Julie and Julia

Yesterday was Mike’s birthday.  He turned 51.  To celebrate, we drove to Portland, in the rain, checked into a hotel, ate BBQ pulled-pork sandwiches at the hotel for free, then watched Julie and Julia.   His pick.  But he was just being nice to me.  But he liked it!  And so did I.  Merryl Streep has got some game.  It was especially fun, I think, for Mike, because he’s been through cooking school and he’s had to bone a duck and make aspic and all that stuff.  We even have a copy of that cookbook Julia got for her birthday one year.

Today we got up and went to OHSU to see the cardiologist and the surgeon for my 3 month check up.  And here’s the thing.  I’m fine.  I mean really fine!  The surgeon expected to find about a golf-ball size remnant of the tumor, basically in my left butt check.  The MRI shows nothing.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.

I’m cancer free.  Both cancers gone.  Sent back to the hell they came from.

The relief all of us, including the Dr., felt, was physical.  Not just palpable, but a physical releasing in the room.  The lights got brighter and this unspoken fear just poofed out of our minds and bodies and vanished into the ventilation system, back to the hell it came from along with the cancer.

We dialed for dollars all the way home from Portland.  I even drove some of the way.  Mike calls stuff like that my “big girl” milestones.  And driving myself is definitely  a big-girl milestone.  I think Mike wishes I couldn’t drive myself to the mall anymore, but that’s another story to tell, complete with a dozen pair of shoes and a tailor bill big enough to choke a horse.  So back to business.

I don’t have cancer any more.

A few of my friends are getting together next week to celebrate a birthday.  The birthday woman has asked us to think about our goals for this next part of our lives and share them with the group.   We’re all in our mid-to-late 40’s and the next chapter of life is waiting for us like a blank book with linen pages, ragged edges tipped in blue and newly bound in soft, kid leather.  Fountain pen’s stand ready.   And it seems appropriate to stop, think and be more conscious, at least for me, about the way I want to live the 2nd half of my life; the achievements  I want, the legacy I am building.  We all leave them.  I’d like mine to be worth leaving.

The first sentence for me in this new book is already forming: I have been given a 2nd chance.  I will use it wisely. And that’s as far as I really have figured out.  But the conversations with friends and family are going to be wonderfully intimate and challenging; funny and frightening and most of all, joyous.   I’m looking forward to it  And hopefully, it will be easier than boning a duck or killing a lobster.

 

 

Like Julie, I had a timeline and a goal:  do everything the doctor’s say until this cance