I find myself with a free day tomorrow and lots of pre-op nervous energy, so I’m FINALLY going to properly tag the posts here by subject, as a public service. I’ve been hoping other patients will find their way to useful posts regarding treatment, or even parenting with cancer, but in the blog’s current state that would necessitate a LOT of wading.  And people may or may not have time to wade.

I’ll keep posting the same random shit I usually do, so not to worry. You won’t feel a thing.

This post has been promised for a while now. I’m finally getting to it, G.

My brother G requested that Racer X, from the cartoon Speed Racer, be his avatar for this post. I am happy to oblige, even more so when I catch myself up with this character and read he is “[an] heroic, mysterious, flamboyant, selfless, sympathetic and often brooding soldier of fortune.” Okay, maybe the soldier of fortune part is a bit much. But heroic? Yes. Mysterious? Yes. Flamboyant? Yes, I think his oft-embarrassed teenaged children would agree. Selfless, sympathetic and brooding? Yes. YOU KNEW WHAT YOU WERE DOING WHEN YOU CHOSE THIS PICTURE, G.

I’m trying to remember my earliest memory of G, but to me he was always around, ready to involve me in some manner of mischief, or just a new discovery. Once our parents were old enough to leave him “in charge” while they went out, we developed a new ritual as soon as the door closed behind them. G would say, “Let the wild frolics begin!” We’d imagine swinging from the chandelier, but in actuality the frolics usually involved making popcorn. We didn’t have Jiffy Pop around, or a popcorn popper, so by necessity this involved taking the biggest pot available in the kitchen, coating its bottom with inches of Mazola, probably having the heat up too high, and not shaking the pot enough, resulting an ungodly stench of burnt popcorn and oil throughout the house. I don’t how the pot ever came clean. Sorry, Mom.

We fought a lot, but there were never fisticuffs. G is almost six years older than me and that wouldn’t have been very sporting. There were lots of insults and fake-insults and slammed doors. Speaking of doors and fisticuffs, G managed to make his way – via fist – through any number of doors in the house in which we grew up. Most were in anger or frustration, though one time I actually slammed my bedroom door on his fist. Another time, while G entertained me and my best friend M with a silly dance in the kitchen, his heavy Hebrew school shoe flew off his foot and right into a closet door. He got familiar with spackle and paint, but not particularly gifted at it.

Against all odds, and against all we know about learning as we get older, a few years ago my family assembled at a Mexican restaurant that had been in favor but which we quickly realized was going downhill. At the end of the meal, Uncle G was entertaining Young J and Young A by pantomiming a game of – I can’t remember now, tennis? Football? I think it was football. He took a few running steps backwards and tried to make a thumping sound against the back wall of the restaurant. His arm went right through it. It was a moment that would have horrified and embarrassed a normal family, perhaps. Having never been a very normal family, we had to hustle ourselves – all dozen of us – outside onto the sidewalk before our peals of laughter further offended the restaurant owner, who was decidedly not happy. I watched through the window as G apologized and offered to fix the damage himself. Somehow they didn’t take him up on that. He did pay for the repairs.

Thus far, I have made G/Racer X sound like a clown. You know what? He is. But he is obviously a lot more than that. He had a paper route, which I would help him with when I felt like waking up at 4 a.m. (once, maybe?). And he had a burning need to be an entrepreneur from very early on. In high school, he ran a bike repair shop out of our basement. He made up business cards, he made enormous orders of supplies and inventory which I was allowed to help him unpack, as his unpaid assistant. He did not need 24 tubes of chrome polish, but they did come in a handy display box which impressed me very much. Ditto on the dozens of rolls of handlebar tape.

G logged hours teaching me to drive, a project that spread over a number of summers owing to my initial lack of interest, the availability of only stick-shift cars in our family, and maybe some general familial inertia surrounding the youngest member learning to drive. G was the one who spent hours with me working on parallel parking on humid summer days in the high school parking lot, with one of the worst cars in our fleet – no power steering. After those practice sessions, I must have had biceps to die for. I couldn’t move my arms, either.

