Count Down

A recent Millie-walk (with J's blessing of course, and the permission of the talented photographer, Lori Mackay)

Just seven more days before cancer takes center stage.

I say that as if cancer hasn't already forced its way into the center of everything I do. As if I weren't giving up the first of those seven days (tomorrow) to drive two hours and back to Boston for second opinions at Dana Farber. As if there wasn't a PET scan on the horizon with its looming specter of metastatic disease, and a deep well of panic that bubbles over if I go more than a day or two without a good cry. Cancer places a gilded frame around each mundane pleasure in this whole and healthy-seeming body, rendering achingly poignant each dog walk, each hug, each swim and run and random smile from a stranger who has absolutely no idea what looms inside me.

For the first time since we found the lump, yesterday J~ and I took time to really be together intimately. We've been too numb, shocked, frightened. To put it another way: matters of life and death are not an aphrodisiac for us.

I can tell you, it is a very strange thing to feel sensations of pleasure in a part of your body that is soon to be gone, for which you have strong and opposing feelings. It was emotional for both of us. And time well spent.

I should add one more thing: cancer, especially my hormone-stimulated type of cancer, is very strict: we have to be careful now not to get pregnant. Ever. How very surreal.