Roadtrip

We are driving through the New Zealand landscape in the slanting late afternoon sunlight. The dads—my father and Michael are in the front seat; the kids—Aidan and I are in the back. This was a spur of the moment weekend trip to see Rob and Dani on the other side of the country. We have been meaning to get there forever and had hoped to go next week but the schedule got messed up and suddenly this weekend was the only chance to go.  The next round of chemo is looming (one week from tomorrow) and I know that my windows open and close here.

But traveling—even a road trip—during chemo is somewhat daunting. I woke up Saturday morning to a sore throat and stuffy nose, the sort of cold that is a common visitor in the winter. But during chemo, a cold is frightening because I have no immune system, and a cold can turn into a threatening illness without notice. The doctors and nurses in the chemo clinic always ask what the dangerous temperature is: 38 Celsius. Hit 38 and it’s time to go to the hospital instantly. So into the car bag went the vitamins for the day, the new shawl from Sue that I don’t let out of my sight, water to keep me ultra hydrated, a choice of head coverings (from warm beanies to soft scarves to a wig) and the thermometer to take my temperature frequently to be sure the cold didn’t turn dangerous.

 

At home I have been amazed at how regular I feel, how healthy and strong. I walk in the hills with Melissa each day. I cook dinner (and inedible sugar and flour free desserts) at night. I edit my book and talk to clients and meet with my partners. I feel like my old self. Setting off into the wilds of New Zealand, I suddenly felt fragile and exhausted—and sick. I needed to guard myself from the sun, from the wind, from the cold. I needed to decide what head covering to wear in the car, through the towns, when we got out for breakfast. I noticed more strongly than usual how the taste of food seems to come to me from a long distance, as though I ate it with a paper wrapping on it muting its flavours. I was more struck by the ways I ached, how tired I get in the middle of the day, how bloodshot and dry my eyes are right now. I was surprised at how different I showed up to myself once we were away from home.

 

And at the same time, we had the sort of magical time I would expect with my dad and my family visiting our oldest friend in the house he loves so much. We went to the restaurant at the Craggy Range winery for a magnificent lunch in the sparkling sun and admired the grapevines turning red for autumn. We ate beautiful food at Rob and Dani’s house (ah the baba ganoush) and wandered across the farm they live on, chattering with the . This morning we walked through a farmers market teeming with colour and sound and flavor, around art deco Napier, and along beaches with rolling waves. Dad and I joked about how absurd it is to try and take pictures from a moving car, but how impossible to stop the car at every beautiful spot. We laughed and talked and walked and ate like old days.

This is the way life looks from here I guess. I am sick. I am fragile. You’re fragile too—we all are really. Being a human is a delicate business. And I am strong. I am resilient. You are too—it’s amazing to get up each day and get through all that needs to get done. I didn’t used to carry those two threads so consistently and simultaneously with me. I used to sometimes feel well and sometimes feel sick. And now I am more consistently both, leaning harder towards sick in the first week of chemo and leaning harder towards well in the later ones. But my shiny bald head is a constant reminder that I am not well, even in my healthiest days. And the chemo that makes me sick is supposed to be dealing with the cancer that would make me sicker. It’s all a tangle. I wonder if this tangled awareness is what Jonathan talked about as “healing.” Healing, he told me, is not a physical outcome; healing is emotional. And I wonder if for me healing is this constant understanding that life is neither about being sick nor well, strong nor fragile, but a tilting shifting slippery balance of each, using the braid of the two ideas to make me more full, more human somehow.