2018 October 2: Ghosts
Yesterday morning, I awoke and considered the day ahead: an Oxaliplatin infusion this afternoon, the first one in almost five years. I wondered briefly if I would see my friend Madeline at the cancer center - a mental image of her, smiling her little Mona Lisa smile at me (she had a whole wardrobe full of smiles, just as she had a closet chock full of fun clothes) from her infusion chair as we sat together, wafted up and forced me to do a mental double take, because I won't see Mad at infusion. Or anywhere else. She died on August 22 from complications of colon cancer. She was 41. I tucked Madeline into my heart and head as I prepared for my day, knowing that her many years (she lived with CRC for over five years) of pushing back against this horrific disease with every medical option available to her would help me keep my perspective when I felt like whining. This woman exhausted all of the FDA approved treatments and then moved on to clinical trials, which are no small unde