Another good day for scan results. No results day seems to resemble any other results day in the past. Today seems to have existed in two separate realities, possibly three.

This morning, after the kids left for school, I got on my bike. I had homework from the trainer I am working with in order to ensure I don’t bomb June’s ride. Today, I needed to repeat the hill in the park five times. When I got to the park I didn’t really know whether I could do it. I had a few tips and techniques from the trainer to go on. When I started I wasn’t thinking of the endpoint. I went around once, twice. In the middle of the third lap I had a moment of mild panic about whether I’d be able to finish. I needn’t have panicked. Each time, I climbed the hill in a gear I never would have imagined could work for me.

However, I am struggling with something that seems laughably basic to me – how to bend down and get my water bottle for a drink while I’m riding, and then put it back without crashing! The trainer worked with me on that last week, I seemed to have gotten the hang of it. Today, the first time I tried to drink while in motion, I nearly wiped out and almost took another cyclist with me. For the following laps I decided only to try drinking while cutting across the quieter transverse road in the park. Again I nearly wiped out (this time, while trying to replace the bottle) and the bottle fell to the ground and rolled away, so I had to stop and chase it down. Finally, I decided I’d just stop quickly to drink before each hill repeat. That worked much better. I need to practice more,  I think. Just a few years ago, I had no problem drinking while riding. I can even remember a moment where I was texting while biking, against all common sense! Clearly, those days are behind me.

I got home from the park with little time to spare before my visit to Dr. P. My main goal was to refuel quickly and appropriately so I wouldn’t show up there almost passing out again! When I arrived at my appointment, the waiting room was almost at capacity. My heart sank, because I had plans downtown after my appointment. J didn’t come with me today. And I had made plans. I treated this like any other checkup, not like my life was hanging in the balance. I had briefly considered the possibility that all might not be well. But I couldn’t seem to convince myself to take that idea seriously today. I’m so lucky I didn’t need to.

In the waiting room, I saw a woman with her daughter whom I’d met at a previous visit. She had begun seeing Dr. P. when she was pregnant with her daughter and gotten a diagnosis of melanoma. Today, I noticed that she is pregnant again. What miracles are possible, when the drugs work. (It is never far from my mind, though, that the drugs do not always work. This particular age of miracles is still far from universal. It is all too selective.)

Nurse Practitioner K saw me today. She burst into the room with the good news, and I almost knocked her down jumping up to hug her. It was the usual checkup – with an EKG added on, since one of my drugs carries the risk of cardiomyopathy.  It was fine, everything was fine. Even the side effects can’t touch me anymore. I know too much to feel truly bulletproof, but I am feeling relieved, like I’m a few notches closer to normal. My medications list, which Nurse Practitioner K reviewed with me, seemed extremely short. And it is! No steroids! No anti-seizure drug! No confounded eye drops!

I left the cancer center, bought a six pack of beer, and caught a bus downtown, to a Lower East Side gallery where an artist friend is working to create an installation that opens Friday. It is called FUCKYOURCOUCH. It’s a comment on many things, but I think primarily the frustrations of being an artist in the current economy, and a swipe at the art world. The couches came from Craigslist, giveaways. Some were already destroyed. Today, I and a couple of other friends were invited to avail ourselves of power tools, fabric scissors, seam rippers, an electric carving knife. One person brought a meat hook. We dismantled a very nice, made in North Carolina couch. It was impressive to see the construction, compare it to the remnants of an IKEA couch on the other side of the room. I’m excited to see the results when the show opens.

Because I’d just come from the cancer center, and gotten good news, and because I rode my bike like crazy this morning, I drank a couple of beers very quickly while deciding what to do to the couch. Then, I drank a third. Two beers is usually my limit. But there was relief, there was celebration, there was three more months of healthy life pretty much guaranteed. So it was a three beer afternoon. The joke was on me when I had to walk back to the subway – about 15 minutes, crossing lots of streets. However, I’m very good at pretending not to be drunk. I walk in an exceedingly cautious way. On a train, I try not to open my mouth so no one smells my breath. The biggest challenge today was climbing the stairs out of the subway without falling over, and I managed that, too.

