Morning, y'all.  I'm about to have me some cheesy grits.  Shouldn't some advisor have told Mitt that he'd eaten grits many times; he'd just called them polenta?  After five years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in running for President, do you think when he's alone in the dark night of his soul, he admits to himself that people just don't like him very much?

In the last few days, a mutual friend put me back in touch with someone whom I knew years ago, who also was diagnosed with cancer (lung cancer in her case), and who had included an entry about it on her blog.  In reading the blog and in a subsequent e-mail, two of her reactions resonated with me.  First was her admission that when she heard the diagnosis and in subsequent weeks, she didn't feel any hope--and she felt guilty about that because she believed in the efficacy of thinking hopefully.  Fortunately for her, the surgery to remove the cancer was successful, and she is now cancer-free, though the next years will involve constant monitoring and thus a nagging worry. 

As for her, hope isn't a feeling I experienced--or still do.  But unlike her, I don't feel guilty or worry about my reaction.  That doesn't mean that I feel despair.  It's just that I'm not very good at looking ahead (or maybe it's my low EQ).  It is what it is (and que sera sera)--amazing how often I fall back on cliches.  Whatever chemical or biological reactions are taking place inside me are, in the long run, outside my control.  And in the short run, I just continue to take the chemo and others meds and then it's one day at a time.  I don't go to the oncologist full of trepidation or full of hope that some sort of miracle is taking place.  I'm tired of taking all the meds and the side effects that follow; I'm tired of all the small discomforts.  But I'm thankful for Mohamed and his love, for all the friends that support me, for all the interesting books and people in the world that amaze, amuse, and infuriate me.  And as for tomorrow, well, tomorrow's another day.  There seems to be an endless supply of cliches to fall back on.

The second connection I felt with my rediscovered friend is more symbolic.  At one point, she wondered aloud where they were going to put the hospital bed and was disappointed when her husband said he'd been wondering the same thing.  When I came home from the hospital, we brought the bed from the guest room downstairs and re-arranged the TV room to accommodate it.  Until I could manage the stairs, it was where I slept, and even afterwards, I often took naps there.  But I learned to manage the stairs after a few days, and I no longer take my afternoon naps downstairs, so there is really no need for the bed.  It would be nice to put the furniture back in order.  We don't do it, though, because the unspoken thought is that at some point, it's going to become necessary again.  So, too, we've got a lot of medical equipment in a room upstairs: an oversized walker (for the seven weeks that I wore the brace, I couldn't fit in a normal walker), a commode, and other once useful devices.  Like the bed, they remain in place, tacit symbols of the future.

This afternoon I have an appointment with the cardiologist.  I've almost forgotten that 18 months ago I had a heart attack.  That bit of medical history is lost among other concerns.  I always thought of myself as healthy, and then I turned 65 and my body revolted.  Damn!