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I was reading about the Marvel Cinematic Universe yesterday with regards to Netflix. There’s a Punisher series coming, I guess, and one about a character who was in the Jessica Jones series as well, among others; I can’t remember them all. They were giving the projected release dates––sometime in 2017, sometime in 2019––and I suddenly caught my breath at the realisation that if something appears in 2019, which is two years after my initial expiration date, Ìýthe chances are now very good that I’ll be around to see it.Ìý

There are no guarantees, of course. I might get through all of 2017 in great shape only to have my cancer wake up loaded for bear in 2018. Or I might be planning my 67th birthday party (a surprise party, of course) and fall under a bus. It’s always Anything-Can-Happen Thursday. (Actually, it’s always Anythiing-Can-Happen Thursday for everybody, even those of us who don’t live in my particular area of Cancerland, or any other Chronic-Life-Threatening-Illness-Land.)Ìý

However, when I started getting the good news that the level of cancer in my body was diminishing, I thought of what my mother, Old Eternal, told me during the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Scroll me if you’ve heard this one.) I was a little girl at the time and the possibility of nuclear war between the US and the USSR seemed very real, but never more so than right then and there. I was actually having nightmares. One night, after she’d read to me, she was tucking me in and I asked her if she thought war could really break out.

‘Not a chance,� she said. ‘Take it from me, putschka, nothing’s gonna happen that’ll get either of us out of going to work or to school tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, or ever. Nobody’s gettin� a day off, so you can fuggedaboudit.� (Her maiden name was Saponaro and at the time ours was a Mafia neighbourhood. We all used to talk like that, myself included, even when my mother and my aunt lapsed into Yiddish or Polish, as in putschka. Life’s rich multi-cultural pageant. But I digress.)

I thought about that when I first got the Diagnosis of Doom. Old Eternal had been gone for a little over two years by then but I could hear her like it was yesterday. I could even hear things she would have said: ‘Two years? Don’t count on it, putschka. They’ll be telling you the same thing ten years from now, and ten years after that, and probably ten years after that. Nobody’s gettinâ€� a day off so you can fuggedaboudit.â€� ÌýÌý

Of course, that was just my defence against the dark arts, so to speak. You do whatever you have to do and think whatever you have to think in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other rather than curling up under the bed in the foetal position. But I also wanted to face reality. I rearranged my priorities, got my affairs in order, got my mind in order, decided that if I had to live in Cancerland, it would be as much on my terms as cancer’s. And while I don’t think I ever really believed I was going to check out in late 2016/early 2017, I didn’t realise how much of the future I had abdicated from. I would read something about London Transport’s plans for 2020 and think, Well, that’s not my problem.ÌýThen, when things went right and the possibility of living years longer than my doctor had originally estimated became real, I had to consciously acknowledge that whatever London Transport or anyone else did in 2020 would be my problem.

As I’ve said elsewhere, Be careful how you talk to yourself, because you are listening.

Another good thing to remember: things aren’t done blindsiding you.

I.e., I was pretty sure I was done with all the feels about my extended lifespan: Yeah, I’m gonna live longer than they thought, hooray! Mom was right, nobody’s getting a day off and hey, that’s a good thing! The good die young but the lucky get old. And in the immortal words of the immortal Warren Zevon: I’m too old to die young and too young to die now.

Yeah, I really did think all those feels about having more life ahead of me were settled, old business, case closed, now back to writing the sushi novel and the ‘Truth and Bone� novel and who knows, maybe Doré Konstantin will get her last hurrah after all. And all of it contained within my 12-week schedule for buying green bananas (not after the end of week 10).

But apparently I’m not done with feels. Today I was, in the words of (I think) Gerard Manly Hopkins, surprised by joy. Not euphoria or ecstasy, more of a quiet bliss arising from the fact of my existence and of having given it purpose myself, and the satisfaction that comes from figuring out what to do and how best to do it.Ìý

And that no matter what I’m facing, all I really have to do is get through today.Ìý

Yeah, there’s living with cancer and there’s living with the treatment. Most of the time I can do both at once. But every so often, the hormones run through their repertoire and have to find something new. Night sweats? So last week. Hot flashes? Been there, done that. Anxiety/mood disruption? Bitch, please. Fatigue? How tiresome. Oh, wait––stomach upsets! We haven’t had that one in a while.

