We were able to leave southern Maine and Jills treatment hub. Thank God Jill was able to get to Chemo on Thursday since she had to reschedule from the last nor’easter and it 20+ inch snow totals. So far she has not missed a chemo treatment and only the one day of radiation which they plan on having her make up at the end of her treatment schedule.
The persistent bleeding that had dogged Jill for the last 4 years has finally passed. Even thought I know that the cancer is far from having been beaten, still takin bites below the surface, it is nice that she no longer looks like a B vampire from Fright Night.
But the cancer is not one to give Jill even this simple victory without a price. Jill has given it the name ‘the Black Water’ it’s the dead cancers discharge trapped in her womb. It has acted as a cork keeping what the body can’t absorb, the dead fluid within. As the radiation progresses more is expected to build up and as her cervix sheds more and more of its cancers coating it will eventually open enough for her body to release what has built up within. For now, it seems though the cancerous dam within her still holds only allowing for small amounts of the black water to escape.
Since the chemo hasn’t completely paralyzed my wife, we were able to make the trip home and for us to sleep in our own bed once more. The journey home has been better than we had expected. Our resourceful son had flagged down the neighbor and with the grocery money we had given him half instead went to making sure that he would be able to see his Mom this weekend.
Visiting the children and our house has been nice but still bitter sweet as from the moment we passed through the threshold on Friday afternoon, I could feel the impending doom of traveling back down south once more. That these days of fractured reality are not days where the rhythm of a home blends one day into the next. No this is only a visit to our home and no comfort taken can be in years old patterns that come from living. We now follow a new pattern that drags us to Nordax for lab work on Mondays and Chemo on Tuesdays, as hospital waiting rooms become more and more familiar with each daily visit.