G and I also spent innumerable hours at one of two seasonal hangouts: the local pool and the ice rink. I was never a particularly gifted swimmer or skater, but G wanted to play hockey. My parents refused to let him. Result: Today he not only plays hockey, he coaches, and one of his daughters is a very talented goalie on her team. He’s also a very active fan of the local NHL team, and has done the unthinkable by getting my mom into it as well. Every Mother’s Day on Facebook, G posts a photo of Mom wearing a team jersey and looking bemused and also maybe a little befuddled, like she’s not quite sure how she got there. I love it.

Long story short, and because there has been lots of drama in G’s life in the past dozen years, Racer X is the person you want on your team. In a crisis, he’s on the scene practically before you call him. And you better let him help out, or else. Last fall, when I was just starting to feel sick and called Mom minutes after she’d been in a very dramatic car crash, I hung up when the ambulance reached her. I called G immediately. He was at the hospital when she got there, even snapping a photo of the man who’d caused the crash, and eavesdropping at very close range on the police officer’s interview of him, because G (like me) does not look like someone who speaks Spanish. G has always been fascinated by police proceedings, and one of his cars is a decommissioned cruiser that still has certain features which delight my kids: a loudspeaker and an air horn. (G’s neighbors must love it when we come over.)

We are three siblings in my family, and G and I have similar (and melanoma-prone) coloring. When I was diagnosed, G made sure to go get himself checked out. After all, we’d grown up in the same place and gotten the same awful sunburns. He got a clean bill of health from the dermatologist… for moles. However, a touch of MRSA was found in his scalp. (It must have come from the locker room. You see why Mom and Pa didn’t want you playing hockey, G?)

Recently, G moved his business offices. The process was so time consuming he had no time to pack his office. When he got to the new one, he dumped everything out on the floor and forced himself to deal with it. This was obviously going to need to happen fast, because he’s a CEO. But being as prone to distractions and sidetracks as I am, a project was born that I never could have imagined. He found some old issues of our high school literary magazine (he and I had both been staffers, at different times, with the same advisor). This was not some mimeographed and stapled affair. We won national awards and there were amazing writers represented . He decided to use the fancy new scanner at his office to create electronic versions of the issues he had. Then he put out a call on Facebook for issues from other years. (I’m sending mine with Mom next week to get scanned.) And he did it as a tribute to our advisor and teacher, P, who was extremely influential to many, many years of students. When I learned of this gesture, I was in the car, on our way back from a day trip that had begun with another thing that had nearly made my head explode (in a good way).  My heart was filled again with such love for G, and this truly random (but… maybe not) act of kindness that made a lot of people very happy.

I looked for a clip from Speed Racer, which we used to watch together on Saturday mornings, and found this one that seems so perfect for what I’m trying to say. (Except, of course, that G never knocked me out cold before the helicopter arrived.)

I’m looking for images to hold in my mind’s eye next Tuesday. Here’s a good one.

I think I’ve decided on an All-Satie soundtrack, because it turns out the gamma knife machine is quiet enough for you to actually listen to music without the jackhammer intrusions.

Today I entered a new province of the hospital – Neurosurgery. Different view from the waiting room, different forms to fill out. The neurosurgeon wants to know which side you favor, right or left. Good thing he isn’t talking politics. Neuro neutrality. The neurosurgeon is more of the Sergeant Joe Friday of the cast of medical characters I’ve met so far: Just the facts, ma’am. (Not as hard-boiled though. A nice, mellow Canadian.)

He did ask me about my professional background. That was interesting. Maybe it was all just calculated to make me talk and see if I was slurring my words? Hardtosay. I gave him a brief CV.

I did get up close and personal with my brain imagery today. Here’s what I saw:

Looks like a bunch of x-rayed beetles, I know. Let’s zoom in.

The top image, the MRI from the ER, shows the area with the largest tumor, in mid-April. That’s the large white rose-like area. The bottom image shows the same area, last week. Notice a difference? Looks like something off The Weather Channel. I prefer the bottom forecast, don’t you?

So, insurance and other things permitting, I’ll be going for a ride in this thing next Tuesday.

The party starts early, 5:45 a.m. But – like so many things in my Cancer Journey thus far, it hopefully ends right in time for lunch.

Right now, though, Q train, pleeeeease don’t let me down. I’m going to hear some Baroque opera at the Alliance Française, and I’m hoping not to be late.