But, hey, at least it’s not a stroke or a heart attack.

I tell myself that there’s so little cancer left for the hormones to kick around that they have to find other things to do. So here I am.

Believe me, it’s not that I’m not happy the hormones are working such a treat. Cancer-Stompers R Us, go team! Side-effects included as standard, no extra charge.

Living with cancer. It’s not always dramatic. In fact, most of the time it’s just a pain in the arse. Given where I was last year at this time, you’d think ±õ’d have a higher threshold for that sort of thing. Okay, ±õ’d have thought. But there you go. Life is the terminal condition we all share, and the human condition is included as standard, no extra charge. Just in case there are side-effects, I guess.

Which is to say, I still have cancer, and unless something miraculous happens, I will always have cancer. Recurrent endometrial cancer (aka recurrent uterine cancer) is inoperable, incurable, and terminal. There are something like four different forms (I think it’s four) and I have the one with the worst prognosis.Ìý

However, it isÌýtreatable. My cancer cells have progesterone receptors, which means that doses of progesterone can keep it stabilised at a low level. For how long? Impossible to say. Could be months. Could be a few years. Could be more than a few years. Nobody knows…just like someone without cancer. Technically, I’m still terminal but now the more accurate term would be incurable. My own preference is incorrigible.

I like to think that the longer I live, the longer I’m likely to live but that’s not really true with recurrent endometrial cancer. That’s recurrent endometrial cancer, not a one-time occurrence as most cases of endometrial cancer are. My oncologist made it clear: this can turn around and bite me at any time. If I continue to lose weight (yes, I still need to lose weight) and maintain healthy eating and exercise habits, I’ll increase my chances of living longer. But there are no guarantees either way. There’s no five-year anniversary for me because I’m not in remission. Being in remission would be a miracle.

Correction: being in remission would be a bigger miracle than the one I’m living right now. It is at least slightly miraculous, Ìýin my opinion, that I am not looking at the last six months of my life after all; that I am not in pain; that my cancer has decreased to such a minuscule level that my straight-shooter, down-to-earth oncologist who couldn’t crack even a faint smile when we first met now beams at me every time I see her.Ìý

Some days, I actually forget I have cancer. Being a cancer patient isn’t all that I am but it’s something I’m always going to be. I live twelve weeks at a time; I make plans only within each twelve week period. I don’t think any farther ahead than that and on week eleven, I don’t even buy green bananas.

That’s okay. Could be worse. Eventually, it will be. But it isn’t today and today is all I have to worry about.

My oncologist was smiling broadly Ìýeven before she called my name.

The level of cancer in my body has fallen again, this time very slightly. The rest of my tests are perfect. Unquote; she said perfect. She also likes my I’m Making Cancer My B!tch t-shirt. I am killingÌýthis cancer thing.

I was so friggin� tense before this latest appointment that all I’ve been able to do for the last day and a half is sit and stare. Don’t ask me what I was staring at; I don’t remember.

The year’s half over. I imagine I’ll be just as tense about the next appointment but that’s in September. In fact, I’ll probably get more nervous as we get closer to the end of the year. But all I have to do is get through the next twelve weeks.

Twelve-week party!

––till my next appointment with my oncologist.Ìý

The nervousness always starts in the last two weeks before The Day. I double-check my calendar to make sure I’ve set a date to go for the blood-test, and that it’s far enough in advance so the results will be available on the day of my appointment. Then I triple-check that I’ve set a calendar alarm for both the blood-test and the oncologist appointment because if I don’t, there’s a good chance I’ll get the dates mixed up. That’s the morning sorted.

In the afternoon, I do the whole thing again, just to make sure.

And then the next day: check, rinse, repeat.

