A MOMENT OF HOPE ( by Silvia F)

I fast as required for this test, I drink a lot of water as well, and drive to the hospital. I park the car and as I walk towards the building I realize I don’t remember this place. Yet I’ve been here just 3 months ago. The lobby looks vaguely familiar, but passed that I’m not sure of anything, my memories are blurred. I feel a wave of shock taking over. I’m slightly dizzy. Maybe it’s because I had to fast. I recall the first time I was here, not the place, but the feeling. The diagnosis had been delivered. 

The kind of information that you sort of know but you don’t really know, and you walk on the edge of it until you hear the word: cancer. 

That word pushes you off the edge and you feel like you are falling into something that feels like it has no bottom. I knew deep inside, that cancer was everywhere in my body. I felt it. Clearly. 

This time I like to believe I’m prepared. 

I brought a banana for later, and a book that indeed is 100% a piece of erotica. 

As I read it I imagine the bodies it describes, their skin, their touch. I think of my own body, my skin. The parts that were toned and full, and flexible. The parts that are now empty and barely kept together. 

I think of my Jeremy. I desire him. We do love each other deeply. I feel it every day in his obsessive cleaning around me to keep me safe. I feel it in his arms when I hug him standing in the kitchen. When I  press my heart against his and I sigh. As I let the air in my body out, I let myself melt in his arms. 

I don’t want to leave him. I hope modern medicine can keep me alive. I hope our love will not crack under this pressure. I feel guilty to take him down this road with me. I have no choice. But he keeps on choosing to stay, love me, hug me in the kitchen and let me sigh in his arms. 

This is the strange ‘gift’ of cancer. Under its blinding light there’s no hiding the flaws of a relationship. The material you are made of gets tested. Like a dummy on a crash test, we drive in slow motion towards a wall, over and over, with each chemo cycle. Each time we hit the wall we check the damage. We are both dummies, I’m in the driver seat, he’s the passenger. Will we break into small pieces? Will we hold together somehow?  

There’s a woman with her husband in the waiting room. She’s the patient. I look at her, and wonder. What type of cancer does she have? Is she going to be ok? Strangely I worry about her deflecting from myself. I want anything to distract me. But nothing does. Inside the PET/CT scanner I close my eyes. 

I think of the first time I was here. I think of all that happened since. I wonder whether life will ever be normal again. I wonder whether I’ll survive. This time I think of competing with the scanner. I scan my body with my mind, envisioning it being black, dark, cancer free. I hope the treatment is working. It must work. I want it to work. 

After 15 minutes I leave and in the lobby I look around trying to form a more permanent memory of the place. I eat the banana. I have a strange feeling of accomplishment. I’m not sure of what, but still, I feel accomplished. Now we have to wait. Waiting is hard. Tomorrow more chemo. 

Cycle 4.  As I sit in the chair at the infusion center I search the room for Jean, my nurse navigator. She’s the lighthouse in the storm, the person you ask anything. She always finds a reassuring answer. I see her, I ask. Can we get the PET/CT scan results? She disappears. She reappears with a printout of the result in hand. I try to read her facial expression hoping for a clue that all is well.

She gives the papers to me. The world turns off for a second. It goes silent as I focus my eyes on the page. I hold my breath scanning the first few lines in slow motion. I squint searching for the words. There they are. S-i-g-n-i-f-i-c-a-n-t i-m-p-r-o-v-e-m-e-n-t.

I breathe. For a moment. WE breathe. 

I read further to better understand the details. A feeling rises like a wave and tears with it. I almost want to jump out of the chair but I’m doing chemo after all. I want to scream. I know there’s other people in this very room looking for hope. I contain my reaction. I cry a little. Joy. Hope. Sadness. We’re almost at the halfway point of this journey. Keep going. Keep moving Silvia.  We schedule a phone appointment with the oncologist for a thorough explanation. In the late afternoon when the phone rings we’re both excited. Dr. Lopez has a way of delivering information that’s always reassuring. He’s excited by the PET result. He goes over the scan, body part by body part. The parts that are clean. The parts that are still affected.  I ask for permission: “Can I be cautiously optimistic?” “ Yes”.  Jeremy holds my hand.

I come up for air and inhale deeply. Then head down, I dive under water again.  

The ‘effing’ journey is long. We must stay the course.

I have to keep moving.