Either an Illusion or a Miracle

We are talking about chemotherapy casually. When I was in the hospital, the nurses would say, “Tonight you’ll get your treatment around 8pm” or “Let us know if you need any more anti-nausea medication after your treatment.” And Patricia and I laughed at how no one would say the C word to me. Now we’re saying it to each other all the time, to drain it of force. We’re talking about the doctors installing a long-term PICC line to save my collapsing veins, we’re talking about the risk of bladder rupture [small], we’re talking about brittle finger nails. We’re strategizing our treatment days—where we'll park and "Let’s buy a headphone splitter so we can watch a movie on the laptop." We’re welcoming it, grateful that there’s treatment available, hopeful that it may interrupt the disease. That my disease is active was no news to me; I have felt it every day, on every flight of stairs, every time I attempt to button my shirt, every time I slip on a pair of boots partly because the small movements required by zippers and laces elude my swollen fingers, every time a fever strikes, every time I have to catch my breath mid-sentence. What was news to me was that my disease formed a new appetite—away from joints and cartilage to organs. Autoimmunity, I was once told by an acupuncturist, is a physical manifestation of self-loathing. But I don’t know. My assent to chemotherapy is very much about loving the body that moves me through the world, my assent to chemotherapy is very much about wanting to continue to move through the world in this body. The monster under my bed is not my body, is not my disease.