J was home with the kids. They’d done their homework. J made dinner. I don’t know where we’d all be without him. I was so glad I had good news for him today, for him and the kids and all you beautiful people who remember when I’m getting results and cheer with me when they’re good. This cancer thing? I guess it can teach you about love.

It was a busy weekend. Yesterday more successful overall in terms of scheduling and stuff checked off the to-do list (kids newly shod with shoes in the correct size, then a very fun street fair).

Today, we were tired and couldn’t get a plan together. Young A had a birthday party in the afternoon, and it was over in Red Hook so I waited it out at the cafe of Fairway, the enormous grocery store located on the waterfront where On the Waterfront is set (though it was actually shot in Hoboken).

As I paid for my coffee, I overheard the two young people in front of me talking to the cashier. They were both wearing life jackets and shivering. They had just gotten off some kind of craft and when asked where they had come from, they said Florida. As I sat in the cafe reading my book, I looked up from time to time to watch them regaining their composure after what seemed like an ordeal. There were five of them in all, three men and two women. One of the women didn’t speak at all, just stared out at the water as she drank some soup. Eventually they went on their way.

All day today, the sky shifted from sun to cloud, from clear weather to spitting rain. It was much colder than it should be, mid-May. I imagined being out on the open water, how long it might take to recover from experiencing weather that way for days at a time. Not being able to count on anything being calm. No stability.

I have a CT scan tomorrow. I’m counting on no news as my good news. I’m hoping that Tuesday, when I go in for my results, I will not have the rug pulled out from under me.

If I do get bad or uncertain news, though, I’m going to show up having done something important that day – namely, Day 1 of my biking homework. I met a trainer last week and she handily dismantled some of my deepest fears about riding and about the specific ride I’m doing in June. The hills. I need to tackle hills. So before I see Dr P on Tuesday, I’m going to do hill repeats in the park. Five of them in a row. Then I’m going to shower, take the subway to Manhattan, and find out whether I get three more months tacked on to my lease.

Last night, I went out. J works most Saturday nights, and most of the time I wind up not making plans, and I stay home waiting around for him to finish working, but since he can’t start until 8 pm, he doesn’t finish until late.

Yesterday, my friend G posted on Facebook that she was planning to go to an exhibit of photographs by urban explorers – the people who like to go climbing in abandoned buildings and inside infrastructure that may or may not be legal to visit. It was being held at the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library, a gem of a building I had only been to once before. Our mutual friend R mentioned he would go too. I hadn’t seen either of them for ages.

The exhibit was interesting, although some elements worked better than others. You had to bring a flashlight to illuminate the photos, because the overhead lights were off and the rooms lit by LED tea lights. There were some video projections, and Phillip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi played in the various rooms. G bought a beautiful watercolor and ink drawing of a bridge which was framed and seemed criminally underpriced. (I’d had my eye on it too, but we have practically run out of wall space.)

My favorite part of the evening, however, was the time I spent standing by a giant window in the upstairs reading room. The window was open and when you looked up, there was a midnight blue sky with white clouds, and when you looked down, there was all the illuminated bustle of the West Village on a Saturday night. I stood by the window for a long time, feeling the wind come through and listening to the sounds and having one of those moments which you pretty much need to have every so often when you live in a city like this – a moment that reminds you why you choose to live in a shoebox cheek by jowl with millions of others.

I’ve always been susceptible to wind. It changes me, sometimes it prompts me to ponder doing stupid things. The wind last night felt good, but it ushered in a gloomy front for me, and I’ve been pretty depressed all day today. Almost palpably so. Possibly hormonally so. The weight of it is so crushing I don’t think I could stand up to it for more than a day, which is as long as this feeling lasts. If the crushing feeling lasted longer, I might finally understand what drove my friend Sarah (of blessed memory) to cast it off.

I’m going to sign off now and go watch a funny show with J and then go to bed. But here’s a photo of the window I was standing by last night, the windy window. In the wrong light, you’ll think it’s all or mostly black. If you shut off the light (as I discovered last night) you’ll see the clouds, and then maybe you can conjure the sounds and the feeling of the wind. I hope it feels good to you too.

