Did You Ever Think Life Was Gonna Be This Way?

Two years ago this afternoon I woke up in an outpatient surgical procedure room after a routine colonoscopy. Water, some snacks, a little crackle of adrenaline, maybe, now that I look back, sort of sticking around. Definitely a sense of concern about where the person who dropped me off was (Nolan, our former nanny) and when she would return. Within minutes, the doctor couldn't stand the waiting and barged into the room to tell me, more than a little wild-eyed, "You have cancer." Hysteria -but slow, heavy and medicinally encumbered - ensued. My husband was called; my mom. My dad. Our best friends, who immediately asked about the children. I was bundled into a car (Nolan's?) and taken to the hospital for a ct scan - late in the afternoon, and bless the staff for keeping the lights on for me. And thus began my journey into a complicated and fucked up medical reality of metastatic colon cancer, a reality that, as I learned that afternoon while googling the info near my fr

Last Monday or Tuesday, I bragged on my Facebook page that I had managed to whisk my kids to SC and back to visit my dad without any problems; I was #kickingcancerlikeagirl and proud of it. On Wednesday, I was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, and stayed there for two days. Now I'm tethered to an oxygen tank - which to my mind is just as claustrophobic as scubadiving but without the  fun of all the fishies and coral.  I'd had a cold when I left for my dad's house, sure, and the cough got worse while I was there; I actually had floated the idea of a doctor visit to my regular nurse practioner before I left, but she suggested I try some cold medicine and said I was probably fine. Okay, I was just being a complainer, I told myself when I woke up for the day feeling ready for a nap. My dad suggested that it was probably due to the high pollen count. So we had our nice little vacay and returned to Denver on Monday and I went to work the next day...but when it literally to