(Hoping Not To Be Late: A Cancer Life. Eh? Ehhhhh?)

We were truly terrified of the drive back home today. Sure we’d hit a solid wall of traffic. We’d left early on Friday morning, and that had served us well, so we tried to leave “early” again today. That never quite works out for us, when we’ve been visiting my parents. There is the general chaos the kids cause, the feet-dragging on my part because I hate saying goodbye to them (even though in an enclosed space and over a three day holiday weekend, we probably all need some space from each other). By the time we’re rolling out of the parking garage and towards the highway, I’m pretty sad. And it is never early. Today we maybe left at 10:30 a.m.

And yet – and yet- THERE WAS NO TRAFFIC. I guess everyone stays put on Memorial Day, until much later in the day? We even made our rendezvous with our favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant in a timely way, right at the midpoint of our trip. Really, the only part of the first half of the trip I’d have skipped was Young J puking in the car and not getting him a bag to do it in right away. He was remarkably calm about it, and he had done us the favor of basically eating nothing all day up until that point, because he hadn’t been feeling well, so cleanup was (according to J, who just finished) not so bad.

Last night, J and I met up for ice cream with my friends N and R, not seen for years and years. We attended the same junior high, but I switched schools for high school (as did R) and I had run into N years later in New York, but not for a long while. She’s always made efforts to meet up when I’m in town, and last night things finally aligned. We ate our ice creams and then we opened the tailgate of our car and we just hung out in the parking lot talking until they started shutting off the street lights. It was good to touch the past and the present together, like jumper cables connecting to terminals. It was energizing, this reunion. And it helped me put pieces together. I know that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing this past month (or have I in fact been doing it my whole life? That’s my current Big Question).

We got back home and the kids slid into TV, Young J requesting a new show on Netflix that I had to pull teeth to understand was something one of his friends at school watches. Lately there’s been a lot of that mean-spirited Thomas the Tank Engine crap playing so I was hoping this show wouldn’t be quite as bad. It turned out to be about soccer, take place in France, and seemed to be populated by children with no parents around. At first I thought they were all orphans, but then Young J explained they were at some kind of boarding school. I’ll have to sit down and watch an episode with him tomorrow to vet it. It looks… eh.

After dinner, J took Young A out on his bike, and Young J and I started drawing a comic together. He loves collaborative drawing projects, and he loves my drawing – something I’ve had to learn to accept as the truth. I grew up convinced I could not draw a thing, and school certainly didn’t convince me differently after elementary was over. I never imagined it would take an 8-year-old – MY 8-year-old – to finally get me to feel less self-conscious about expressing myself through drawing.

We took his little cartoon notebook which has each page divided into six frames. He titled the first one: THE PASTA PILEUP. We’re only about halfway done, but the scene is set. Italian restaurant, two customers, one a dreamy children’s book author (male), one a possibly bitchy woman who demands her pasta be AL DENTE. There is a closeup of the stove in the kitchen, where two pots are boiling, one labeled spaghetti and one farfalle. After they order, the man calls across the restaurant to the woman: “Howdy.” (It’s a cliffhanger. Tune in tomorrow! Maybe!)

This is how Young J reels you in, I’m realizing. We share some close moments having fun with a drawing project. Then he asks me to keep him company while he takes a bath. I do. Then he lays on the heavy trip. “Mom, why did you quit your job? Why didn’t you just put it… on hold or something?” I start trying to explain to him the complexity of my situation, the work situation, our financial situation. It was all a little much. Ultimately I told him that if I hadn’t quit it would have been much harder for me to get well as quickly as I have. He still remembers me last fall. I had hoped it had faded like a bad dream, but I don’t think it has. Not enough, anyway. He was wrapped in his bath towel, leaned forward and kissed my nose, like we used to do when he was much younger.

While he was putting on PJs he said, “You know, things seem different than they were a couple of years ago.” I asked him in what way. He said, “I never thought you would get cancer. And there have been plane crashes, and that car on fire…” I loved how he brought together the global, the familiar, and the totally random. There was a car on fire down the block – last year. We’d seen it on the way to school. I guess it made an impression.