I didn’t let anyone down today. Not even myself!

I moved the car for street cleaning and didn’t even curse when I got stuck in traffic while doing so.

I then rushed home and got my bike and met my friend A. in the park for a ride. This is the same friend A. who drove us to the cancer center a year and a half ago, when I was in the midst of my wonder drug-induced colitis, so it was extra special to meet up with her on a much healthier plane. She wanted to check on a nest of cygnets, but they didn’t appear to have hatched yet. The geese and swans were having a turf war.

I came home, making sure to eat lunch and drink lots of seltzer immediately to prevent a migraine, because I rode a lot more yesterday, and went to bed with a brutal migraine. (It turns out seltzer isn’t the best possible option, though.)

I finished up preparing a presentation for Young J’s class, and I headed out to give it. It has been a year since I taught a class, and I have never taught this demographic, but it went very well. I wondered if I’d be nervous, but why would you get nervous in front of 9-12 year olds, some of whom you’ve known since preschool or kindergarten? I had fun. I made them laugh a little, and I taught them how to evaluate the results of their Web searches in order to make sure they are getting good, reliable information. It’s the sort of thing a school librarian would teach, but the school doesn’t have one yet. (One can hope…)

I finished up my talk, came home, started a pot of chili, and got back to school in time to pick up Young J (Young A had after school today). I was hitting all of my marks today!

Later on, while we ate dinner, out of nowhere, Young A asked where the rash on my back came from. “My scar, you mean?” Yes, he meant my scar. Young A is six. I was first diagnosed with melanoma when he was three. Ancient history for him – of course he doesn’t remember.

I started at the beginning. Surgery, radiation, recovery. Young A sat quietly and listened to every word. Young J, who has probably heard enough, tried interrupting by singing “Radioactive,” a song he likes by a group whose name refuses to stay in my brain. But for once, Young A wasn’t taking the bait. He was determined to listen. I kept going. I talked about being okay for a little more than a year, and then not being okay, and how the medicine made me very sick, and I couldn’t take it all, but how even so I got better! But then they found the bad stuff in my brain, and that’s why I am still taking the pink pills and why I had surgery in the special machine that was like a tunnel.

It doesn’t matter how many times I tell this story, it still sounds improbable and outlandish and Alice-in-Wonderlandish and space age. I wish everyone got to tell it the same way, got to experience the wonder and the hope that drove out the pain and the fear.

Then the kids asked how you get cancer. My own cancer is easy enough to trace the origin of, and it makes a damn good case for sunblock and hats on the young’uns (who have always been very good about these things). And smoking is easy to implicate in lung cancer.

But there are so many reasons and so many cancers and at a certain point, you might let Joe Jackson take over, because you can dance to it at least.

Happy Mother’s Day to the moms. All the moms, in every circumstance – joy, expectant excitement, exasperation, grief.

But I also wish an easy day to those who have to put up with this day, those for whom this day is a knife to the heart. Tomorrow will come, and the shop window displays will come down.

In the aftermath of the morning’s festivities, which included breakfast in bed and many lovely cards and wishes and heart-shaped soap, I am lying in bed, enjoying the quiet of the empty house. The plants I bought yesterday are out on the balcony waiting to be potted, and I think that this year, I will probably get to that before July.

(I am doing laundry, because I do it best. There are some truths that cannot be glossed over, even on a Hallmark holiday.)

I’m grateful I get to be a mom, grateful to still be around to get the cards and snuggles, and grateful I can pick up the phone and call my mom. None of these variables are guaranteed, and they won’t all be true forever. I’m happy for the right-now-ness. It can be ephemeral and still enjoyable.

I finished reading The Little Prince to the boys last night, can you tell?

Sure is gray and chilly out there. We’re stuck under a front that is stationary, unmoving, massive. An omega something or other. Not a good omen for my bike training, but that will need to continue regardless of the weather. J asked me last night what I want to do on Mother’s Day, if I want time alone. I may want to burrow under the covers and not get out of bed until noon, at this rate.

