the whipped cream conundrum

It’s that time of year…yes, the White Chocolate Mocha with whipped cream is prominently displayed on the Starbuck’s holiday menu.  There’s even the option to add a shot of peppermint with peppermint sprinkles.  I should be thrilled, right?  But to my surprise there’s a new drink on the menu – the Maple Pecan Latte (with whipped cream and maple sprinkles).  I do love maple.  Thus, I am faced with yet another beverage-related conundrum.

As I stand in the line waiting to make the ultimate decision – which overpriced caffeinated delight will be going home with me – I think about choices.  I struggle with choices.  I am a sucky decider.  Do not ask me to choose the restaurant or the movie.  You certainly don’t want to be the salesperson waiting on me when choosing between the boots in black or brown…but these are little choices that aren’t necessarily going to change the trajectory of my life.  They are small conundrums.

When it comes to those life-altering choices, I haven’t exactly had the opportunity to make those in the last several years.  For so long, I didn’t feel like I had options. There was really only one kind of coffee, one restaurant, one pair of boots – and each was for survival.  Things have changed.  One year in remission.  Tests and scans are clear – every three weeks I get the #merckmiracle, and I go about my scheduled programming.

The thought of having to make decisions scares the crap out of me – it’s like turning on the tv with 1,000 channels and you end up watching the home shopping show (what, that doesn’t happen to you?), or, in Whipped Cream Conundrum speak, you go to Starbucks and walk out with a bottle of water.  Now I have the opportunity to make real choices.  I’m not sure what they are, but I know I have them.  Some may surprise me,  like the Maple Pecan Latte, others may be self-initiated.   Some may require courage, while others could come with ease.  Whatever the option, it still comes with whipped cream.

WARNING: Under no circumstances should you say “yes” to coffee at 8:30 pm, especially when the cable is out. It seemed like a good idea at the time, the taste of a strong cup of coffee to cap off a delightful Asian-fusion meal with good company.  It looked appealing in the glass carafe, brewed to order just for me.   It was a superb cup of coffee, but now at 12:20 am on a school night, I am regretting every last drop.

I generally don’t suffer from insomnia, and if I can’t fall asleep from time to time, I find watching mindless television lulls me into slumber.  So filled with caffeine and without cable, I have “found time”  –  a concept new to me. Honestly, it makes me a little uncomfortable.  I have things I need time to do, but I don’t think moving my bedroom furniture around is the smartest idea.  Then I have things I want time to do, like writing, which is a perfectly appropriate post-midnight activity.

It is challenging to discern my needs and wants when it comes to time.  After all, I have a complicated relationship with time – I am grateful to have it, while at the same time I mourn the loss of it. I always seem to want more of it, but there just never seems to be enough.  But when it comes to needs and wants, I struggle to find a balance.

While my cancer is in remission, I am still in treatment.  This means I suffer from immunotherapy-induced fatigue, along with the general fatigue that comes from everyday life.  As a result, I need to get sleep and make time for rest.  I am very conscientious about time, and try to hold fast to a 5:30 am wake up and 7:30 pm lights out.

Yes, I often go to bed earlier than a 5th grader, but this is what I need to do to maintain my rigorous schedule.  I wake up, turn on Morning Joe, grab a cup of coffee, walk Sadie, and prepare for the day.  My “school day” kicks off around 7:30 am and runs until late afternoon. I then enter the twilight zone when I begin to wind down – make dinner, prep for the next day of classes, take Sadie out, and hop in bed between 7:30-8:00 pm. I’m very conscientious about time; I need to make every minute count so my stamina stays in check.

But, I want to have fun.  “Use your time wisely,” isn’t that what your teacher told you?  That means I make choices, and sometimes the wisest use of my time is for fun, contentment, relaxation…sometimes it’s dinner with friends, a movie night, getting caught up in a good book, writing, even a concert here or there.  I let go of my rigid, self-imposed schedule, and indeed use my time in the wisest of ways by finding joy.

The clock keeps ticking…12:45 am now…I wonder what tomorrow will bring without my usual nine to ten hours of sleep – a hot mess is the likely result. But, I think I’ve used my time wisely because writing brings me joy, and so did that cup of coffee.

It’s my birthday, too!  Today I am 5 years old.  Well, put a 4 before the 5 and it’s a little closer.  But seriously…

5 years ago today I received a stem cell transplant for a recurrence of Hodgkins lymphoma. Upon completing a treacherous chemotherapy regimen which killed my immune system, I was confined to a hospital bed for three weeks wherein the doctors pumped stem cells that were weeks prior literally extracted from my body back in.  Scientifically, I was reborn.

I hadn’t really thought anything about the transplant today until I went to my mailbox and saw a letter with an unfamiliar name and return address.  As I opened the small envelope and pulled out the folded paper, I burst into tears.  It was a letter written by an older woman, Noreen, in response to my recent article in the Boston Globe.  In this moment, the past seven years of my life flashed before my eyes.  It was a feeling I cannot explain; a rush of some kind that at once I felt elated and sad, embraced and alone.

I sat quietly outside in the unseasonably hot late-September sun and read her letter.  She shared with me stories of her life – immigrating from Ireland, joining the National Guard, and meeting Elvis Presley.  She described her family including her husband of 52 years, two daughters, and one son.  Without knowing who she was writing to, she explained about her daughter with special needs and how times were not always easy.  She wrote to me, “Don’t be a slave to anger and sadness for lost time … you are a wonderful human being.”

A message from a stranger, who with just my name and the name of my workplace scribbled on an envelope, took the time to write me a two-page letter to tell me the words I needed to hear on the exact day I needed to hear them.

