September 29, Passing Through

Angela writes:

As soon as we got on the train it felt like we should do this more often. The seats were comfortable and unusual, yet not new. I assumed VIA may make new out of other companies' old holdings. Since we've been living in the country, we are not quite as fascinated by the countryside sites swiftly running by the train window. We took out our various writing tools and set out to do some writing.

Coming to Montreal is always a bittersweet experience. It throws me back almost three decades ago when I lived here for four years during my graduate training. Bitter because I was poor and wary of the future in those days, but mostly because I only knew the city in winter. In order to save on rent, and to spend time with my parents, I would leave at the end of every school year for Calgary, and came back to Montreal in fall. Nobody figured why I would do such a thing, why I would leave this cultured city precisely when things were poised to blossom. Yet those who know the hypnotic appeal of the Rockies will understand.

That is how this city, to this day, only presents itself to me under its most difficult appearance: windy cold winters with little sun and slush up to one's knees. I yearned for Alberta's solid, white-particle winter breath. For the infinite semicircular horizons, the white sun, the chinook's transforming incursions by which winter went into spring every few weeks. And, of course, for the premier Lougheed's largesse, that which had given me a scholarship to go to study in Montreal.

Whatever I got in Montreal, I had to wrestle out of it. The French language was not given, I had to insist that people speak French to me, rather than English, and it was not obvious why that would be so. Moreover, some things remained equal wherever I went. In Alberta, just like in Quebec, and later in Ontario, I was and am still taken, today, for a traveller. Une voyageuse. You are visiting? En visite chez nous? ask the more polite among those who enter the conversation. It would be easy for me to say yes, after all it was and still is true in a sense. Just like the French from France will not accept that I come from Canada but want to know where exactly, that is, originally, do I come from. Le sang ne se fait pas eau. Blood does not turn into water. They can tell that Canada is not quite blood where I am concerned.

When the time came to defend my thesis, I travelled to Montreal from Calgary, where I had gone back to live. I was honored, and it was an overwhelmingly pleasant surprise to have my friend Catherine attend the defense. She, who was never as blissfully ignorant as I, said nothing further about how this process usually unfolds. At the corner of the table, a woman, by all appearances homeless, took a seat. She sat in through the whole procedure and nobody seemed aware of her being there at all. As if she did not exist. Somewhere in the back of my mind, in spite and beyond the anguish such events are bound to produce, I thought she might be a ghost only visible to my eyes, an angel in disguise.

Years later I had to come back to this same university, this time as an examiner. And then I found rooms full of the friends and relatives of the defendant, all poised to praise publicly the accomplishments of their friend and kin. The defense, which in my case had been some sort of a disruption in the day of those supposed to fill the seats of yet another committee, could be what it was supposed to be. A celebration. Particularly when the blood is at home and not just visiting from elsewhere.

Of course when I got back to Calgary my mother organized a big party for me, and all our Romanian friends came to the feast, like they always did when she was inviting. They certainly and rightfully came as much for her as for me. But this was in fact a private, confidential celebration. My parents were convinced I had accomplished something important, without knowing what. Thanks to that, I had to believe it myself. If I received so little recognition from the public sphere - and years would have to go by before I would get some of that -, it was, no doubt, because I had chosen a particularly difficult group to call mine.

September 27, Less than 100%

Angela writes:

I had just been moved from the scan gurney onto the hospital bed waiting next to it and was trying to follow instructions. Not to cough in spite of the saline solution which, forced into my lungs, was now trying to come upwards and out. Coughing would further trouble the lung which had been stirred. The doctor comes smiling before me and by now I know he is smiling simply because such is his fortunate disposition. His name and waving long beard, black streamed with timid white tidings, rimes with mujahideen, while his disposition, at odds with that rime, makes him immediately lovable.

Still wearing the radiation-proof costume recalling a Scottish clan's green and blue plaid, he brings under my eyes a vial of clear, water-like liquid. Look at this, he says proudly, you see? There's the matter we just extracted. I have to look very closely, the "matter" consists of a few minuscule bubbles similar to those Perrier would yield, or champagne. I try to be excited about this harvest, he certainly is and I could only hope the evidence we needed is trapped in there and relevant.

