The chemo cart

In the corner of my living room sits a cream-colored metal cart. On it are various art supplies, folders full of medical information and notes, the breathing devices I had to use daily for a clinical study I was enrolled in, balls of yarn and knitting needles, a giant visual encyclopedia, my sketchbook, my journal, some books, a basket of pens, markers, and cards sent by various friends and family members over the past seven months, a grip strengthening tool, and a blood pressure monitor my mom left one afternoon.

“Clean up chemo cart and put everything on it away” has been on my to-do list for the last ten days, among various other “clean-up” or “put-away” type tasks, most of which I’ve taken care of. But some part of me dreads putting away everything on this cart. I actually put it together just before my surgery in December. I knew mobility would be an issue for a little while and wanted easy access to sketching, writing, and reading, along with a surface to store various bits of junk or hold coffee cups or plates of food. The cart also corralled me in when I slept on the couch for ten days after surgery so I wouldn’t roll onto my side and tug on one of the surgical drains. But then it hung around after recovery from surgery and I slightly adjusted the contents before I started chemo. And now I’ve finished chemo. I know I’m not going to be slammed with a wall of fatigue or body aches or nausea every two weeks anymore; I don’t need easy access to my art supplies or books or journal. I’m also no longer going to see my doctor or PA every two weeks, I don’t need all my medical papers in my living room to quickly grab before each appointment. The cart takes up precious space in a small living room, but I continue to avoid putting it away. I think, at most, it would take me fifteen minutes to do.

Somehow, the cart feels like the final vestige of the madness and challenge of the past seven months. If I clean it up and put everything on it away, what evidence will remain of what I’ve been through, of the fact that my world was, and still kind of is, turned upside down? Sure, there are the two four-inch scars on my now-flat chest, the fact that I’m still bald and lash-less, all the medications I have to now take—but those are not things that bring comfort or joy. The cart and its contents were a source of brightness, a colorful corner of my living room where I could easily access knitting projects or watercolor paints or pictures of animals and plants no matter how crappy I felt. The cart, despite what it represented—that I’d had a major surgery, that I was undergoing chemotherapy—was a source of comfort. I’m hesitant to put that away, the singular bright piece of concrete evidence that my life has forever changed.

But there is also a part of me that is ready to move on. To put everything away that says “active treatment” and move forward, facing all the new fears that survivorship brings with whatever courage and calm I can muster in any given moment. When I went to the hospital for each chemo infusion, I usually saw a PA or NP beforehand, to go over my bloodwork and answer any questions I had. And they were all wonderful. But I had sooo many detailed and nuanced questions about the drugs and therapies I’d start after chemo, so I saw my actual oncologist before my final infusion. And after the litany of questions I asked him about studies, drugs, diet, and clinical trials, the conversation spun downward and narrowly to a small but firm and immoveable point: the fear of recurrence. If breast cancer like mine recurs, it’s usually elsewhere in the body—the bones, lungs, brain, or liver, and at that point it’s no longer curable, it’s stage 4, and the prognosis for most stage 4 breast cancers is not good. What I was trying to get at, after all my technical questions had had their turn, was what was my risk, really, of that happening, if I did all the treatments available to me AND exercised enough and ate really well and fasted sometimes and cut out high fat dairy and, and, and, and.

And of course that’s not a question any doctor can answer with certainty, with a guarantee. Your risk of anything can be 1%, which is very low, but you could still be that unlucky 1%, in which case your risk was actually 100%. We can’t ever really know until something happens, or doesn’t. But that’s when my doctor said something I’ll never forget: “I think the fear of recurrence is normal for someone in your position, and I think it’s a lot like grief—it doesn’t really ever go away, but life grows around it, and it becomes easier to deal with over time.”

I think about this, now, whenever I think about recurrence. And I imagine my fear of recurrence as a dark door in a garden wall. And I imagine over time, planting things around it, and they will grow—vines and flowers and ivy, and will maybe almost cover the door, hide it so that I do not think about it fifty times a day every day at some point, even though the door will always be there, even though it could open, and happen to me. Because it could. I could do all the treatments available to me and eat all the right food and do all the right exercise and I could still get unlucky. But I can’t do anything about that possibility—it’s there now and always will be. But I can plant beautiful things around it, I can let my life grow and expand around and beyond that smallish but very scary risk. That dark door, that dark chance, can be a continued reminder not to waste time, not to depend on “later” or “eventually” and better cherish and attend to “now.” I don’t like this new risk, but I also don’t have a choice about its presence in my life. What I do have a choice over is what to do with it: what to plant around it, how to look at it, how to let my life grow around and beyond this dark little garden door.

I suppose I’d like to begin by cleaning up the space around it, opening it up for planting and painting and creating and growing something new. Actually, many new somethings. So the chemo cart has to go, doesn’t it? It takes up precious space, after all. And I can’t hold onto the past if I want to move forward, however frightening forward might be. It’s preferable to going backward, or simply staying stuck, isn’t it? I also can’t hold onto evidence of what happened—I don’t need it, what happened is still on my mind every day, cart or no cart. And I’d rather the opportunity to create something more beautiful than a metal cart full of stuff as evidence, I’d like a choice in the matter, in the colors or materials or diction. So I will cross that off my list today: “Clean up chemo cart and put everything on it away.” And then I’ll finish my laundry, feed the shrubs in my garden, inspect the seeds I tossed into the dirt last weekend for new growth, do some yoga, maybe a read a little, cook something for dinner.