Oligodendroglioma. Oddly beautiful, right?*
Some details evoke times that I will always want to return to. The scent of boxwood, which some liken to cat urine, brings me immediately back to my great-grandmother Romie’s fine approximation of an English country garden at her small house on Orange Lake in Newburgh, NY, and the days as a child, younger than my daughter is now, when I’d swim in that murky water until I shivered and finally had to call it quits. As I was toweling off Romie might produce a decades-old bottle of peach brandy from under her sink, thinking that a nip might warm me.
Other details seem insignificant on the surface. How Kool & the Gang's "Joanna" was on the radio as my family drove up the West Side Highway after a ridiculously cold 13th birthday celebration at Rockefeller Center in mid-January. I recall knowing I was warm and loved as we headed home to suburbia, but still felt the pull of the myriad lights and wonders of New York.
Then there are details that always seem to matter, because as sentient beings we seek to mark the passage of time. Holidays. Birthdays. Anniversaries.
Three years ago this month my world was upended when, about 10 days after a seizure, I was diagnosed with an intrinsic tumor on the right frontal lobe of my brain. Inescapably confronted with my own mortality, I felt abject terror the night before surgery, not knowing if I would awake afterwards as the same person – or at all. I signed a release for surgery that night, and despite my Kiwi neurosurgeon’s chipper confidence as he joked, “Well, and you acknowledge that there is a risk of death, although I think that’s very unlikely,” I simply did not know what to expect.
That first year after my diagnosis was one of regular upheaval, both physical and emotional. In some ways the surgery and the radiation treatments were the easy part. I had a regular schedule, was on “sabbatical” for the first time in my adult life, and was at liberty to do nothing but sit on the beach, nap, make friends with neighborhood cats, perfect my Kiwi accent, and eat hokey-pokey ice cream and copious amounts of spicy knife-cut Dan Dan noodles. Soon enough we moved from New Zealand and American Samoa to an apartment in Providence; six months later, we moved back home. I stared down punk-ass kids on the RIPTA bus who clearly wondered about my punk-ass hair. I cried a lot. Radiation made me weary for months and a single late night or extra glass of wine could sideline me to bed for a couple of days. “Normal” life had never felt so hard.
I also had to give up a job I adored in American Samoa, a place I had come quickly to love. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever work in the field again, which felt like one of the biggest tragedies of all. I had invested so much in starting a global health career at a relatively late age, and fucking cancer had to go and screw it up.
But here I am, resilient and resolute and, most fortunately, healthy, as far as I know.** My current aches and pains and such are far more garden variety middle-age complaints. (I need to run more. I need to stretch more after running. I need to stretch more, period.)
And so it is that exactly three years after I received my cancer diagnosis, I was offered – and gladly accepted! – a position as a field coordinator in Eldoret, western Kenya.
Perhaps if the devil is in the details, so is the blessing. October 12 is never going to be an anniversary to celebrate, but I still hope to see many, many more - next year from Kenya.
Grace and peace,
Kelley
*Oligo (cancer slang!) image from Martin J. Van den Bent, Michele Reni, Gemma Gatta, and Charles Vecht. 2008. "Oligodendroglioma," Critical Reviews in Oncology/Hematology 66(3): 262-72.
**I still get regular MRIs and have one this week. Prayers/good vibes/crossed fingers always appreciated.