I had been awarded that which only a few days ago seemed preferable to the imaging tests. A biopsy, that is, a procedure with a higher degree of eloquence, physical, intrusive, and painful to boot. Three hours later we were out in the Kingston windy sun, the lake breathing almost furious at our feet. Another appointment was waiting, the pain clinic which I had not dared reschedule since one only gets a shot at it once every two years. I had not considered what fasting for about fourteen hours, and a fine needle pushing slowly into your lung, can do together. At the clinic, three forms were waiting to be filled.

As applications for government grants go, the one this researcher uses, in order to build up the body of pain under investigation, is seventeen pages long. Between four in the afternoon, and six in the morning of the next day, I slept. Intermittent and belabored sleep, with the lung just punctured making itself known at every breath. At night I woke up and did my exercises, wondering whether I would be able to take this planned trip to Montreal. I very much doubted I would. Two tests later, I only had one aching lung to show for myself.

The morning came, cool and sunny, once again offering its promise to those ready to march on as they say. Sleep can perform miracles and I had slept through difficult breathing and the fear that my trustworthy lung was betraying me. I decided that I would go to Montreal against the odds, if only because four days without Colin is too much to bear. Come what may.

What came was the phone call. The lung specialist, also known as the iPhone doctor, was as prompt, if not better, than he had declared. The biopsy showed infection and/or inflammation, but not cancer. While I was ready to give in to my joy, he was not ready to let me. It is not a 100% certain diagnosis. The needle might still have taken a sample from an area adjacent to a cancerous formation, which could have been missed, etc. I said I was happy with less than 100%. I have not known much of 100% of anything at anytime. Particularly so when it comes to cancer. He disagreed, and held on to his quest of the 100%. We are still waiting for a pet scan for which we will travel to Ottawa. If that shows a hot spot where the shadow is, then we will have the surgeon go in and remove it.

Still, I insist, it is good news, we have moved up from 42% possibility of cancer to, say, little under 100% (I do not have the exact number here) possibility of not cancer. That's good enough for me anyway. In the evening, heartened by the less than 100% but still good enough news, we got to read the report of the skull scan which was waiting, unopened. The brain, as I learn, is enveloped in a porous tissue, called arachnoid mater. A translucent spiderweb which gives way, through granulation, to light formations in the darkness of the skull. This, in the first report, appeared as "lucency". A spot of shining like that of the moon, and rime to "lunacy". In there the fear of a myeloma formation took shelter. As it turns out, thanks to that cat scan where I could not contain my tears, it was simply the spiderweb's doings, which, ignorant of percentage, deploys its inconsistencies in the fullness of time. A bit of light, a bit of shining, not cancer.

