Distance traveled

I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth. It just seems that way. The Belly is still in business; thanks for your concern.

I had every intention of sitting down for a nice, rousing blog post over the last week, but life got in the way. It tends to do that. While the days were whizzing by and I remained blog-less, several ideas for posts meandered through my brain, but because I didn’t write any of them down, they’re now a swirling mish-mash of disjointed words and unattached ideas. Probably best to just start fresh. That’s what the New Year is for, right — starting fresh?

Being an overachieving busybody, I have tons of plans rattling around in my head. Yucky but necessary plans, like cleaning out my study and purging the stuff I don’t use anymore. Like touching up my kitchen paint, which has been nicked in many places as this busy little family has gone about its business over the last few years. Like repairing the wallpaper in the powder bathroom, which has started to peel in a few spots. It’s the only wallpaper in my house and I love it: big, lush banana tree leaves. Those giant leaves wrapping around that small space makes me smile, 8 years later. Lots of projects on the to-do list in addition to the everyday hub-bub of keeping my family up and running. After a long, leisurely winter break, my kids went back to school today (a somber affair that remained heavy and dreary despite the oh-so-rare appearance of a warm Pop Tart on each kid’s plate. Yes, I am that mom — the one who deprives her kids of sugary processed pastries for breakfast. Poor babies).

Besides a fresh start and umpteen projects, the New Year brings me perspective. Before looking forward and lurching headlong into 2013, I want to take a mo to reflect back on 2012. While 2012 had its challenges, it was a far cry better than 2011; that year and the one that preceded it were pretty stinky, with a cancer diagnosis followed briskly and cruelly by a nosocomial infection that would. not. go. away. Looking back on those dark days makes me shudder.

Many parts of that “journey” remain hazy in my  mind. When I think back to that time, it’s almost as if I’m watching a movie. A really bad, really scary movie. I know that it was I who endured it, yet my brain tries to protect me from conjuring up the details. Thank you, brain. I remember bits & pieces of it all, but not the specifics. It’s not as if I’ve erased all the unpleasant memories; they’re just faded. When I go back to the month I spent in and out of the hospital because of that damn infection, I can recall the exact look of each room in each of the three different hospitals, but I can’t really remember what that time was like. I know there was a lot of hopelessness and fear, but if I had to describe it, I would fumble. If you were to ask me what it was like to undergo a bilateral mastectomy two weeks before my 41st birthday, I’m not sure I could come up with more than, “It was hard.”

If you ask me how it felt to have a wound vac attached to me 24-7 for weeks on end, my answer would be that I can’t really say. I remember how loud that damn thing was, and how cumbersome it was to lug it around. I remember my home-health nurse coming four times a week to clean the wound; I know she measured the depth, length, and width of that wound every visit, and compiled the stats in a handy chart that we used to hang on to a semblance of hope that progress was being made, that the damn thing was healing. I know she used an oversized, medical-grade Q-Tip to clean the wound, and that it was horrific enough that she recommended a xanax before each visit (for me, not her). I remember her using that giant Q-Tip to gauge how deep the wound still was, yet when I try to recall how it actually felt, I can’t. I guess that’s a good thing.

This time last year, I was trying to regain my footing as I negotiated life after cancer and that awful infection. I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions that year, or this year. I’ve never been one to inscribe grandiose plans upon my new calendar. Perhaps it’s an effort to fly under the radar. To live a normal life. To step lightly around the sleeping beast that is cancer recurrence. To put as much time and distance as possible between then and now.

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