27.64% of Life

I always overeat before chemo week.

People tell me I look healthy.

Good to know the bar is set low.

Here’s something else about me. I’m stubbornly impractical.

I do things that are mistakes, but we all go along with it, and it works out. Great! This is my toxic trait. Impracticality.

I’ll tell you what’s impractical: chemotherapy.

So I’m overeating this week.

All of this has been the pattern recently. Are you picking up on that? I guess I’m just realizing it. I’ve been writing about these quirks I have. I’m trying to convince myself that I have an angle. A way into life. A hook. A way to stay relevant. This disease has a way of erasing you. To be oddly, normally, frighteningly, not so badly, all-the-time, somewhat, but very manageably sick is a trip, dude. And it takes up 27.64% of the space in my life.

27.64%? Not bad, dude.

Yes, but that 27.64% is from 100% of my life.

Which is to say.

I’m never 100% without the disease.

72.36% normal life? Eh. Maybe so.

The first time, we hedged. Sold my car. Sold a house. Prepared for the completion of my life. Then I up and lived for eight years.

And counting.

If you had any doubt, I am still alive, but you can understand if tensions are a little high around here.

I’ve finished seven months of chemo. Sunday, I’ll start the eighth round. If bloodwork holds up and the tumor behaves on the scans, we’re doing 12 months. After that? I’m sure I’ll find something to complain about.

I’m cruising at 45,000 feet through bloodwork, chemo, scan, repeat, and waiting to begin our descent. It’s really pretty tough to know just what to do, so you string together days, work hard at work, and, funny enough, work hard at things that aren’t work, too, so you’re always working away at something. Tonight, this. Would you believe I have an open draft in the other browser tab for another blog I maintain?

Trying to have an angle, I guess; a hook.

And snacking a little too much. I always overeat before chemo week.