September 22, For Alberto

Angela writes: Last night we saw the film Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami. I had had a particularly sad day, and the film somehow brought me back from my sorrow. Colin found a way to leave work and come with me to Trenton where the cat scan was scheduled. Often if I am on my own I can bear the difficulty of such tests with some stoicism, but as soon as he is with me, I let go. He is the perfect medium for tears. I have been to this hospital many times in the past year. I used to prefer it to others because it is small and easy to reach. Yesterday, nevertheless, this submission to imaging machines had reached some critical point and I found it difficult to even bring myself to go through the motions. For the first time, I was almost wishing for a more painful, physical, more real procedure. That something should be so painless, and yet so threatening, felt very much like mental torture. Every time a lay on the narrow gurney that goes into the machine, it is as if I am about to open one of two doors: one that leads to the normal, the other, to the pathological diagnostic. I wish so badly to open the right door, but the chances, optimistically speaking, are at most one out of two. If I used to lie still at the centre of the radiation machine, I realize today, it was because, precisely, it was treatment, and not diagnostic I was undergoing. I felt very little discomfort while knowing that the attack, the aggression was there and hopefully working for me. That in fact allowed for some exorcism, together with the exercise of courage. When the machine – and they all resemble each other, scanner, magnetic resonance, radiation – is used in order to read the inside of the body, something terrible occurs, especially when one, like myself at the present, thinks they are beginning to do better. All that work to become stronger can be wiped out by an image and the shadiest of images will give the lie to our subjective, hopeful idea. Already weak as I was entering the room, I kept loosing control by the second, so much more when I noticed that the technician who was going to do this test was one who had done other tests for me, in Belleville. Everything may become an ominous sign. I lay down and the woman in charge of positioning me wrapped a strap over my forehead so I may not move. As I went in, tears started streaming down my temples and try as I may, I could not stop them. I definitely did not want to start sobbing, which would really have shaken the whole of my body, head included. I had made the mistake of crossing my arms over my stomach and it was too late to change that; such a posture obstructed the deep breathing that might have put an end to this attack. Fortunately the head scan is very short. Somehow the two in charge had noticed I was crying although I always think they do not really see much about the person going into the machine. The girl brought tissues, which, light as feathers, took flight from the box and could not be grasped. They would have been useless anyhow, hospital tissues, ridiculously small. I got up in one straight motion from the gurney thinking that less than a year ago I would not have been able to get up on my own. I do not know why this film, which we watched later at night, was such a liberation for me. I encourage you to see it. The drama, which unfolds between two charming strangers who could be meant for each other, takes place in Florence. Of course, that would be enough to lighten anybody’s chagrin, for there is this atemporal, I dare say eternal quality to everything in that land, from cypresses to pots of flowers to statues of which the very copy of the copy is already antique. Everything the eye apprehends is the old copy of something so much older as to be immemorial. And yet people keep living there, in the here and now, and in each one of them something a bit off makes one wonder if the people themselves are not somehow the lovely ghost of somebody who lived amidst those walls a long time ago. Which made me wonder if I was not, right now, repeating perhaps an older, perhaps an immemorial story myself …

September 20, Iron Drama

Angela writes: Before every appointment for a new test, I go through a bit of madness, which can last for a few minutes, hours, or days. Or maybe I should call it a creation of signs, like that which occurs in analysis, as Heidi reminded me today. Confronted with silence, the analyst may sometimes provoke in her patient some sort of a physiological symptom supposed to speak on behalf of the speechless analysand. Under my circumstances, I often play both roles, I am the analyst and the analysand. Needless to say I prefer the scarcity of signs nowadays. Somehow, I tend to believe that signs most often foreshadow the ominous; I admit to a tendency to expect strife rather than easy conclusion.

A few weeks ago I was due for those scan and x-rays which ended sending me for more biopsy and scans. While preparing to leave for the hospital, I somehow succeeded to tie up my necklace, made of small amethyst crosses linked by a very fine chain, into as many impossible knots. By some automatic, mindless repetition of motion, I had been folding it in two, then four, then eight. And just before taking the test, it seemed of utmost importance that I be able to bring the necklace back to its normal condition.

Three weeks later, when we finally got an appointment to see the lung specialist you have read about, I was preparing myself for this visit, at the house in Belleville again. (It appears that that house has something to do with the investigation of ill fittings.) I took out of the closet one of my favorite dresses, made of light blue linen, and perfect for the dying summer day the next day was going to be. I am not sure it needed any ironing at all. Yet to make it better, I put it in the drier and set it for “Touch-up”. I knew full well that linen is a touchy fabric, but tried my luck nonetheless.

Twenty minutes later, my dress looked like a piece of cloth meant for cleaning some very clean floors. I panicked like I rarely do. I was hungry, weak and disheartened. Went rapidly in my mind through all the stores I knew of in Belleville, where I could find an iron to buy, because of course, thanks to the “touch-up” function, I did not have one in the house. I threw myself in the car, almost fainting in the heat of the day. I drove to the closest hardware store only to find out that they did not carry such things. My only hope was Sears, the store across the city, foundation of the daunting Belleville mall. It was rush hour and Belleville traffic was even slower than it regularly and predictably is.

Half an hour later I was contemplating the selection that venerable department store had to offer. Not one iron priced over $29.95. I did need an iron very badly, but did not want to spend small money on new trash. Finally, looking them over again, I noticed in a corner, hidden and unremarkable on account precisely of its beauty, a green iron bearing flowers daintily engraved, and the promise of extreme ecological efficiency. German technology made in Germany. I could not have asked for better. It took another half an hour to get to pay for it, in spite of the store being empty. And the cashier did try, as they always do, to dissuade me from buying this object, on account of its price, which was going to come down the next day. Alas, sometimes one can simply not wait until tomorrow. I was needed for lung investigations in Kingston at 9 in the morning, so I insisted that I buy my iron as it was, and rushed home, flushed with that sensation of at once guilt and joy of having done something morally reprehensible.

