|
||||||
HI. I'M BACK.
It has taken longer than I had hoped; it has been tougher in some respects (and
easier in others) than I expected, but I'm back.
Where to start? The last time I sat down to write
something to fill this space, daffodils were just fading. Now, we've gone
through the peonies and azaleas all the way to full summer, that heavy and slow
time of year when the planet puts on the lush green of life and shouts for our
attention.
Well, I feel like shouting, too. Hey - I'm alive
and surrounded by people who care.
As some of you know, I've been sidelined since May
by cancer treatments. I've been the beneficiary of an
autologous bone marrow transplant, the latest tool doctors have found to battle
my particular form of the disease.
It is an incredible procedure. Doctors drew marrow
from my pelvis and froze it in a couple of plastic bags. Then they gave me huge
doses of anti-cancer drugs. The drugs kill everything that grows
rapidly, which is an earmark of cancer cells.
The problem is, healthy blood cells are killed
along with the bad ones. That's why the doctors took my bone marrow, and why, a
few days after the chemotherapy, they defrosted it and shot it back into my
bloodstream. The marrow, with cells that create new blood, helped my body build
back what it needed.
That's the short version. There was, of course, a
lot more to it and I'll be writing about the experience in more detail later,
outside of this column.
For now, it's enough to say that after six weeks in
the hospital and a few more at home, all signs are go.
I'm not quite up to speed - I'll be writing for you once a week for the time
being - but we'll pick up the pace soon enough, too.
I'd like to share a few reflections on the last two
months.
The hospital stay was spent in a modified
isolation. I could have visitors, but because of the decimation of
infection-fighting blood cells I was limited for several weeks to the specially
filtered air of my room or, if I wore a heavy mask over my nose and mouth, the
corridor of the bone marrow transplant unit on the 13th floor of Barnes
Hospital.
More than the physical isolation, I had feared an
emotional aloneness that might accompany it. It quickly became apparent, much
to my relief, that this was not going to happen.
My mother stayed with me throughout the hospital
stay, sleeping in the room on a small hide-a-bed which
she bravely insisted was perfectly comfortable. We talked about everything from
unfinished embroidery projects to concepts of eternity and death. I am amazed,
again and still, at Mom's ability to stare adversity in the face and then just
deal with it.
And every day, the mail brought reinforcements for
any flagging emotions I might have experienced. Many of the cards and messages
were from friends. Almost as many - dozens over the course of my stay - came
from people I had never met. This was unexpected and frequently overwhelming.
The mail reinforced my belief that people are, at the core, wonderful.
Still, there was no question that the world at
large was not mine. I watched May's storm clouds and outbursts from behind
double-paned, tinted windows. I read about the weather, the floods and wind
that were making such havoc, but it seemed absurdly irrelevant.
Then came a hot June day, about four weeks into the
hospital stay, when my doctor told me that if my blood counts continued their
recovering trend the next day, he'd give me a pass to leave the hospital - to
actually GO OUTSIDE-
I spent the rest of that day in a state of agitated
anticipation, thinking about the feel of sun on my skin and the smell of grass.
I remember wondering if my legs would be steady on the lawn after weeks of
contact with nothing but linoleum.
Around noon the next day, the doctors came in and
said yes, I could have my pass.
An hour later, as I stepped out the door of Queeny Tower, I was startled by a warm sensation that
wrapped itself around me and rustled my clothes. ''Wind-'' I thought. ''I
forgot about wind.''
Shortly after I entered the hospital, a friend
brought me a stuffed toy. It was a green caterpillar that, through the miracle
of a Velcro closure along its underside, could be opened up and turned inside
out, converting to soft, colorful butterfly.
It sat on my window sill
and became a means of signaling my condition. Was it an icky green day, or a
butterfly day?
The butterfly's out now. He might duck back inside from time to
time, but now I know that no matter how ''green'' a particular day might be,
that butterfly's hiding inside, just waiting.