took a memoir-writing class. I resumed working out. I traveled: I went to Ireland, Denmark, Holland, France, Bermuda, Cuba, Spain, Los Angeles, Nashville, Cleveland, Washington D.C. I spent time with so many of my favorite people. I visited with friends, from Copenhagen to Dublin to L.A. to Nashville. So many friends visited me. My bathtub is lined with shampoo bottles from so many visitors.
I reconnected with people who had always been there for me and will always be there for me. When I went in for a scan recently, someone gave me a hug and reassured me, “You’re not alone.” I realized then that though I had started the year feeling abandoned and alone, I hadn’t really felt alone at all this past year, surrounded by so much love and support. I had felt lonelier and more isolated before this past year, as it turns out. I have been enveloped in goodness.
Along the way this past year, I met new people and made new friends. I fell in love.
I probably wouldn’t have done the last thing if I knew how limited my time was. Sometimes I get angry at myself for allowing myself to be optimistic, to hope that I had more than a year. I had started looking beyond my year, and then the curtains abruptly closed. It’s bittersweet.
This past year I healed, if not from the cancer, then from the inside. I hadn’t realized how broken I had become. It’s been one of the best years of my life. While I recovered from my first PRRT last June, as I watched Under the Tuscan Sun at more than an arm’s length from my friend whom I had to stay with while radioactive, I wondered aloud what to do. “I can’t be sad,” I said. “I have only a year. I don’t have time to be sad.” I couldn’t mope about the breakup. I couldn’t waste more time being angry, because I’d been angry for more than a decade already.
In February, I experienced a loss so devastating, I could barely get out of bed. But the clock was ticking, so I had to pick myself up, dust myself off, and keep going. If it would have been a physical manifestation of how I felt, I would have had teeth knocked out, bleeding, with a black eye, limbs askew. “I’m OK!” I reassure everyone, dragging myself forward.
I tried to find inner peace at meditation centers, in church pews, on yoga mats, in hypnotism. I allow myself to be sad, but I also don’t have time to wallow. I still find moments of peace. I watched the Fourth of July fireworks with some of my favorite people on a friend’s rooftop. Yesterday, I walked along the Brooklyn waterfront, the sky a sunset lavender behind the Statue of Liberty. I was heading back to my blanket to meet my friend and boyfriend on a beautiful summer night for an outdoor movie. I felt at peace.
I’m so happy. I’m also really sad. I’m scared for the possibility of disappointment that lies within the next few days and for the coming months.