So, in celebration of my “rebirth” and in honor of Noreen, I live my life with a deeper sense of hope and gratitude, and the knowledge that I’m not in this alone.

My dog is depressed; she is literally a downward dog – she’s mopey, likes to sleep all the time, and she shows little interest in the usual things that give her pleasure, including her beloved peanut butter-filled bone.  She’d rather laze about on the big red couch. The unfortunate result is that perhaps her depression has rubbed off on me, or vice versa.

Many of us suffer from bouts of depression, some more frequently and intensely than others.  Indeed, the wartime genius Winston Churchill suffered from major bouts of depression.  In the book, First-Rate Madness, author Nassir Ghaemi writes that “Churchill’s severe recurrent depressive episodes heightened his ability to realistically assess the threat that Germany posed (57).” Some would say thank goodness for his struggle with the depression that Churchill coined his “Black Dog.”  The irony is not lost on me.

My “Black Dog,” along with Sadie’s,  reared its ugly head this summer.  In some ways, the mood “heightened” my intellectual abilities, but more than anything it has heightened my self-awareness, and compelled me to ask essential questions about my life.

After the school year ended and I took some time to decompress, I got a smack in the face  – despite the #merckmiracle, I plowed through the year re-integrating into my professional and personal life while ignoring some of the deeper feelings I had surrounding the turmoil and trauma of the last several years.  BAM!  Time off = time to think = acknowledging the post-trauma sadness.

Life certainly did not work out the way I planned; I am mourning lost time and lost opportunities.  Sometimes I feel as though I have to say things like “I’m feeling great” or “I’m so grateful.”  I’m not lying when I say these things, and the sentiments are true under most circumstances, but they often times mask my true feelings of anger and sadness.  What if I say, “Well, physically I feel good, but I’m pretty fucking angry.”

In many ways, neither Sadie nor I have much to be depressed about – we’re both healthy (kenahurah, which in Yiddish means essentially “knock on wood”) and finally have a sense of stability and home.  Under these circumstances, it feels almost indulgent to say I’m depressed.  BUT, yet again, life has not exactly dealt me the luckiest hand.  As a result, I often get sucked into self-pity; that doesn’t make me weak, it makes me human.

I so want to wrap up this post in a pretty bow, telling you that all is well in my world, that I’ve worked through the “Downward Black Dog.”  Instead, the emotional backlash of cancer rears it’s ugly head more often than not.  And, while I don’t think Sadie nor I will shape the future of world peace like Churchill, we persist.

People keep asking me, “When’s your next blog post coming out?” “Talk to my agent,” I tell them.  But seriously…

I feel a tremendous amount of pride and gratitude that people want to read what I write, but I have a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach every time I hit the publish button.  Doubts swirl through my mind – will they be thinking, “Here she goes again!  More of her cancer ‘conundrum’ and cutesy thoughts on sprinkles.”  I suppose most writers feel this way; they wonder if what they are saying is relevant and how is something that is so personal to them going to be received in the world (I wonder if my students think this when they turn in a writing assignment?  I’ll have to ask.).  Admittedly, I am my own toughest critic and I think more about the reader who doesn’t care and wonder why, than the reader who does care and write for them.  I assume if you’re still reading this, you care, so I write this for you.

Last week I had the flu.  Everyone gets the flu; it’s a normal human experience, a miserable one, but normal.  I work at a boarding school, which means I live in a petri dish of disease in the middle of winter, so it’s expected that one would contract whatever nuisance is making its way around campus.  But for me, these ordinary ailments can be far from normal in my world.

First, the symptoms begin and my mind races:  Why do I feel more tired than normal?  Are my blood counts off?  Do I need a transfusion?  Oh, no is this another blood clot?  What do I do with Sadie?  Another trip to the emergency room with a never ending hospital stay?  I suppose the food isn’t that inedible…

Second, I wake up in cold sweats, the thermometer rises and a call to the doctor is placed.  Yes, you must go to the ER – “Make sure you tell them you’re on chemo,” the nurse tells me.  Well, I’m not exactly on chemo, but this way, you actually get a space separate from the general population because they assume your immune system is compromised.  (Note 1:  My immune system will always be compromised since I received a new one in 2012.  Note 2:  A separate space is valuable real estate at the Mass General Hospital Emergency Room and I will not hesitate to pull the chemo card!)  After pokes and swabs and x-rays, they send me home with some Tamiflu and instructions for rest.  That’s it?  No transfusion?  No scan?  No admittance to Phillips 21 with a view of the Charles?  You’re just sending me home?  What’s going on here?  Aren’t you worried?  “Wait it out,” is what they tell me.  Wait it out?

So, I wait it out.  Sleep…fluids…Tylenol…repeat as necessary.  I feel trapped and helpless – a very familiar feeling.  I start to get flashbacks:  Will I ever leave this room and get back to my big red couch?  Will people think I’m unreliable?   I have so much to do – plan my final exam; do my taxes; prepare for spring break.  Am I really watching the 11th hour of the Today Show AGAIN?!?!?!  Then, as I’m rolling my eyes at Kathie Lee, I start to come back to life and realize that this is normal.  People get the flu, they suffer through it and come out on the other side.

I have been trapped on a medical merry-go-round for the last six years that has never seemed to stop.  I forgot that I can get sick and not be SICK.  Every cough does not equal cancer and feeling extra fatigue does not mean a relapse.  Do I have to take extra precautions?  Yes.  Will my medical dream team overreact from time to time?  Yes.  But, at the end of the day, I can just be like everyone else and get the flu.  The flu sucks, but feeling like a normal person certainly doesn’t.