It sounds kinda OCD and I suppose it is, whether I want to admit it or not. I don’t; I don’t think of myself that way but really, we all are, some more so than others. Old Eternal (aka my late mother) lived by routine. As a single mother working full-time and raising a kid, routine and organisation were her greatest weapons against chaos and danger.Ìý

My mother always coloured within the lines because that was how she could fulfil her obligations and responsibilities. But she had one funny thing: whenever we left the house, she would make sure the door was locked by trying knob thirty times to make sure the lock had caught and the door wouldn’t suddenly spring open after we were gone. I could hear her counting under breath. I tried assuming locking-up duties myself but it didn’t help. It didn’t matter who locked the door, she had to try it thirty times before we left. And I had to stand there and watch, to make sure she didn’t walk off and absentmindedly leave her keys in the lock. The woman who lived upstairs from us had done this, not on her way out but when she had come home from shopping. The keys stayed there all day until finally the guy across the hall came home from work, saw them, and knocked on the door to give them to her. She told my mother about it thinking it was kind of funny in retrospect, not realising this was one of my mother’s worst nightmares.

Well, at least I don’t have a set number of times I have to check the calendar.Ìý

But even if I did, what the hell. So I’m quirkalicious. Who isn’t? Could be worse. Has been worse.

Yeah, you read that right. First I was terminal. Then I was incurable. Now I’ve decided incorrigible is really the most accurate term. Seriously, it only makes sense––I mean, I’m incorrigible, therefore my cancer must be as well.

Terminal and incurable aren’t very good at parties but incorrigible is something you can have a little fun with. You can take the piss out of it whenever you want. Sometimes it’s tiresome and boring; when it gets that way, you can ignore it in favour of something with more depth and meaning. And when you’re feeling more energetic, you can scorch it with two or three one-liners to remind it that you’re the real talent and it’s just a one-trick pony.

Incorrigible cancer: eventually, it may revert to its previous status. Well, fck it if it can’t take a joke. Just because it loses its sense of humour doesn’t meant I have to lose mine.

Well, the oncologist told me that fatigue is one of the side effects of the hormones. Considering the hormones seem to be extending my life, possibly saving it outright, it seems churlish to complain.

Yeah, that’s me: Churlish Cadigan, scourge of the sofa. When I can stay awake, that is. Not that I’m necessarily asleep, though. Often I’m in a state where, uh…um� � � � � � Uh, was I saying something?

I haven’t talked about it much because I thought it would pass with April. The transition between seasons, especially when there’s a time-change involved, gets a little more difficult every year. This year, I’m still jet-lagged even as we near the end of May and look toward the longest day of the year coming up in June.

And I have no energy at all. None whatsoever. Whatever it is, if I can’t do it sitting down, it’s not getting done. Not by me, anyway.

I’ve been telling myself I’m feeling the side effects from the hormones so strongly because there isn’t a whole lot of cancer left for them to kick around. That makes perfect sense to me. I can stand anything that stomps those rotten cancer cells. Night sweats? No big deal for a badass like me. I can even ride out the anxiety attacks, which, as anxiety attacks go, are pretty mild. Knowing the disturbances in mood are also hormone side effects gives me an edge in coping (I didn’t have them before I started taking hormones and the oncologist agrees it’s another side effect).

My next check-up is at the end of the June. I would like to become more mobile between now and then. I wanted living with cancer to have more bouncing around, more socialising, more occasions to put on my technicolor Doc Martens, strut out the door, and fck sh!t up.

I keep trying to punch my way out of this fatigue bubble because I know that eventually I’ll hit a weak spot. I always do. Then it’ll be a party!Ìý

Maybe after I finish staring at nothing. I mean, nothing’s going to stare at itself, right?

