Nadir to Zenith

----- Original Message -----

The isolation is over. Yeah!

Blood tests today showed white counts at a critical high versus the normal critical low for the week after treatment. Between the Neulasta and the different drug, it appears we have struck away the chains that have bound my people for so long.

No sign of thrush, another good sign (and common side effect of the new drug). Karen is still tired, partly from low hemoglobin, partly from recovering from treatment. Though she's going into work today. That may become more regular, at least in the off weeks.

Everything else looks good.

----- End Original Message -----

Shadow War

The grendel has opened a second front. No longer content to batter us with the brute machinations of his necromancers, he has enlisted a host of disenchanters and disillusionists, Gothic faeries floating on delicate black-lace wings, miniature Circes with raven hair whose melancholic melodies are difficult to resist.

Some swoop down on silent wings at twilight, night-raptors leaving no trace across the sky. Others creep on cat's paws from the shadows of the data mines, their eyes glowing malignant green across the night. They stalk lone victims, shunning the banes of light and laughter. They hunt the darkness, draw strength from low, gray days.

Their spells are studies in subtlety that exploit our natural faults and weakness like diminutive dwarven wedges tapped, tapped, tapped patiently into stone.

Fear fills the void between the dull monotony of day by day and the dread of a future unknown. Sadistic sprites weave smoky incantations, summoning shadows that cling to our flesh with kitten claws while raking us with tiny daggers that draw no blood but sow an ache into an unseen web of scars.

Spells of insomnia deprive us of sleep yet not the need for nightly dreams. Brain fog rises from dark rivers of undreamt images, their languid tendrils weaving an elaborate phantasmagoria before our bleary eyes.

Some days we feel cloaked in the forgetability of Victorian children, unseen, unheard. Charms of confusion infuse some allies with linguistic misdirection, suggesting that talking about is the same as talking to. Domes of silence mute others completely.

Stalwarts shake off these bewitchments in a spray of color, a misty halo that guides us to the gold within. Veterans lean on prior experience, exposing the diaphanous line drawings of illusion as transparent legerdemain.

Our familiars engage in a proxy war of spell and counterspell, shielding us with the warm curls of their bodies as their soft purrs dispel any lingering sorcery. They lull their prey with this feigned passivity before pouncing, taking perverse pleasure in snapping fragile wings and batting helpless, grounded bodies before consuming their muffled cries. They resume their contented purring, a disguise for bitter fairy breath.

During our isolation, we engage in make-work projects, distractions for idle hands too easily dusted by depraved pixies, enchanted into soulless golems, enticed into a demonic workshop to hypnotically spin their poison thread.

Each night, demon faeries seek to bind us in that twisted spider-silk of emotion. We spend our days untangling the skein before the Norns can weave it into permanency.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Starting Over

----- Original Message -----

One more time with feeling. 1 down, 3 to go.

The new drug, Taxotere, doesn't have a nickname like Cytoxan did (The Red Devil), but it seems as potentially nasty. The list of side effects, some which could occur during the injection, along with the blood pressure monitoring was a bit intimidating. But everything went fine. No sensitivity reaction during treatment which is a plus.

In ways, it is like starting over again as we have just the barest idea of what to expect. Some things stay the same, steroids for three days, shot tomorrow morning, bloodwork and maybe a shot next Monday. A number of the side effects are similar (fatigue, immune suppression, anemia, hair loss, nausea) but a few are new (sensitivity, neuropathy, rash, fingernail changes). As far as the actuals of what to expect we get to sort it out on the fly. Just when we thought we had this down.

Three more and this phase is over. That's what we're trying to hold in our minds. We'll see how it goes.

----- End Original Message -----

Slipping Grades

----- Original Message -----

Karen's white counts slipped back in to the C's again this week. So she may not get into work this week. Plenty of young white cells, just the mature ones dying off prematurely.

Longer drive this morning as we are now going to Carillon (the other side of the county) for all our needs. With the average time we spent waiting at Bardmoor, it's about a wash. A couple beside us this morning had driven in from Lakeland for an 8:30. What a haul.

We continue kidding with the nurse each time he accesses Karen's port. The first time Karen had chemo, he put a plasticized paper shield around her shirt, like you see at the dentist office. He kept adjusting it to where he needed it while Karen, in a fit of modesty, kept pulling it back. ("And this is where the nurse slapped my hand....") So we kid him each time we see him. Only because the other nurse has told us we can't joke with him any more about his previous job of making the leeches sick. But that's another story.

Next week begins with new drugs, almost like starting all over again. She's nervous about how that will go.

----- End Original Message -----

Mile 5

I began these missives alluding to a company, a journey, a destination. I return to my allusion reminded of younger travels, more physical than allegorical.

Several spring to mind, mountains, pastures, streams, shores, some successful, some nearly disastrous. Assets and liabilities, each revealing inner details formerly unknown, credits and debits on a balance sheet of experience to draw against as equity of a life.

The first is a ten-mile trek with three days of food and equipment strapped across our shoulders. A company of twenty, we set out from familiar territory. Asphalt, concrete and stucco are softened by the green, suburban view to which we've grown accustomed, schools, churches, neighborhoods interspersed with the semi-wild outskirts of development.

We are young so most start quickly, their exuberance outpacing their stamina. My feet are last upon the path. An elected leader, I ensure the youngest and least experienced are ready for the road ahead. I find myself encouraging stragglers early on only to trail them before the first mile is behind us when a piece of my equipment comes unraveled.

By the second mile, the company is strung out before me. All eyes remain forward with little interest in what, or who, lay behind. Past the highway, trees conceal our ragged line as orchards of houses are replaced by the maintained wilderness of windbreaks, lakes and pavilions that transitions into the pasture, pines and palmettos lining the dirt track near mile three.