Belleville marina

The next hour I remember as one of the most peaceful I experienced of late. Listening to the radio, where the story of a children’s show of yore was unfolding, I was brought back to my own youth, when I used to iron in the company of what was then called “radiophonic theater”. I put my new, perfect, ecologically friendly ironing machine to good use, and righted the wrong I had done by trying to quickly touch-up the precious, fussy linen. By the time Colin made it home, all traces of panic or distress had been ironed out.

September 19, Young and Old

Angela writes:

A wooden box with rows of bolts on the one side, neatly cut hollow circles on the other. I was to unscrew the bolts out of their nut and screw them again on the opposite side. This, with my left, weaker hand. A deck of cards that I was to shuffle with my left hand again. Pens ordered in a row, which I had to pick one by one with two fingers and replace at the end of the row, in a repetitive semicircular motion. These simple frames have all the appearance of a dream made of disjointed scenes, yet they belong to the training towards recovery I undergo once a week. As you can tell, keyboard exercises are the least surrealist of the propositions offered to me.

For the last few evenings we have watched a couple of documentaries about the life of two silent monastic orders. The Ordre des Chartreux, in the French Alps, and the Discalced Order of Carmelites, in London. The monks in the first, the nuns in the second, dedicate their lives to prayer and contemplation. I had wanted for a long time to know something about life lived in silence, silence almost absolute, except for assigned times when the secluded are allowed to engage in conversation among themselves.

What I found most astonishing is the fact that the more difficult – physically difficult – tasks like gardening (in the Alps it begins with snow still high on the ground) and cooking, sewing clothes, shaving, laundry, all in the service of the community, are accomplished by the older of the brothers and sisters. And by “older” I mean quite old, considering that these groups, small in numbers already, have a precious few members under forty years of age.

It was the prioress of the Carmelites who helped me understand why. She tells the story of her own entering into faith, which took about eighteen years after her entering the order. She alluded to how, busy with work, with the daily chores, she had no time to face herself and therefore fell into deep spiritual drifting, doubt, maybe the despair of not being sure of anything any longer. Such a state, the melancholy or acedia of the cloistered, cannot be cured but by study, self-examination and prayer. In other words, the young – and again, by young we understand here the able bodied at the stronger pole of the spectrum – are supposed to work much more towards reaching that state of self-understanding, than to contribute, through the execution of tasks, to the well-being of the community. As time goes by, and one is better advanced into accepting one’s condition and place, one can begin to give more to those with whom she shares her life and beliefs.

The gardener and cook of the Chartreux was so old, his body so feeble, that he had to lean on the spade with which he was digging his garden in order to move from place to place. The tailor’s neck, so bent as to resemble a flamingo’s. His vertebrae a crown of knots under the hand of the brother patiently rubbing an ointment onto the old man’s shoulders and back.

Nevertheless, the old and very old have now reached a place where the work of the spirit is mostly done. The reading, the praying, the contemplation and learning, are more urgently a task for the young. And in a reversal of the order of things we are accustomed to, the more difficult, more exigent – including bodily – of tasks, are deemed not to be the physical ones. Not that there is not a part of physicality in prayer and learning, of course there is. But it remains that all of the able body’s energies are employed towards the sustenance of a yet doubtful soul. As soon as that part of learning is achieved, or achieved mostly, the body, now feeble and fatigued, is ready to put itself into the service of the necessities of life.

god's ribs

It is a marvelous use these orders make, of the old. So long as they can move. While we, seculars, wait for later to possibly address the needs of the soul, and put all our young energies into the service of the body, youthful appearance including. And keep postponing the day when we should look at the nakedness of our flamingo spine.

All the way hoping, that such a day should never come to us.

