Everything is ready, I leave tomorrow
I can't be sure I didn't think it back in August, because August was the darkest time in my life and I have very little memory of it, but I don't recall once entertaining the thought of how unfair this all is. Don't get me wrong, cancer is one of the most profoundly unfair things I can imagine. If we were to personify the universe itself, I'd say criminally unfair. But personifing the indifference of the totality of existence seems as valueless as fixating on the unfairness of it all. This is just how life is. It is our responsibility as creatures capable of understanding this fact to do what is in our power to create places where we work for, and celebrate, fairness and hope and love.
Friends, thank you for doing your part in making one of those spaces for me this past year. In a very, very literal sense I could not have made it this far without you. One of the things that makes cancer so insideous is how long treatment takes, and how disconnected you become from everyone who doesn't make an effort to stay in touch. Thank you all for making that effort, however small you might think it was.
Tomorrow morning at around 4AM, I leave Midland, not to return for many weeks. Thomasin will be we cared for, and I will miss her tremendously. At 7:45AM I have to be at Mt. Sinai for a pre op appointment, and the remainder of the day will be spent following whatever instructions I'm given. Friday, at 7AM, I have to be back at Mt. Sinai to check in for my operation, which is scheduled for 9AM, making those two hours on Friday by far the longest I'll ever have to endure. And then, with luck (which, to be honest, belongs in the same bin as unfairness), I can close this chapter of my life, but regardless of luck, the long process of recovery can begin.
From the comments
James Petrosky: The hardest thought I've had over the last week is knowing that, even in the best possible outcome, I may be cancer free, but I'll never feel as good as I have since I finished chemotherapy. I'm trading some quality of life, largely in the form of digestive organs, for quantity of life. This is a calculated risk. I've done my reading, spoken with the specialists, and know what the remainder of my life looks like with and without the surgery. I've followed the science, which is the best we can all hope for.
The corelary to this is that I never felt worse than I did in the lead up to chemotherapy, and probably could not endure the pain I felt at the appendix biopsy again.