But! Being the Queen of Silver Linings, I do have some good news today. I’m back from the ophthalmologist, Dr D, who has been following my progress back from the medication-induced iritis and subsequent retina swelling, and then dramatically increased pressure in my eyes due to the steroid drops that were treating the condition in the first place.

As of today, my vision is normal. My pressure is normal, after a month with no drops whatsoever. I don’t need to go back for three months.

Which in most ways is good. The waits can be very long at Dr D’s, his staff are by turns friendly and surly, and the radio playing in the waiting room makes the ears bleed. Well, my ears, anyway.

Once you get into an exam room, there is dim lighting, no music, and this is your view:

I have complained in the past to Dr D about the music. He claims they tried classical music, but “nobody liked it.”

Today, Dr D decided he needed to know more about what kind of music I liked. I told him it was complicated and really, please, don’t worry about it anymore! And then he was looking for mp3’s on his phone and started playing a wholly inoffensive (= soporific) guitar thing, which he said had been used as the theme music to a Ken Burns documentary about the National Parks. “Hmmm,” I said, flailing around for something nice to say. “It sounds… Burnsian.” Okay, I guess that didn’t come out very nice.

But the pressure was down! In my eyes! Down to 13. Which is a good measure. And 13 has always been my number – it seems to come up a lot.

I went back out to the crowded waiting room, paid my copay, made an appointment for impossibly far-off early August, and headed back to the subway in the windy rain.

My legacy of the ocular side effects to my cancer meds, side effects which in the trial afflicted a mere 1% of patients? One floater in my left eye. It’s round, shaped like a lentil. It floats. When I want to, I can stare at a white wall and bounce it around as though I were playing Pong. It may be there forever, or at least (as I understand) until I get much older and my eyeballs are less sticky and it falls off.

It is better than a scar, by far. Weirder than a scar, for sure. But me, I’ve never been a textbook case of anything. Why start now?

I’m lying in bed with the weight of the past week on top of me. (No wait, that’s the winter duvet which we still need even though tomorrow is May. DAMNIT.)

In the first hours of April 24, Kate Boone passed away.

I’m so sad. I’m frustrated that recent advances in melanoma treatment didn’t go far enough to save her. But I’m so glad to have known about her. Social media made it possible for me to know her, and to convey my condolences to her family, but it is hard to know just what to say to people who now contend with a giant hole in their lives. There was a memorial service for her yesterday in Houston which I wish I could have attended. Her husband is still coping with medical bills and illness of his own. If you can, please consider helping out.

It has been a week since Passover began. It is ending, and not a moment too soon. We’ve spent the week afflicting ourselves by avoiding bread and other related products, to remember our ancestors’ wandering in the desert for forty years. At the end of those forty years, on a diet of matzah and manna, they were probably pretty constipated. Today, they’d probably be working on creating a bread starter using airborne yeasts. The seders this year were a lot of fun for us, because the kids, particularly Young A, were so engaged. That’s what happens when they spend a good month of school preparing for the holiday. They enriched the experience, and made it new for us. That’s really all you can ask for, I think. (Young A seems poised to inherit the mantle of seder leader from his father, who leads the seder for his family.)

We spent a few days in DC, visiting with family and also visiting the National Building Museum, which never disappoints. Since J had to be back at work on Monday, I did the drive home on Tuesday solo. I hadn’t done a long drive like that in ages, and certainly not since the brain mets (and being on anti-seizure meds and being forbidden to drive for a while). Other than a tense few minutes on the New Jersey Turnpike, where the driver of an 18-wheeler got sick and needed to be helped off the road by some very on the ball state troopers, it was a good drive. I played some episodes of a kids’ science podcast, Brains On!, which delighted the kids (and me). It was a good break for them from readingreadingreading. (I can’t complain, though – they’ve always been very good car travelers.)