September 14, Reading from the Book of Nature

Angela writes:

We live in the midst of a colony of chipmunks. At this time of the year they gather acorns for the winter. This year their task is accomplished with more fervor than before. Every morning we open the door to the outside only to step into a pile of leafy branches ripped away by careless riders avid to acquire as many oak nuts as critterly possible. The looting accompanied by screams and squabbling. I hear this is a new habit; the old generations used to be known for the delicate method by which they separated the nut out of its shell.

It might be, I hear, sign of the terror that the coming of a very harsh winter instills in those who have not set aside enough for the dark season.

This is quite how I feel while writing here. Writing used to be about careful planning and only opening the shell of promising ideas. The rest, passion, imagination, fear, was left for later. Yet since I do not know what winter holds in store for me, I will try to set aside as many words as I can, before loosing grasp of my branches.

On the other hand, what a marvelous experience, that of the hibernation of the reading and writing animal we have become. This is the second time I am tested by such an interruption of purpose. The first time it happened 33 years ago.

Neither the year before, nor the year after my coming to Canada, did I read any book, or did I write a line outside the aching letters addressed to my mother. As soon as I set foot in this country, I thought the best way to learn its language would be to read more books in English. Such had been the case when I was a student back home. And because my favorite novels in those days were Latin-American, I bought a pile of translations of those into English. I thought you learned a language by reading books you loved. As it turned out, I became immediately impatient, if not bored. Those novels could teach me nothing of the new life I was exposed to, like a naked body exposed to the burning sun, in need of cover. What they did was to incessantly remind me of the life I had left behind. Ordinary, tacky fashion magazines, tabloids, the Calgary Sun, taught me more, more shockingly and efficiently, and so did all those hours of sitting, scared and befuddled, in front of the incomprehensible television set.

Once a year or so of such learning went by, I was ready to go back to school.

I ignore what kind of school I am attending now. I cannot read but I do not miss my readings, those which have been second nature for me for so long will not teach me what I need to know under my new circumstances. Just as I do not find succor in your guide to gentle, non-toxic healing. The other day, listening to the French CBC as I do lately, I heard a French philosopher extol the advantages of “reading from the book of nature”. Having published some fifty books or so, he discovered that nature has more to teach us than the printed word. In order to make that point, he performs in a play, alongside twenty thousand bees also called to bear the heat of the stage.

one way of reading from that book

But who has the time, I ask, to "read from the book of nature”? Ill parents lying on hospital beds and waiting for another morning, children like Marius who wants to know where we go to from here and weather we come back again after, patients like myself who, while waiting for another test, jealously watch the multitude of critters who carry on preparing for winter, blissfully ignorant of imaging techniques. And people like our sister in law Robyn, whose job it is to bring that which used to be called nature back to the city; and who, incidentally, also keeps bees. But be warned: whatever we get to glimpse out of this book of nature under the form of some understanding becomes, even for those who have got hold of it, one more impenetrable secret to preserve.

September 12, Speaking in Tongues

Angela writes:

Not long ago our niece Grace, who was visiting with her family, asked me a question many an adult would be advised to ask, including of themselves. She said that Madame had instructed her pupils not to translate from English when they were practicing their French. Yet, after a few days in our house, Grace wondered how this rule of language was working in my case? Was Madame right? Did I ever translate? And if so, from what language?

You will agree that such a question is not easy to answer, to say the least. I was here before a very thoughtful child, and I better chose my words wisely. I could hardly say I was not translating, since that would be close to impossible, especially when – as she had rightfully observed – all these other fragments of language keep wandering through my brain uninvited, blind and rueful. If I am to answer truthfully, I will have to observe, like an outsider, my practice.

Our morning walks – mine and Rocky’s – on the trail, are the place to start. I have called this old railroad trail that used to cross Canada from shore to shore, now reduced to a path for hunters in search of game atop their ATVs, many things since we moved here. Right now I call it the trail of confession and promise. On the way out, eastward, I discuss those things that I consider reprehensible in my recent behavior. They usually concern the manner in which I give in to my fear. This illness has weakened my resolve and brought to their creaky knees all those years of philosophical reading, writing and teaching. Does philosophy teach us how to die? Theoretically yes, maybe. Practically, very little. Between Montaigne, who thinks it does, and Derrida, who only a few years ago found out, not unlike myself, that it does not, I am torn and astray. Theory bends its proud neck under the threat of crossing from this to the other world. One is left with a few grains of dust in one’s hand, the grains of foolish knowledge.