As of today, Chris and I have been married for 20 years. We came from very different backgrounds, from two different countries, and we’d lived completely different lives, but we discovered that we had somehow arrived at many of the same conclusions and we had as much in common as if we had been friends all our lives.Ìý

On 9 May 1996, we went to the Haringey Civic Centre with Chris’s oldest friend, Dora, as his Best (Wo)Man, John Clute as my Matron Of Honour, and Judith Clute as our wedding photographer. After the ceremony, which wasn’t just civil but warm and friendly (you see what I did there), we all got on a bus and went to Ruby In The Dust in Camden Town for the wedding feast. Ruby in the Dust has since passed into oblivion but it was a special place, partly because they had a dessert called ‘Death By Chocolateâ€� (which is how ±õ’d like to go).

The wedding was very much us––fun, with people important to us, and easily fitting into the surroundings, in the city that Chris and I love more than any other. The two of us are urban creatures. We like our trees growing up out of the sidewalk like Nature intended, and the music of traffic noise lulling us to sleep at night. We also like our environment diverse and ÌýHaringey is most certainly that as it is home to 600 different ethnic groups.Ìý

In 20 years, we have been through ups and downs; we’ve had some good luck and some bad luck. But we’ve never been apart, not even when I was travelling and there was an ocean between us. In 20 years, we’ve never had a fight because we’ve never had any problems––only technical difficulties.Ìý

That’s what cancer is to us––a technical difficulty. And that’s all it will ever be.Ìý

I don’t normally link to stories ÌýMy favourite stories usually involve Teh Cute. However, this hits on a few things I’ve been saying for years. Namely:

‘What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare [at cats]�

I may not have the quote exactly right, and at our house, it’s mandatory to add ‘at cats�, but you get the idea. I know we’re all busy, we all have a lot of demands on our time, a lot of things screaming for our attention, deadlines that must be met.

But people are not machines. We need time to do nothing. We need time to sit and daydream. Or not think at all. In some areas, this is called sitting zazen although you don’t have to sit. Old Eternal told me that when she was a kid, every time it rained, her mother/my grandmother went for a long walk. If anyone asked if they could go with her, she’d say no. Then she’d put up her umbrella and saunter off into the wet for half an hour.

Apparently the walking-in the-rain thing is genetic because I’ve been known to do the same thing, although I’ll let someone come with me if they promise they won’t do anything that could be construed as an errand or a chore. Grandma on the other hand had seven kids and usually no fewer than three extra relatives, not to mention anyone else she might have taken in because they had nowhere else to go. So I understand why Grandma preferred to walk solo.

But my point is, you need to have periods of time when you are not justifying your existence, to anyone, time when you are not improving, learning, thinking constructively, or applying yourself. And you need to spend those times away from the Internet and/or the TV and/or videogames. Your brain needs to have some time when nothing is required of it, when it doesn’t have to work on something important or challenging or even fun. It needs time to do its own thing. Personally, I think of this as giving the black box time to digest.

You may not find all of the advice in this article appealing and maybe some things won’t work for you. However, if you do nothing else do this one thing: get enough sleep.

If you’re sleep-deprived, you’re in a bad way. Sometimes this can’t be helped––if you’ve got a new baby, a colicky baby, a toddler running a fever of 105F, some other family member who is ill and needs care, or some other extraordinary situation, this isn’t aimed at you, although I really hope you get to a place very soon where you can get more rest, because you sure need it.

Sleep-deprivation isn’t just *really bad*––it’s a form of torture used on prisoners in very bad places in the world. All torture begins with sleep-deprivation––trust me, no self-respecting sadistic interrogator ever hung well-rested prisoners up by their thumbs. So if you’re not getting enough sleep, you are, in fact, subjecting yourself to torture. Would you do that to your best friend? Then don’t do it to yourself.

As I said, the rest of the advice here may or may not apply to you. In general, I don’t have much trouble blocking minimising my time online. There’s always someone somewhere being wrong on the Internet. The thing is, I’m extremely lazy. Do I get involved with that, or do I spend the same amount of time goofing off? Do I have to tell you goofing off wins every time?