Tuesday evening, I attended the book launch of another melanoma compatriot I met through a friend, whose memoir, A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles, just came out. I am so happy for her, and have been tearing through the book the past few days. Some parts I feel I could have written myself. Sometimes I cringe with the recognition of the exact sensations being described. Sometimes I burst into tears when she expresses the exact same thoughts I have had regarding my kids, and how difficult it is to watch them deal with a parent’s serious illness at such a young age. I hope the book is read widely, because it provides such a good window into what it is to be a cancer patient in the age of immunotherapy (among a dozen other things). Pick up a copy today! Or borrow one your friend bought! Or get it from the library! But do read it.

Wednesday afternoon, I managed to accomplish three loops of Prospect Park on my bike (that’s a little over nine miles). I hadn’t managed that since September 2014, the day before having my lung biopsy (which I consider the true start of my trip down the rabbit hole). I’ll need to be able to manage more miles than that by June’s ride, of course, but I am feeling less daunted by that. This coming week, with the kids back in school, I’m aiming to kick my training up a notch (BAM!) and ride in Central Park, where there are more challenging hills (but a million more slow-moving obstacles… I mean, tourists). Your sponsorship means the world to us – if you have already donated, thank you so much for your support! (If you have not gotten around to it yet, here you go.)

So, there, by way of explaining my silence this week, you have it. Sadness and gladness and busy-ness. Full spectrum living, is all.

The kids’ first day of Passover vacation (which lasts until MAY – which seems impossibly far off). I feel like we kind of hit it out of the park today, and I worry it’s downhill from here.

We didn’t rush to get out of bed today. J made pancakes this morning, because starting tomorrow night, no pancakes – or many other staples – for a week. After J left for work, I tried to motivate the kids to get out of the house early, then realized they weren’t having it, and neither was I, really. We started a building project that Young A suggested, and that somehow turned into Young J suggesting we invent a new game, and so we did! We borrowed a spinner from another game and made up a new one, involving the design of new transit systems. There was a lot of drawing required in the game. It wasn’t always clear whose turn it was. But by the time we needed to leave the house, I had designed a ferry route, Young A, a train route, and Young J, a bus line. It was a lot of fun.

That took us to noon. Then we went to the pizzeria for one last hurrah before the holiday (well… maybe one more tomorrow for lunch) and then hopped the subway to Central Park. There isn’t usually much phone service down there. But there was just enough for me to spot an email saying that Prince might be dead. By the time we came out of the subway, it had been confirmed. I was in the same kind of shock and disbelief I found myself in mid-January when Bowie died. But I was on an outing with the kids, it was a beautiful spring day, the park was a riot of flowers and amusements, and I couldn’t afford the luxury of a breakdown. Here’s  a little photographic sample of the day, which included a carousel ride, a zoo visit, and an encounter with newborn mice at a playground.

Like Bowie, Prince was part of the aural wallpaper of my coming-of-age – ever-present, ubiquitous, dependable. It feels a bit like the wallpaper is being unceremoniously ripped down. I’d post a link or two from YouTube but they seem to get taken down eventually. We have the music. We just won’t get any more of it.

When J got home from work I was demolished, but also determined to get a bike ride in. Biking will be tough for the next week while the kids are out of school, but I’m determined to train regardless. I don’t want to approach June 25 with trepidation – I mean to go in strong, knowing I can do the miles and survive the hills. Yesterday with J, I rode two laps of the park. (The last time I rode three laps, I believe, was in September 2014, the day before my lung biopsy.)

Tonight, I thought of maybe going a bit farther, another half lap with the cut-through by the old Quaker cemetery, but I didn’t want to push it. I enjoyed the beautiful evening, and I sang Prince songs as I went along, until I got to the big hill and was only able to manage a whisper.

Last year, this was going on. I was living minute-to-minute. Didn’t know if things would improve.

This year, this was my day: Pancakes for breakfast and a cappuccino/milk toast with J and the boys, because it’s a year later and I’m still here. A lazy morning and then a sudden formulation of a plan for the day. An outing to the city for lunch, a movie, a playground.

Back home, I ate dinner quickly and then left again – alone, such a sweet, unfamiliar sensation on a Saturday night – to see a friend who was reading from her new book. A friend who, like me, knows very well how it is to feel lucky to still be here.

