We've moved on. We've kind of moved on to a different stage in the game. Chemo stopped dripping a couple of weeks ago, a lifetime ago, the last of those damn bags pushed aside to make room for more antibiotics. And I know that it's not the very last bag I'll ever get, because you don't just go into the hospital once and everything is cured. Dr. Collins has explained that we'll have some follow up rounds later in the summer, consolidation, but for now, for this round, the chemo is over.
If the first stage is chemo, then the second stage is recovery. We don't know how long this next stage will last. We have expectations. We have estimates. But it's not like the bags of chemotherapy that we can control, stopping when we want to. This is a waiting game. This stage is all about waiting for things to come back, and we're on pins and needles.
Nobody uses these words with me (or maybe they do and I just forget), opting instead to share this information only after a few years have passed. "Hanging by a thread" is one of the favorites. "Nip and tuck" is another. Sometimes Mom will just shake her head and get all quiet when we have these discussions, years later. "If only you knew," she will say, another popular phrase, her voice quietly trailing off.
We don't talk about whether or not the chemo has worked anymore. We know that it did. Hell, yeah it worked. Of course, you've got to narrow your definition, be precise about what you mean by "worked," otherwise it's too easy to worry about other things. When we're talking to friends or relatives, we'll say that the chemotherapy "worked" because now I'm in "remission." I don't get into details. I don't explain that, well, technically, my bone marrow isn't actually producing anything (yet, we always parenthetically yet), so that's not necessarily the best thing.
But I'm in the second stage, okay, I am recovering, which also means -- and don't you forget it -- that I am now cancer-free.
So let's move on.
Let's get this recovery thing done so I can get back home. I'm going to be turning twenty-one at the end of the month. I've been pretty accommodating so far. I haven't put up much of a fuss. And I understand that circumstances dictate one's actions as much as anything else, that nobody expected I'd be in the hospital in the first place, so we all adjust our expectations and everything.
But let me be clear about this: I am absolutely not going to be stuck in this room for another five, six weeks, whatever, missing out on the chance to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. I will not have balloons and cake and party guests here in this clean, well-lit room.
I will not effing celebrate my twenty-first birthday from inside of this effing hospital.
There will be bars and beers, and even if the bouncers have to double and triple check my ID -- reconciling the shaggy head in the picture with the bald dome I'm sporting -- at least I'll be out of my bed, actually wearing clothes instead of these damn pajamas all the time. I'll be with my best friends. We will celebrate an important milestone together, as many of us as possible, with as much normality as we can muster in these extraordinary times.
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