sailing away

My scan was clear. I am now officially six months in remission. Unfortunately the individual informing me of this was still the same haematologist that i believe has absolutely zero people skills and or natural displays of empathy. So he called my name in the waiting room of the cancer clinic. My boyfriend was off buying carrot juice and the newspaper in order to entertain himself with what is usually an excruciating wait. I asked with a slight tone of incredulity why he was still in haematology as being a resident I thought he would be moved to another speciality in the new year. He informed me that not to disappoint me but he had another year in Haematology. I was seriously disappointed. Then he stated my scans were clear and although my lungs were given me grief everything else was healing as expected. I told him how I had fainted on the tram a few days previously to which he asked if I was pregnant, which has been the common response from friends and family. But after urinating on two of those oh too familiar blue sticks I was safely assured that fainting must of had another cause. The fainting story was quite absurd. I was waiting outside the tram stop I catch to head into town, holding a coffee and reading a political magazine. When I got on the tram it was crowded but not asphyxiating, warm but not hot and I was on the phone. I felt my head start to cloud and my legs begin to loosen there upright posture. I went down. Not gracefully onto a seat but I dropped to the floor (my head was caught by some very agile passenger) and the coffee went over everyone and everything. When I awoke cradled in the arms of two men I looked around at the scene. Around twenty people were starring at me trying to ascertain whether I was a junkie and had nodded off or if I under some peculiar circumstances had fainted. I was mortified. They had stopped the tram. The tram driver was shaking my shoulders and screaming in a thick Indian accent whether they he call an ambulance. I needed to be off this public transport vessel I needed to be away from the sea of unfamiliar and generally concerned faces. I moved swiftly towards the door and down the steps. I could hear the cacophony of concerned individuals still talking to me about whether I needed water or could they call someone for me. I did have a flash thought of how for those brief few seconds I truly enjoyed the commonality and general concern of the human race. It isn't often that I reflect positively on the human condition. This was one such moment.

It was wasn't the fainting that disturbed me but more the reason I fainted. I have this fine and somewhat tenuous relationship with my health where I feel my health isn't completely transparent and honest with me. Sometimes I just can't read what is going on. My lungs speak volumes for this as it has been the last month I have been truly struggling to breath and have been calling on devices (asthma ventilators) that I haven't used since I was a teenager. It feels like regression. My lungs were quite healthy and free from the excessive amounts of Ventolin I am now pumping into them before cancer. I know the chemotherapy contained a drug that caused the lungs to scar, then add the addition stress of the lungs being 'collateral damage' during radiation and you have there present state. It makes me angry and annoyed as I have thrown myself back into my life and I need adequate oxygen for that to be possible. I have already taken four days off work, cancelled a gig and spent countless dollars on naturopathic tonics and herbs to strengthen my lungs. What they need is patience, something I struggle with.

I had a very short dream of being on the ocean in a boat during the seconds I was out cold. It was lovely the warm sea breeze tickling my skin while the waves were lapping at the sides of the boat. The sun was perched high in the sky casting a bright yellow glow over the scene. I was happy and healthy and genuinely delighted to be sailing somewhere out on the magnificent ocean.