A friend who visited the other day asked me how I’ve been passing the time, and it was difficult to formulate an answer. I’m on a short term medical leave from work, but the past few months have felt nothing like the summers I enjoy off as a teacher. Those days are usually filled with leisurely errands, cooking, reading, small projects around the house, our annual trips to the beach and the lake–in short, stuff I like to do that’s more of a challenge when I’m working. And well. But right now, I’m not. This is a hard thing to accept, both for myself and for others. I want to be able to say that I’m passing the time productively–that I’m keeping apace with the world and its various demands. Or that my role in it remains an active one… But illness is really more of a passive art, as I’m slowly learning.
For example, I’ve had to increase the dosage of my pain medication, which makes me drowsy and means I can no longer drive. The radiation also causes fatigue, so I spend a good part of the day sleeping. I actually love the hours in which I’m not awake because I don’t feel any pain or discomfort. I’ve even fantasized about being put into a medically induced coma for these last few weeks of treatment (which my generally pleasant, positive doctor has said I’ll want to “blot out of my memory”), then magically awakened, like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, when it’s all over.
The remaining portion of each day is now devoted to consuming the requisite amount of fluids, which I hate. I used to look forward to meals, but now I dread them. Swallowing is painful and requires a near herculean effort, so I work my way through a single glass of water or an 8oz. Ensure in, like, an hour. Because I’m losing weight and not getting many calories, I’ve not felt up to my daily walk. I’ll still go outside (as the weather has been beautiful), but mostly to sit on the deck or check the mailbox, savoring the sun on my skin.
In short, I’ve been convalescing. This is a rather foreign concept to our modern minds (not to mention, an outright affront to the busied, breakneck ethos of modern life), but it was once quite common. Pick up almost any 19th century novel and at least one character in it will be at–or headed to–some oceanside villa “to convalesce.” They’ll sit in a wheelchair on the shore, blanketed against the bracing sea winds, the salty air a supposed elixir of sorts. I feel oddly akin to them now, despite our differences in time and place. Just as I’m beginning to feel akin to the folks in the radiation waiting room. I see the same people at the same time every day, seated in mostly the same chairs. We smile wearily at one another, sometimes chatting a bit and sometimes not. It’s a fellowship I never sought, but will be strangely sorry to lose. Perhaps it will be succeeded by another one: survivors.
Well, then 