I was crying by this point, and told him what I’ve said here and said to friends: That the thing that feels worst to me is I don’t know how it feels to have a sick parent. I never went through this as a kid. I told him that more than anything I wish I could take away this feeling. But I also made sure to tell him that good and bad things have been happening since the world began. It’s just that at his age, he’s starting to hear about more of the bad ones.

Then it was my turn to read a story with Young A. He dismisses so many of my favorite books out of hand now. “Those are for toddlers,” he said tonight, witheringly. I managed to find one we hadn’t read in a while, a derivative work, but with cute illustrations and a tale of friendship and loyalty. I just didn’t realize how much it would relate to my conversation with Young J about my job, until we got to this page:

I got through the lullaby without crying, then had to scramble for a substitute spray bottle to use for the bad-dreams-away ritual spraying of the bedroom. I found a travel sized one, because my usual spray bottle was outside, cleaning vomit in the car. Turns out they don’t really care what size the spray bottle is, as long as there is one and I follow the proper protocol dictated by Young A (“window-Young A-closet-Young J-door-Mama-spray Daddy later”).

I sprayed everything with my empty spray bottle. We’ve been away a few days, it’s possible bad dreams accumulated in the corners. It was the least I could do.

A decent drive down to my ancestral home. An amazing reunion with my family. Lots of food (of course). Lots of exhaling. Eating – did I mention eating? – at any hour thanks to no moratorium on eating thanks to break from cancer drug. Today, a good long walk in nature, and some excellent food too. And Young J walked my brother’s dog.

Only letting go of the leash once, which I have to say is pretty good for Young J.

We also took White’s Ferry back home. The last time I had been on it was July 1992. I remember specifically it was then, because I had just flown back from a very significant few months studying in Italy – my first time abroad on my own, finding my own place to live, deciding what my priorities were, oh yeah, and studying. It sure was hard to come back from that experience.

Perhaps my dad intuited this, or perhaps he wanted to avoid traffic. In any case, from the airport, we took winding country roads through Leesburg VA until we wound up at the ferry landing, with a stout overgrown Boy Scout indicating to the cars which line to get in.

“Welcome home,” the entire scene screamed to me. “This is the Potomac, not the Arno. This is a car ferry, and it’s not taking you to Elba. No, you didn’t find yourself a boyfriend in Italy, but that was just as well, because the options were ridiculous, and it wouldn’t have lasted. It will take you about a month to stop being a big snob about your time in Italy.”

It’s no Giuseppe Ungaretti, I’ll grant you that. But we don’t really get to choose what inspires us. I went back today to the ferry of my discontent of 23 years ago. It hadn’t changed, but I had. In infinite ways. And the boys loved the ride.

Not in Ontario in the fall, no.

I’m leaving for a few days. Going easy on the blogging. Got a lot of people I love that I will see. I will recharge my battery and stop being the steroid-crazed cancer flâneuse of Brooklyn.

Don’t worry about my well-being. Don’t worry about yours! Just be.

I went for an MRI this morning. I was worried when the train stalled in the tunnel just south of where I needed to transfer, taking me past the time I was meant to be showing up to sign in. I still needed to transfer and ride three stations. It was tense. I was listening to music but finally couldn’t take the stress anymore.

Facing me was a woman dressed in scrubs, also annoyed by the delay. I tried to will myself not to talk to her, because apparently now, fortified with steroids, I am become a person who speaks to everyone. I could not keep it in. I asked if she was a healthcare worker, and she said yes, a phlebotomist at a faraway hospital. I told her how much I valued Phlebotomist B at the cancer center. I tried, really I tried, to keep my steroid-fueled gregariousness in check. I could not. At least I only spoke to one person.

To think, at the beginning of the subway ride, I’d considered making an announcement to the entire car about an effort the NYC government is making to reach out to workers in manicure shops, following the recent NYTimes expose on poor health and labor conditions at many of them. I had just gotten an email this morning with information on how to sign up to be stationed at one of a dozen transit hubs on Thursday morning to give out literature to people who may be employed at these places. I didn’t think I could go to any of these faraway stations at 7:30 a.m., but I figured maybe if I announced it someone might take interest. I didn’t do it, though. Because I still have a very froggy voice from my unrelated-to-cancer spring cold/upper respiratory infection/reminder I am human and not some freakish cancer-fighting-eternally-blogging robot. Not because it was a crazy idea. I have had a few dozen of those in the past weeks.

