Tempus fugit ... except when it doesn't.  I have a paradoxical relationship with time these days--almost unaware of its passing day to day, all too conscious of its passing hour by hour and month by month.

At the daily level, one day is pretty much like the last.  Yesterday I was writing a rare check, and I was ready to guess that the date was about the tenth--only nine days off when I took the time to look at my phone.  When friends ask how the last few days have been, I often can't remember.  Was yesterday a good day or a bad one?  You'd think that would be an easy response, but they all blur together.  I have no schedule, except that every third day I write this blog, and, as many of you have probably noticed, it's become more and more difficult to vary the content.  Luckily, Mohamed does have a schedule, so I'm vaguely aware of which days we need to set the alarm and he'll be off to school.  But even that doesn't affect me much.  Time on a daily basis is marked more by naps vs. bursts of energy than by the difference between days.  I know that no matter what time I get up, after three hours, a black wave will strike, and I'll fall into bed and sleep for an hour.  I know that when I wake up, I'll finally shower and have lunch--and those will be my big accomplishments for that period.  By 1:30 or so, the wave will strike again, and this time I'll collapse for two hours.  That schedule is absolutely predictable.  Except for another flagging of energy about 6:00 or 6:30, I'll be good till 11 or so.  Monday or Thursday, weekday or weekend, it doesn't make any difference.  And most of the time, I'm not sure anyway whether it is Monday or Thursday, weekday or weekend.  It may be frustrating, but that's the way it works. 

But on another level, I'm very aware of and good at counting time.  It was three years ago this month--October 2010--that my left shoulder had hurt so long that I decided I needed to see a doctor.  I was still teaching, and as a leftie, I couldn't lift my hand high enough to write on the board so that the students could see what I'd written.  It was three years ago that I went to my doctor and had an x-ray that seemingly showed nothing.  It was three years ago that I began six months of misdiagnosed treatment--cortisone shots, physical therapy for a torn rotator cuff or then bursitis.  And it was exactly 2½ years ago that I had an MRI and first heard the word 'tumor.'  Since the prognosis for stage 4 kidney cancer is less than a year, that meant that I was given six months tops.  But I didn't really have time to concentrate on that because I had an immediate operation on my right femur and hip and had to spend the next 46 days (every one of which I counted down) 24/7 in an abduction brace.  The 46 days did come to an end, and I took tentative steps.  I mastered the seven steps to the two upstairs bathrooms. 

October 2011, my latest "expiration" date, came and went.  As did October 2012.  As is October 2013.  I count the months all right.  And as much as get tired of looking at the bottles of pills and swallowing my Votrient, as much as I get tired of being tired, of taking a shower and putting on clean clothes as my major accomplishment of the morning, I know how fortunate I am to have the Votrient to take.

Cancer, shmancer, abi gesund.  The only problem is that I can't remember if I was 'gesund' yesterday or not.