Balancing Act

I’ve graduated to soft foods. It’s an accomplishment. It’s taken me (or should I say my pancreas) almost six days to get to this point. A team of doctors woke me up this morning with the good news that my pancreas is healing well and doing much better with food-intake. They suspect I’ll be well enough to go home in a few days. At that point it’ll be a matter of resting for several days before coming back into the hospital to begin round 3 of chemotherapy. That’s right, more hospital love. During round 3 of chemo I’ll be receiving a pretty intense drug called methotrexate. So intense, in fact, that they need me in the hospital for four days every time they administer the drug to me, just to be on the safe side. I’m a little anxious to start this next round. The doctors said that methotrexate is ‘no walk in the park,’ to quote their words. What am I supposed to do with that? Such vague descriptions I’ve come to expect from the medical world. Still, they give little comfort.

I never used to be any good at jumping off diving boards. I was always that kid who would hesitate for a bit before squinting and finally, after extensively analyzing the options, jumping. That doesn’t work so much with cancer. Very often, you have no other choice than to leap blindly forward, no hesitation allowed. And you seldom know what you’ll land on: firm, level ground or uneven, imbalanced uncertainty. The balancing act becomes learning how to prepare yourself for either possibility. I won’t say I’ve got the act down yet, but I’m becoming a whole lot more comfortable with it.