On the way back, westwards, I turn to the Saints. To them – that is, to the ones with whom I have a relationship – I make a promise. We have discussed these weaknesses many times, and my promises are renewed anew without much remorse. They may or may not be kept; the important thing is to keep working on that construction of resolve. Which in the end may prove to be helpful.

Here I come finally to my topic. A person in my condition, most often in the company of my dog, and, while on the trail, happening upon beaver, or falling under the diligent gaze of a good number of cows, needs to speak aloud to keep that priceless gift of speech alive. What language do you think I use, when I speak alone, that is, with my dog, the beaver, the cows, and my Saints? Mostly French. Sometimes Romanian, when the matter is grave beyond redemption, and the skies really gray. But there will be only a few, well-weighed words in that language.

French because I miss speaking and hearing French, it is a fact. Yet I figure, once in the world beyond, languages must loose their specificity and become interchangeable. They must sound like Fredo Viola’s Sad Song. Everybody should understand everybody else without effort, regardless of the language they speak, and what is left of that old specificity is the affective color of that language in tatters still used. Nowadays, because I paint, and because every single painting is a submission to my first teacher of the art, my own French Madame, I take the liberty to speak French to my Saints while promising to strengthen my resolve. They certainly get the color of my language, which is the color of affection, foolish knowledge, bonheur and still time at once.

Of course I did not tell Grace this story quite in so many words. To her, for now, I said the choice of language and the manner of speech had to do with whom one spoke to, what one had just read, or who had visited her in her dreams. Although quite often nowadays, the first thing I ask Colin when we wake up in the morning is:

“Cit e ceasul?”

September 11, Physiotherapy

Angela writes:

I have a new physiotherapist. My old one, the one who had cured my broken ankle and tried to help my broken back, has left for the more alluring skies of BC. I loved her because she had been a gymnast in her youth. All these years later, and she is about my age, her body the bearer of the grace branded by that superwoman-superchild sport.

After her departure I thought I would not go back to the town of Campbellford. I would not continue my therapy there. I did not want this separation to weigh upon the already exhausting balance of good byes I carry around. Yet as soon as the month of September sent everybody back to work, I felt I’d better take up again at least this one fragile routine and pretend I was going back to some sort of work myself.

The new physiotherapist looks nothing like the job would presuppose. On the other hand, her name is Kathy. There have been so many Kathy and Catherine in my life. Some are still with me, some are not, and some are tenuously in-between. I decided I should give this Kathy a chance if only in the name, the melancholy name of those older associations.

She turned out to be more interested in the workings of my fingers than of my arms. I am in therapy because my arms have been weakened by the tumor. My fingers have been even more affected, of course. That is why I have not written anything since last October, when I did a paper, my last paper, for my friend Calin. But until now, knowing the damage to the fingers to be irreversible, therapy has only been concerned with strengthening my arms. And some progress occurred.

Nevertheless, the new Kathy came up with a new idea, which I confess took me by surprise. That I should work on my fingers.

She is telling me to pull a facecloth between my two weakest fingers, the index and the thumb, held tight; or to endlessly clip laundry pins on a rod; or, better yet, to sit in front of the computer and practice typing, for a few minutes every day.
I look at her in disbelief. I find typing difficult. This is why, last year, once out of the hospital, I got an iPad. In order to write on an iPad you only need to use one finger or two.

That is precisely why, she comes back, you should use the computer keyboard, and just type away, numbers, random phrases as they come to your mind, whatever you hear, if you do not know what to.

A bit frazzled, I tell her that I know what to type; I pretend that is not my problem; it used to be my job. You know. I used to write, to put it simply.

She does not seem to see the relevance of that. A relatively unimportant detail under the present circumstances. And continues by encouraging me to do my emails on the computer keyboard. Yes, there’s a good idea.

I say thank you, not without a sort of dazed sincerity, and leave with the resolve, albeit bemused, to “practice keyboard” for a few minutes every day.

I’ll ask Colin to make some room for me in his blog. Maybe I can write a few words now and then, in order to strengthen my fingers, and with them all the muscles which, all over my back, contribute to the task of writing.