Speaking of dozens, guess what? I found something out today. Something interesting, going back to last month. Back when I was writing to you from my hospital bed? And recorded my brain malfunctioning as it happened? I didn’t have three lesions on my brain then, as I had been given to understand. Today, I learned from Dr P and Nurse Practitioner R, their faces flooded with relief upon seeing a good brain MRI from this morning, I had actually had “a dozen.” A dozen lesions on my brain. That may not even be 12. A dozen is an approximative number. Like “several.” I understood I had several, but what I actually had was a dozen.

I cannot quite get over this past month. It has been one of the most transformative in my entire life. Even when I went through puberty or shot up to six feet by eighth grade, I don’t think I’ve been through this much in this short a time.

The elevators at the cancer center were totally messed up today. I race-walked from the subway to get to my MRI appointment ten minutes late, then climbed a steep flight of stairs to the office. Dr P’s office, though, is on the 9th floor. I wasn’t up for that kind of climb. I rode in the elevator with a lot of sick people. I know there is great pain and suffering in that building. Last fall, I was briefly part of that landscape, adding to the tableau of infirmity. Today, I was exuberant even before I knew the results of the MRI. I enjoyed my time in the weird tunnel, happily looking through a mirror at my legs and feet and almost laughing when the lame classical music in the headphones (truly, it was from the soundtrack of Swiss  Family Robinson or something) would get drowned out by the jackhammer or fire alarm noises that produced resonance that made the images of my rapidly healing brain come clear.

I am not out of these woods, this selva oscura my mid-life has led me to. Phlebotomist B drew some blood today. I learned about his life – he works in Midtown, lives in the Bronx, and studies way out in Dobbs Ferry. He spends his entire life on the road. He is trying to transfer to a closer program. I felt it my duty as a New Yorker and a Jew to teach him the word schlep. But first I had to explain to him what Yiddish was. Perhaps he had no idea I was a Jew before today. I told him next time he’d need to teach me a word from his language. He is from the Gambia – which has English listed as its official language, but it could be a number of different languages he grew up speaking. I’ll report back when I learn a word from one.

The blood he drew was analyzed, while we celebrated my good news with Dr P and Nurse Practitioner R, who announced her new pregnancy to us. I am down to three lesions, the largest of which (the three centimeter one from last month, the one affecting my speech and language) is now down to a centimeter. That is unbelievably rapid progress. In one month. I also came bearing gifts today, for Dr P and both nurse practitioners. I had heard about this anthology on Facebook and promptly bought four copies. I started reading it a few nights ago, and have been riveted. I have gone from not having a very good understanding of nursing to reading the most profound meditations on it from excellent nurses who are also excellent writers. Do you need more incentive? IT’S ON SALE. Go buy one. Dr P celebrated with us her first “A” in accounting (did I mention she’s getting an M.B.A. in her “spare” time?). It was just nonstop joy in that room. Nurse Practitioner R made up a calendar to help me taper further off the steroids. Even though I’m down to one 4 mg dose per day, it did keep me up last night when I decided not to take my sleepy drugs. I also learned today that Ativan is not habit-forming, so I won’t need to worry about not taking it when I want to stop. And I want to stop. Staggering to the bathroom in the middle of the night like an addict is not my idea of fun, and it’s ten times worse when Young A also gets up to pee and I need to supervise and feel like I’m going to just fall over.

So. The blood work. That’s when things turned slightly southwards, but nothing insurmountable. The blood work showed an increase in my liver function. This is attributable to the cancer drug. So I’m officially off it for a week, until I go back next week for another blood test. I was reassured that this is normal, that patients often take breaks from the drug, and that it is yet again proof the drug is working (as if my own immune system obliterating maybe ten brain lesions were not proof enough?). I’m glad the side effects this time are more sneaky. (I like sneaky. I can handle that. I know now that I can’t handle a month of colitis. That almost broke me.)

In the waiting room, J and I had met an adorable four year old girl there with her mom, who is also being treated by Dr P. She’d actually been diagnosed with melanoma while pregnant. She was referred to Dr P as the person to see. As if I needed more reasons to love my doctor.

