The beginning

 This is where I will tell my story.

Wednesday 11/4

Last week, exactly a week ago it was November 4th. It was the day after the election. Nothing much was happening just a lot of vote counting. I went to Pennsylvania Hospital to have an ultrasound. The U/S tech was nice and asked me if I had a history of endometriosis. etc. This part of the story is boring. I went to MOMs organic and got the weirdest tacos ever. 

Thursday 11/5

At 10:50 I received a phone call from my "primary care" doctor, an NP named Charlotte who I've seen twice in the past 5 years. She told me she saw the ultrasound and I have a 13 cm' mass not necessarily connected to my ovary and it looks very concerning. She gave me several numbers of offices and told me to call right away. I texted Shay and asked her to cover the next hour. I started teaching and kept leaning back in my chair, putting my head in my hands and crying. I kept picturing Rachel Macy, hiding in my classroom and crying during the day when she found out her cancer had returned, much more quickly and aggressively than she had hoped. I pictured her there, she had run in to see me. I stood at the whiteboard and wrote notes on random charts in permanent marker. I was trembling and numb and overwhelmed and full of doom. I didn't know what to do. I drove to Ott's. On the way there I got 2 phone calls. 1 to schedule my appointment and 2 to tell me that Pistachio needed 1100 surgery and to be on prescription food the rest of her life. This day was very long. I got to Ott's and walked around. I saw two old ladies walking in the big room and talking about opinions. I bought a plant so that I could watch it outlive me. 

I called Michael and told me not to ask any questions but it looks like I have ovarian cancer and it's likely I will die in the next few years. I picked up Pistachio from the vet. I met with the K team. I called Charlotte Scott again who just told me the same thing but was nice and talked to me so quickly and for so long that I felt like things were OK. 

I saw Michael. He told me I was a legend and we were going to have a great time. We sat around and cried a little and smoked cigarettes. We decided to go to Attic. 

At Attic I saw Zach and Amanda and Todd and Michael Baker and Korey. I told Zach and Amanda I was sick. They hated it. Before I told them Zach looked at me and smiled and said "My friends are so cute." I got drunk and was also nauseous the whole time anyway. When we got home I puked in Michael's bed and he took care of me just so he could get used to it. 

Friday 11/6

I went to Forest School and walked around and looked at the leaves and kids and just kind of listened and played with stuff. I peeled bark off a stump and scraped all the decomposed middle stuff off with a stick. I ran errands and got ready for Thanksmas but really I went to bed early cause I couldn't do much. We tried to get puff paint at Artist & Craftsman and when we walked to the door I saw them turn off the neon "open" light and I sobbed suddenly and loudly. 

Saturday 11/7

This day was Thanksmas. Michael and I were getting ready. It was sunny. We came to my house to cook. We found out Joe Biden was elected president. We cheersed. Everyone was clapping and dancing and honking in the street. While at Thanksmas, I thought all about how it could be my last Thanksmas. I keep thinking about being gone and watching what people look like without me and imagining how they might think of me or remember me. Maybe sometime in the next few years there will just be a flower arrangement. 

Sunday 11/8

By Sunday Thanksmas is over and I can just sit and think. I'm at Michael's house. I sit and think. We watch ET. I try to take a nap in the hammock. We watch Back to the Future II. I'm thinking all day. I have so much figured out about what I want to do, questions I need to ask at work, ways I'm going to handle the next few years. 

I'm wondering if I'm somehow confirming my own quick demise by wrapping my brain around it or if that's just what I'm doing. If somehow all of my visions of Michael burying me and feeling like Beth from Little Women and not being able to picture my future are all just ripples in the future already being written. It is easy for me to sink into these fantasies. It is more difficult for me to imagine that I will just... get better. I can try to imagine that I become a cancer "survivor" and that's how I become wise and somehow more healthy and productive. 

I also have a sick awareness of how depressed I've been in the past year, How I've said to myself I don't have a future and I don't want to live and maybe I'm somehow like excited to be delivered from that? I know it's terrible to say but that's also reality. I'm sure it will be hell. Like so painful and ultimately not great. But.. ?

Monday 11/9

I go to work. I teach at school. Dina from Dr. Ko's office calls me and says I need an MRI and blood work. She schedules them for me and calls me back. I go pick up Pistachio from Michael's. I forgot to mention the whole time it is warm. It's November but it's actually like 70+ degrees. Everyone is in the yard, Maggie & Jehane, Corrie & Jose, Zach, Jesse, & Ross playing board games in the yard in masks. I tear up a little thinking of their beautiful day and how sometime soon it will just go by unobserved and unappreciated by me. 

Michael decides he wants to hang out with Braelyn. I make some snarky comments about how hot I am and then leave. I come back to hang out with Amanda. Mostly we just sit silently and sigh and stare at each other. It is sad because I feel like I lost my friend because now I can't talk to her cause she's only thinking about me being sick. 

Michael didn't want to be alone anymore so I went over there and said goodnight and came here and took a shower and went to bed. hahahaha. I used to cry myself to sleep because he didn't love me hahaha. 

Tuesday 11/10

Today is the day I go in for my MRI. I teach at school, am still distracted, and come home to tidy a little and try to focus. Michael & I go to West Philly - Penn Presbyterian for the bloodwork and the MRI. It is my first time in a "Cancer center." I kind of like the MRI. It is warm and it forces you to pay attention and it feels like a friendly AI that will take care of everything. At the end, the crazy delco lady tells me "good luck honey" which I take as code for "your insides are fucked." 

We go to Local 44 and eat burgers. We never mention how they taste. We come back to my apartment and sleep with the dogs. 

Wednesday 11/11

We take Pistachio to the vet for surgery. She is scared and so sweet. We go to Wendy's for breakfast. We go to Thomas Mansion and eat there at a table that has "LIONEL" etched on the side. We walk around the old trails we walked when we first moved to Johnson St in the snow. It is hot. We see a dead deer carcass and a natural spring. I go home, Michael goes home. The nurse calls to tell me the mass is there but doesn't appear to be in my lymphnodes or spread beyond the one ovary. I feel relieved. I plan to have friends over to help me clean and to have an online yard sale of all my belongings. I imagine the soft clothes I need to buy. I am feeling soothed and special. I take a long and detailed shower.

Then Michael calls me, upset, tells me about Amanda, upset, we start talking about telling my parents and I get overwhelmed by having to bear this news for others and process it with and for them. I start to feel sad and defeated. I light my tiny snail shrine. I watch RuPaul's Drag Race. I write these notes.