I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad you are too.

PLEASE stop coughing on the vinyl.

Dim reminder.

Young A, Clear Blue, W.

Teresa aims to please. 7 A.M. til 10 P.M.

Menopause is HOT.

Desiree Cooper presents her book of flash (short) fiction, Know the Mother, at Bluestockings bookstore on the Lower East Side.

So I got my May brain MRI a few weeks early, yesterday. Results this morning. In the image above, focus your attention on the large white blotch from the November scan (left), which was the area of bleeding that necessitated some “touch-up” gamma knife surgery. Note how the spot is barely visible on yesterday’s scan (right). This is good!

The reason for my haste in having the scan was that on Tuesday night, right when I was getting ready for bed, I suddenly felt very dizzy. I couldn’t move my head too quickly or I’d start feeling seasick. I also had a headache. When I woke up the next morning (before 6 a.m.), I also vomited.

So I activated the usual phone chain, starting with a call to Dr P’s service. I got a bleary sounding call back from Dr P in minutes, who said I’d need to have an MRI immediately.  Later talked with Nurse Practitioner A who works with Dr K, and they booked me for an MRI at 3:30 p.m. I was super uncomfortable, and asked whether it couldn’t be done sooner in the ER, only to learn that MRI is not standard practice in the ER, that I’d only get a CT scan there. Also, I learned that in a battle between the oncologist and the neurosurgeon, the neuro gets priority in terms of MRI scheduling. 3:30 it was.

I hunkered down in bed for most of the day (coincidentally and very luckily for me, the day of the week J works from home), sleeping off and on. They’d told me to take some leftover Decadron prophylactically, but somehow I was still able to doze. Decadron also makes me ravenous, so when J went out to run an errand, I asked him to fetch me my favorite slice from the pizzeria, which is covered with fresh arugula. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.)

In the afternoon, I took a shower, spotted by J so I wouldn’t fall. We took a cab to the cancer center, me sucking on Jolly Ranchers in an effort not to hurl. Success.

When we got to the cancer center I got in a wheelchair. The guy in charge of them tried to steer us to a smaller one, and when I got in the one we’d chosen, I saw why. It was EXTRA EXTRA WIDE. Hard to get through doorways and frankly not that comfortable for me. It was the linebacker model, I guess. I was half bemused, half annoyed by J’s wheelchair-driving ineptitude, but ultimately, grateful I haven’t really spent much time in them for him to have much practice.

My stomach had started churning again while the nurse prepped me for the MRI. I took deep breaths and willed myself not to need to vomit for the half hour I’d be flat inside the tube. Somehow, I managed to stay calm. I don’t know how I did it. I’d planned some visualizations to pass the time, but, perhaps because I was too worried about the circumstances of the scan, the insanely loud and varied noises of the machine interrupted my every attempt to visualize anything. Even “whirled peas.” (Given the state of my stomach, that would have been an extra poor choice.) So I just breathed. And waited for status reports via the speaker. 21 minutes to go. 15 minutes to go. And finally, five minutes.

I was still feeling green around the gills when we came out of the cancer center and climbed into a cab to head home, where J’s parents were waiting with the boys – and J still had to cook the labor-intensive stir fry we’d planned to cook in our weekly meal plan, unscheduled MRIs be damned, because I’m a stickler for not letting the boys down, even when I am down for the count. I’m pretty convinced a home-cooked meal can go a long way to making things feel normal… even when I’m not at the table to eat with them.

The cab ride through early rush hour traffic proceeded well at first. I kept my head down looking at my phone, because raising my head caused more dizziness. I looked up when we were approaching the Brooklyn Bridge and I knew I was not going to be okay. I also knew there was nowhere to pull over. I produced the two plastic shopping bags from my purse and stretched them open just in time. The pizza, it turned out, had not been a good idea. I was so, so glad J had suggested I bring those bags.