I also found new pants for the boys to wear in their school pictures tomorrow. Pants without holes in the knees, like all the rest of their pants. And they were marked down to $5.90 each. It was THAT KIND OF DAY.

I didn’t take my sleepy drug triad tonight. I am a little anxious about the results of the MRI I’m having later this morning. So here I am back where I was a few weeks ago – wide awake at 3:30 a.m. when I was so sure it was already 5. I’m okay with this, because I know that later, I will sleep. After the MRI and the Very Long Lunch Break and the 1 p.m. consult with Dr P.

It’s funny, when you are as obsessed with music as I am, what the first song that pops into your head can be when you find yourself wide awake in the core of night. Tonight/this morning, it was this one.

On my 15th birthday, I had recently changed schools. I didn’t have a lot of friends at the new school yet, and had lost touch with the ones from the old school. So I had one of the most angst-ridden 15th birthdays in the universe. At this distance it sort of amazes and amuses at the same time. I accompanied my parents that evening to see a new documentary, Partisans of Vilna. I am sure the choice of movie didn’t bother me at the time, and I was probably glad to go to the movies with my parents, who rarely went.

On the way home, we stopped at a hospital. We stopped there to check on a friend of a family friend who was dying of cancer, to see if she’d died yet. A weird, awful errand. I probably stayed in the car as I have no memory of the hospital.

Once we got home and I was curled up in bed with my trusty angst log – I mean journal – at the ready, I suddenly realized that the evening, and my entire birthday really, had been GRIEVOUSLY WRONG and there was an urgent need for redress. I needed to do something good for myself, and soon.

I was in a creative writing class at school with people older than me. It was a given to them that you listened to the progressive radio station, WHFS (and you really should follow that Wikipedia link, as it is hard to imagine another set of call letters that has had that many things happen to it).

Well, guess what? After a period of listening to WDJY, the “urban contemporary” station, during my awful, awkward junior high years, I had settled on Top 40, which in the mid-80s had been passable but by late 1987 was becoming unbearable.

My conscious, soul-saving act on that winter night of 1987 was this: I made a written declaration in my journal that I was done with bad music, and I deliberately switched the dial on my boombox, from the top to the bottom, until I tuned in the station from far-off Annapolis. “I think they’re playing John Lennon,” I recorded. I don’t have the journal in front of me now, but I am pretty sure that’s what I wrote.

I was introduced to dozens of bands thanks to my new listening choice, and by the time I went out to San Francisco, alone, to visit my brother U the following summer, I had quite a list of albums I wanted to buy. I remember wandering through the promised lands of Amoeba and Reckless and Tower, amazed at my finds. One of them was the album by Translator, the band you heard above. It wasn’t much of an album. I only have it on vinyl and haven’t wanted to hear any tracks from it in years, which is good because the turntable has been imprisoned under the couch for about 9 years now. We’ve kept our albums, but haven’t had a means to play them, and I recently (before going back to work in February) evicted a bunch of them from a shelf in order to make space for the kids’ burgeoning library. I didn’t have a plan B for where the albums would go. My 45 collection is kind of strewn around on the floor lately. “The Reflex” by Duran Duran, in its limited edition poster sleeve. This morning I was grousing about the vinyl on the floor to the home organizer (we were focusing on my bedroom today) and I said, “You know, I guess if someone stepped on and broke ‘Walk Like An Egyptian,’ I wouldn’t really care.”

But this song! Man! It’s practically a work of philosophy, or maybe even physics. “You’re everywhere that I’m not!” The requisite list of foreign cities! The impossibility of love ever coming to fruition, because the beloved is NEVER IN THE SAME PLACE as the speaker.

I hope you listen to this song when you read this post, J (if you’re keeping up – I don’t think I’ve asked you in days whether you read a particular post. I’m trying). I’m sure you’ve heard it before. We used to play each other lots of songs. It was part and parcel of our courtship. Now I am in this place that you’re not – Cancerland – but you sure aren’t as hard to find as the person in the song. Thank you for that.

(Imagine the immortal voice of Casey Kasem, who I left ruthlessly behind in December 1987, reading this out as a long-distance dedication.)