September 11, In the Woods

Today I walked off the trail and into the woods.  Perhaps I had hoped to get lost.  In fact I had hoped to calm down.   There, where things were most green, dark, and wet, and I stood most still, my heart still ached.

The lung specialist had little to say.  He thumped the bottom of his fists over Angela's collar bones and sternum.  He listened to her lungs.  He said he had seen the CT image in question.  He tapped the surface of his iphone entering pertinent variables into an app.  He said that based on Angela's age, and relatively favorable smoking history, the lesion in Angela's right lung has a 42% chance of being malignant.  He acknowledged that Angela's recent history of both cancer and radiation treatment do not figure into this calculation.  He said that his iphone app is proven to be more accurate than a panel of experts so it would be folly for him to speculate on more than the few variables required.   He told us that myeloma does 't usually show up in the lung, so if this is malignant it is likely something else.  He is sending Angela for a CT guided fine needle aspirate biopsy of the lesion.  He has also requested a PET scan for which we will have to go to Ottawa.  This scan will also help differentiate the lesion in her skull.  Both of these investigations will take at least a few of weeks.  Reluctantly, we are waiting.

beavers' pond

Angela sleeps restlessly.  Her appetite is poor.

I am enraged by the very system of which I am a part. These tests should be done already.  This man, preferably, would have gazed into a crystal ball, or read Angela's palm.  I'd prefer a panel of fools at this point to iphone medicine.  The fools, though, are hiding behind their machines.  I have left a number of messages on various phones at the Kingston Cancer Center yesterday.  It seems to me these phones are never answered directly.  I would like some solid dates, and of course I'd like them sooner than later.

The colors around us are changing quickly.  Acorns have been falling on our roof.  Angela, mostly patient, is capturing the changes in photos.  Our morning routines, complete with coffee and foamed milk, remain the same, as does our resolve.  We will keep you posted. 

September 3, Under a Blazing Sky

“I have such a good life.  That’s why I’m crying.  Who would want to give up such a good life?”

There was one day of cloud recently in what has otherwise been glorious weather.  Although we welcomed a little bit of rain, it was on this cloudy day that we received the results of Angela’s most recent scans: “a 2.5 cm lesion in the apex of the right lung suspicious for neoplasm.”  The radiologist recommends a biopsy of this.  She also recommends further investigation of “a lesion potential for myeloma at the vertex of the cranium.” 

Now we are waiting.  We are back to the Cancer Center in Kingston at the end of this week, this time to meet with a lung specialist. 

In the meantime we try not to think. 

Angela paints.  She is working on her largest canvass to date.  Along the very bottom she has painted a few boats tied to a pier.  Originally two of the boats were named “RESCUE,” and above them was a blue sky. 

Enraged, we looked at this image stupidly. 

“I do not need to be rescued,” our bear finally said. 

Now the sky is emblazoned, painted and repainted with variations of red, yellow, green, grey, blue.  The boats too are bolder.  Once named “rescue,” they are now called “COURAGE.”  

When I am not at work I have taken on dumb tasks.  We lost our internet connection recently so I have spent evenings booting and rebooting the modem.  I have jumped through hoops for technicians in India and New Brunswick who take me through various sequences of plugging in and out the modem, router, computer and so on.  The satellite people tell me it’s the router, the router people tell me it’s the modem.  They cannot know what anger I am displacing onto this.  Foolishly, while Angela slept the other day, I drove to Belleville to buy a new router knowing it wouldn’t work.  Finally, I am promised a visit by a technician.  Finally, like Angela, I am also finding courage.

We do not want to jump to conclusions.  We talk casually in the mornings about where we might go for Christmas.  We contemplate the potential for scar tissue and tell ourselves that these lesions may not be what they appear.   Angela reassures us that she feels strong.  Against the CT and x-ray images we have her blazing sky.

I blame the timing of this, in part, on Angela’s lifelong submission to the academic calendar.  We hoped to avoid a return to work this September, but in this, my friends, we know that we are not alone.  We are grateful for the continued words of encouragement that we still receive.  Let us not waste our time on dumb tasks.  Let us not paint things only as they appear.  Let us all return to work however we must, and let us all…be in touch.