And when was the last time someone who was wrong on the Internet actually gave deep consideration to your words and said, ‘Damn, baby, you’re right! I’ve had my head up my ass. I feel so foolish. Let’s be friends!�

The only other thing ±õ’d exercise caution about is the shutting-down ritual. I know so many people with a touch of OCD and for them, this could b a slippery slope. I don’t think of myself as particularly OCD––people as lazy as I am don’t look for more things to do––but then I noticed I’m doing this thing with the light switches in the hallway. Right now it’s only quirky but I think it’s got to stop anyway.

But I digress�.

About thirty-five years ago, I got into Zen in a big way. Some people thought I was silly; some people thought I was a remarkably late bloomer. Maybe I was both but that didn’t bother me. It happened at the right time––chance favours the prepared mind (the definition of serendipity). Keep your mind prepared and you will find that you come upon the exact instrument/technique/ice cream you need at the exact moment you need it.

I absorbed Zen on a deep level, so much so that more often than not, I follow the principles without even realising it. Zen is, basically, knowing what to do––or knowing that there’s nothing you can do, and not only being able to identify which is which, but also not lying to yourself about which one you are faced with. If that reminds some readers of the Serenity Prayer, I’m not surprised. What I like about Zen is that it identifies the principle involved in the Serenity Prayer, and then leaves it up to you as to whether a deity is involved.

Personally, I’m not a believer…but that doesn’t mean I’m a total disbeliever, either. The more I learn about science––and I’ve been studying hard lately as research for this novel I’m writing––the more in awe I am of the universe. If I did believe in a deity, I would think that learning as much as possible about the natural world––from quarks to the microwave afterglow of the Big Bang to gravity waves––would be the best kind of prayer. But I’m starting to digress. I hit a section of the novel where things got very mystical in a hard-science way. Don’t ask me, I just think here.

But I was talking about Zen. Not long after I embraced it, a friend told me––with no disrespect––that she didn’t think of me as a Zen person. But her impression of a Zen person was someone who cruised through life with an attitude of ‘It’s all goodâ€� (I’m paraphrasing). This is similar to the mistaken impression some people have of antidepressants––i.e., that they’ll level you out so you emotionally flatline and go around with a vague smile on your face, no matter what happens Neither is true. (I’ll get into the matter of antidepressants another time; I’ve been taking them for over twenty years and I promise you, they are not ‘happy pills.â€�)Ìý

As for Zen: if you have ever seen the movie The Deer-Hunter,Ìýit has one of the most Zen moments I’ve ever seen in a film. It comes unexpectedly, early on, after the big wedding, when all the other guys decide to go hunting. John Cazale’s character hasn’t brought boots, which apparently is typical behaviour for him, and he wants to borrow a pair from someone else. Robert DeNiro’s character is fed up with him and doesn’t want to give him any. He takes a bullet and, holding it up, says, ‘Do you see this? This is this––this is not something else, this is this.â€� I think that’s an amazing moment. And then Christopher Walken, in the sudden role of Buddha, gives John Cazale’s character a pair of boots and says to DeNiro, ‘What’s the matter with you?â€� (Actually, he says, ‘Whatsamatter wichoo?â€� Which is how that particular question is pronounced in the northeastern/mid-Atlantic area of the US) The question is basically an even more emphatic ‘This is this, this is not something elseâ€� lesson for DeNiro––i.e., ‘This is what he does; accept it or don’t come with us.’Ì�

Yeah, I know: that’s probably not what Michael Cimino was intending. But that’s what I saw. Cimino would probably think I was nuts but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

So what does this have to do with Zen and the Art of Anti-Cancer Maintenance? Well, that’s the title on the post, isn’t it? It’s all anti-cancer here all the time. But in fact, someone left the photo below on my Facebook page, and I wrote a koan to go with it. This is all just my excuse to post both photo and koan here.

°Õ³¢;¶Ù¸é–â¶Ä�

ÌýÌý

A student said to the Buddha, “Master, how may I gain enlightenment?�

The Buddha said, ‘Wait.�

The student waited all day. Finally he fell asleep. During the night, a kitteh crawled onto his lap and went to sleep.

In the morning, the student awoke and found the kitteh sleeping on his lap. Immediately he was enlightened.