Fortunately they dope him up before hand, so not only is he relaxed, but his short term memory is trashed. They must have given him a bit extra because he was still quite buzzed by the evening. Needless to say he slept the rest of the day, and is sore and tired today.
Except for a few more lumbar punctures, he's pretty much cruising through the rest of this treatment cycle. Just pills and a few IV drips. He's doing amazingly well. It's a few months away, but crossing into 'maintenance' seems like a short jump away. Scarily so. It's almost hard to believe. Or hope for.
There's a girl in the clinic that comes in the same days he does, about the same age, and she's relapsed. It's tough to see the older patients there not doing so good, but to see a peer having a relapse is especially depressing to him. It's hard to think that getting better and then getting worse is so unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Even more critical is a family friend who has been fighting cancer for some time. She is in 'transition' which is where they stop chemo entirely because it's not helping. She's in hospice care now. Even though KD has been dealing with leukemia himself, he still doesn't know what to say to his friend and his family. Who decides which cancer patient recovers and which doesn't? Is survivor guilt a life-long issue now?
He keeps saying that he's living on borrowed time from here on out. Which is more true now than ever. As a newborn he had rheumatic fever and nearly died. Not to drag out the old cliche about life being too short, but hey... let's face it. Life IS too short. Having been with KD through this whole experience has brought that single fact home to me.
Sure, a lot of people believe in reincarnation. I do. But that doesn't mean life (this life) is any more disposable or any less important. On day one I realized the only way to get through to the other side was to open my embrace, close my eyes, and step forward into life. (Anyone who knows me, knows what a control freak I am and that this new philosophy is an aberration.) For every sudden loss of altitude, there was an equally brilliant moment of hope. And most important, these moments were happening whether I accepted them or not.
Surviving was about giving up control and taking the moments as they were. Because frankly (another cliche) that's all we've got. The horizon became a distant, unimportant, vast, and changing foreign country. We started looking instead at the nearest scenery. And the people around us. Life became richer. Life came alive.
Yes, I know. I'm running off at the keyboard here again. You come here to find out if KD's still alive and well, and you get me rambling about the other side. The spiritual, emotional, metaphysical sides of cancer. But with cancer fading into the background, becoming a part of our history, we're still shell-shocked and processing what the hell has just happened.
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