This post contains swear words and strong emotions

1 in 3 of us will develop cancer in our life times. Our bodies will try to kill ourselves in a process as ancient as life itself. A cell will divide and divide long past its sell by date, and we will sit in that room and wait, all nervous fingers and breath, for words that can't be taken back.

Fuck cancer. Fuck it. I fucking hate cancer. It's a thief that comes in the night to steal what is most precious. It steals what is sacred, loved, and cherished. I fucking hate cancer.

When I was a kid, my mom would correct us. Anytime we said, "I hate so and so." She'd say, "do you want them to die? If you don't, you don't hate them."  I didn't get that then. Now, I do. I want cancer to die a fast, quick death. I want to have that giant party that George Lucas threw at the end of the remastered episode VI.

It's been a rough and scary week, and I've welcomed too many people to the survivorship club. I'm sad they are joining, but I'm glad I'm here to give steady hugs and endless time to listen.

Most days, my cancers and I have an uneasy truce. They leave their echoes in my body, and I don't attack them ferociously with my mind. Shots were fired. The truce hangs by a thread.

Cancer is a force of nature. It's hard for me to stay mad at it for long. It's like a tornado, hurricane, or drought. It just is, and here I am standing in the desert, shaking my fist at the sky, screaming for rain until my throat aches from heat and air. 

So if you're reading this, and you know that full body betrayal, that cellular treason, you aren't alone. It's OK to be pissed off, and it's ok to scream and cry. Cancer fucking sucks, but it can't steal the you-ness of you. I'm going to tell you something that stills my racing heart and eases my knotted gut:  cancer can cause my death, but it can't kill my soul, my love, or my peace.

Know that you are so loved, no matter what happens.

Delayed

No snow!!! How can we snow shoe? How?

It's been a busy couple of weeks, and our busted laptop was moved away from my comfy blogging chair to the floor. I don't find this super conducive for writing my heart out, but alas, D's back won't allow him to fix the situation, and I can't move the stupid entertainment center to get at the plug. Amanda's blog, presented by dust bunnies, live from the guest room floor.

Yesterday, I parallel parked my new company's car. Yeah that's right, Amanda who would rather walk two miles into town than parallel park, parked that car between two giant trucks. Maybe it was just one giant truck and a fiat. Actually it was a prius and a fiat, but they were HUGE for their make and model...It's an omen.

In November, after receiving yet another denial letter from my insurance company about my machine, I sat defeated, hunched over my steering wheel, crying my eyes out. In my hand, I held a packet of papers one of my doctor's had graciously filled out for me to turn in. Across the top, the paper read, "Application for long term disability."

I couldn't drive. I couldn't walk. I couldn't type well. I couldn't hold a pen, tooth brush, comb, knitting needles, etc. I couldn't really do anything. I had ceded my power to the insurance company, and the remaining had been sucked away by a ridiculous finger infection. A lot will change in two months.

My machine came. With daily use, I am losing on average three pounds of fluid a day. I can walk. I have energy. I can hold a pencil. The disability paperwork is somewhere collecting dust.

Yesterday, I went to a resource fair for kids with disabilities transitioning to adulthood. As is often the case, someone commented on my sleeve.

Interested stranger: Burn garment?
Amanda: No, it's a compression sleeve

Interested stranger: Lyphedema?
Amanda: Why yes.

Interested stranger: I did that work and amputee work for twenty years.

What followed was a pleasant discussion of what has changed in the last few years since she left the field. She got it. She got what I was dealing with. She sympathized, and then she said something totally startling, "You and I both have disabilities, and no one would know it looking at us." She, M, has MS. I have total body swelling.

We have disabilities, we are not disabled by them. The distinction felt so crystal clear. It was like a weight lifted from me.

Today, I was discharged from OT for the first time in a year and a half. My pump is working so well, I don't have to go see my OT anymore except for tune ups. Now I just have to navigate the accommodations and the insurance. I see the end of it though. I see all I can accomplish.  The end is in sight.

Fish Lake in the SNOW!

The cleaver

The cleaver

I managed to find out about almost all of my Christmas presents from D this year before Christmas day. I didn't go out snooping. I love the surprise of it, but it just happened. The first one, I discovered as the amazon account is in my name: "Hey, That's my Fish!" shipped today!

D went on email duty until the rest of my presents arrived. He, unlike me, doesn't feel the need to make all the red numbers on my phone display disappear. When the note arrived for the last shipment, I gleefully deleted spam and swore at urgent missed missives.

A few weeks later, as I tidied the spare room, I found an amazon receipt. With dismay, I looked at it thinking, "How careless, Amanda, you left the receipt laying about." It was the receipt for my two gifts. I saw both gifts pre-Christmas...

The knife I want

The other gift? A cleaver. My old knives kept losing their edge The snick snick of the knife on vegetables dulled into a "scrinch scrinch." The knives would slide off whatever I cut. The cleaver was the closest shape that I prefer, a santoku, in the type of steel D wanted. "The cleaver is the only knife used in many other countries."

Unwrapped and in hand, I could feel the handle lacked enough girth for my neuropathic fingers, but D can make a new handle. The old knives packed off to the thrift store, I set about learning the new one. 

It slides left when I slice. I can't get my hand closed around it with enough pressure to keep it moving the direction I want.

A few days after Christmas, the sneezes arrived. By Sunday, D and I huddled together under blankets sneezing and whining. By Monday, one of us had to make soup. I started cutting the garlic. I sliced half of an onion. I turned to slice the other half, and the cleaver pulled left out of my hand and slipped neatly beneath the skin of my left ring finger.

Blood actually spurted. I actually howled. I haven't felt pain in my fingers for 8 years. D tried to get me to put

it under cold water, I, thinking he thought I had burned myself, hollered "Wrong solution." I grabbed a towel and applied pressure. D looked at the finger: "We need to go to the ER."

"NO ER. NO ER." gasp, sob.  "DON'T TAKE ME." gasp, sob. "DON'T," gasp sob,"TAKE ME. I," gasp sob, "CAN'T.," gasp, sob, "GO."

The ER is worse than bleeding. The ER is the place I go when nothing else works. The ER is where I find out bad news. The ER is no good. The ER is where I blow thousands of dollars at a time. Stupid cancer. Me bleeding and not healing is better than going to the ER sick and wounded.

After D swore he wouldn't take me and the bleeding slowed, he cleaned it, super glued it, and bandaged it. He then cleaned up the blood in the kitchen. I couldn't explain why the knife slipped. I still really can't. I think everyone thought it was too sharp, too big, or too something and that is just not it.

I'm not careless. I just don't have a great grip. When I hold onto small things too long my fingers and hand feel like they've been jammed by a basketball and eventually my muscles let go, and my hand stays in a neutral position. It drives me bonkers. I drop things all the time. In this case, I dropped the moving knife on my slightly extended left ring finger.

It and I are on the mend. I think, more than my finger, my heart hurt from the thought of the ER doors looming. It was a shock to feel that stab of emotional pain burst through the very real and blood drenched physical pain. I think I'm past it all and then it comes: grief, fear, and pain wrapped in a tidy little packet.  Will it always be my shadow?

D and I talked through all this on a hike. When I showed him the hand position that is the only one that never hurts, he said, "That's the neutral position. That's what it  does when you are floating in water." In that one phrase, I felt my grief lift. My hand is floating in water all the time. It's always relaxed. I only need to reach for it with my mind to remember to breathe. It's not broken. It's just sleeping.

P.S. A very sweet friend of mine said good bye to her sister this week. Please send her warm and loving thoughts and prayers. Heaven has another angel, and here she is greatly missed.