I tied the bags shut and carefully held them away from any upholstery, and after drinking some water, I apologized to the driver – who had no idea I had just puked. I mean, I’ve always been pretty discreet about it, on the occasions when I’ve gotten too drunk at my own parties and had to stagger vomiting episodes in between saying goodbye to guests. But this was in a cab! I was right behind him! He thanked me for not soiling the upholstery. “Anytime,” I said.

After the MRI, and even before it, I had a feeling in my gut – and I mean this metaphorically, you’ll be so relieved to hear – that my brain was just fine. The weird sudden onset of symptoms did not jibe with the way things went down last year. Plus, it was NOT GOING TO BE COOL to have a relapse on the exact one year anniversary of the tumors showing up in the first place. It would have been almost suspiciously shitty.

Of course, I know better than to expect things to be rosy and well forever. I’ve been invaded, the opponent is formidable and is determined to get the upper hand. But for now – I get some peace of mind about my brain. Next month, my CT scan. Then, bike ride. Then, Italy. I’m living for these things. For now.

After getting my good scan results this morning, and taking a quickie neurological exam that found me just fine, I visited my primary care doctor, Dr S, about my condition. She has pretty much now seen it all, from me. Pregnancy scare (negative, and my thyroid is fine), multiple pneumonias, weird recurrent eczema in my ear… and every time I come see her, a new update for my cancer ledger, because Dr P and her staff are amazing, but they don’t do a great job of keeping Dr S up to date. But Dr S is pretty unflappable, in the face of all the weird shit I bring up.

Today she checked my pulse three different ways – lying down, sitting up, standing. Then checked my glands, ears, tongue and throat. She checked my visual tracking. And then, she had me turn my head sharply to one side and lie down – which as of yesterday, even this morning, would not have felt good. It was fine! She had me repeat this facing the other way. Again, no problem. She decided that I didn’t have vertigo, but rather that I am dehydrated. She based this on the difference in my resting pulse lying down, sitting, and standing. I’d already been sipping Gatorade, because I hadn’t had lunch and it was nearly 2 p.m. and a terrific headache loomed. So I need to drink more water. And eat more salt. And then drink more water.

But because this is Brooklyn, she had another trick up her sleeve as well. In addition to being an M.D., Dr S has studied Chinese and alternative medicine. She once did acupuncture on me, to improve my “lung chi” after a pneumonia. And she has recommended homeopathy when she thinks it will work, but always with a very light touch and making no promises. She suggests it as an afterthought, sort of like when Columbo comes back in when you thought he was leaving, with “oh, just one more thing…”

Today, Dr S needed to know if my dizziness has had me wanting to be under a warm blanket, or wanting a blast of cool wind on my face, “like Leo DiCaprio in Titanic,” she actually did say. I’ve definitely been under the blanket a lot, and I definitely can’t stand DiCaprio. It turns out there are two different homeopathic remedies for dizziness, but you have to have the right one based on your preference. So, after leaving Dr S, I stopped by our awesome local drugstore and plucked a vial of Cocculus indicus pellets off the shelf. Five pellets under the tongue, three times a day. (Saying an incantation is optional.) Here’s hoping for a speedy return of my equilibrium.

Last summer, I was searching for blog posts on gamma knife surgery, and I came across a post by a woman in Texas, Kate Boone, whose metastatic melanoma trajectory was similar to mine.

I came to her blog for the solidarity, but I stayed for the quirky humor. This was someone I hoped I could get to know, felt like I knew already. Familiar, even though I’ve never heard the sound of her voice. I was so relieved to find someone else who was not painting their cancer in pastel hues, or talking about how everything happens for a reason.

I think the hardest and most unsettling thing to accept is that things happen at random. And that things can happen which we cannot look back on and laugh, because nothing – nothing – is funny about someone, especially someone so very young, being all out of chances. Yet that is what Kate’s oncologist has just pronounced.

Tears are falling for you, Kate – here in Brooklyn, and everywhere else your wonderful energy has reached. I’m wishing you an easing of your excruciating pain, and you and your loved ones peaceful time together.

To support Kate and her husband Dennis through this very hard time, please see their fundraiser page. Thank you.