By mile four, I achieve the middle of the pack, closing the distance with dogged determination. Cliques of preference have been replaced by groupings dictated by pace. Straps rhythmically rub out any remaining banter as the weight of our journey settles upon our aching shoulders. Breaks become too frequent, too extended. Our timetable begins to tatter with our goal nowhere in sight.

With more miles before than behind, exhaustion drains encouragement into mere example. As I shoulder my pack after too short a rest, an old formula surfaces, pick a point near the horizon, perhaps a mile away, rest a moment beside it, then scan for another.

At each respite stiffness seeps from the ground like clinging Lilliputian vines that fatten the longer I tarry. Ignoring the protests, mental, physical and from others only arriving, I rise, my vision constricting to a pinpoint surrounding each interim destination. The road tunnels to a distant curve, a palmetto brake, a sapling that grows into a tree as I attempt to close on an ever-distant horizon. Fatigue fades to numbness as ten thousand steps narrow to a seesaw rhythm of one followed by another.

By the end, half our number succumb to the temptation of the tailgates trolling our line with water and the equipment our adult leaders can't survive a weekend without. I am not among them.

At the edge of a stand of pines, a shallow stream, no more than a rivulet, marks the boundary of our destination. A dozen paces on, I drop my burden to claim the first unmarked and unadorned campsite chosen from the random wilderness, then return to the water to cool my burning feet and greet the others as they stumble past.

Five years later at dusk in the mountains, I would scout ahead to report the distance left uncovered, then light a hot meal to greet the five behind me. Fifteen, and I would linger to ensure each of the ten who set out made the miles over cobblestones strewn with driftlog timber, extending a silent hand across each obstacle to those trailing while others raced ahead.

But that first day all I had to offer was my back, soldiering on so others could see what was possible. We were children then, incapable of masquerading as adults as we sometimes do today. I wasn't the strongest or the fittest, even the oldest or the most experienced. I was just the one who endured.

Some days on this journey I carry her pack as well as my own. That day taught me there are times when I must ignore the ache, the fatigue, the silence, the miles left untrodden, shoulder my burdens and move on.

Mile 5, and we lever each other from the ground, tottering entwined in a 2 a.m. embrace like derelicts down the Bowery, not looking back to see who still follows.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Halfway

----- Original Message -----

Last of the AC treatments. Next up are the four T treatments (Taxol or Taxotere) starting in two weeks, three if Karen decides she wants a week off. At least the shots to stimulate her white and red counts have kicked in so they aren't as low as previous treatment days, but still low. We'll see how they look at the nadir next week.

On my list of things that get your attention when talking to an oncologist: Him musing about using an alternative drug (less proven in this environment) to reduce the amount of toxicity and the possibility of side effects from the current first-line choice including, but not limited to, neuropathy inducing numbness and tingling in the extremities, hypersensitivity reactions (similar to allergic but through a different mechanism), which hopefully, but not always, go away when treatment ceases (your experience may be different, so be sure to consult your physician).

Definitely not an E-ticket ride for those old enough to remember the reference. At least the $70 (post-insurance) three pill steroid packs are a thing of the past.

On a note of synchronicity, there was a sign for a seminar in the lobby of the medical building as we entered. Today's topic: What to do if you receive an abnormal mammogram. Given by: Karen's surgeon. Sorry we missed it, though I think we may have already cribbed a few notes.

I'll close like a Chinese fortune cookie with this week's lottery recommendations for those reluctant to schedule their annual mammograms. 3 million women have breast cancer in this country. 1 million don't know it.

Off now to pony up and "embrace the suck" as the Marines in Iraq like to say.

----- End Original Message -----

Fatigue

Fatigue comes in trailing waves of undissipated energy reflected after each attack, each trough an opiate numbing my mind one memory at a time.

Perhaps this is a gift, blank pieces fitted into a puzzle whose picture I wish I could not remember, night and fog obscuring the gothic ruins atop the dark mountain from which the enemy emanates, each missing moment an amnestic victory though the mountain remains unmoved.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Blood Counts

In the quiet between attacks, she reviews her mildly resurgent garrison. Their ranks form into twin companies for the counting, one red, one white. In battle, the white is charged with the outer defenses while the red ferry ammunition and supplies.

We live by weekly muster. Too few reds and our mage-general delays the trebuchet. Too few whites and we stand a night watch against an anticipated counter.

After each attack their numbers dwindle to critical levels before reinforcements trickle in. Exhausted, they appear insufficient to endure the continued onslaught. Each fortnight, replacements appear, mostly women gray before their time and girls too eager to learn, not caring that they, too, could be ravaged by our own fire, casualties of a trebuchet targeted so tightly to the wall.

In the latest assault, the grendel deployed his newest ally. A horde of hemogoblins broke through, loping across the bailey on bandied legs and slaughtering ranks of the red and plundering her energy while cat-toothed shamans wove an evil spell that clouded her thinking in confusion by raising a malevolent fog of war.

Pestilence, the grendel's opportunistic cavalry, lurks in a nearby copse of trees ready to flank her forces with lightning quickness by setting spurs to motley steeds, bacterial, viral, fungal. My job is to root them out and break their formations by scouring the walls and purifying each approach with fire. The first sign of contagion results in instant quarantine.

Our battle plans shredded into tattered pennons at first contact, the contest devolves into a test of wills. Shoulder to shoulder, her companies bridge the gaps, refusing to cede their ground, eyeing the black banner hanging ominously above the grendel's command post knowing no quarter will be offered and none bartered or exchanged.

Battle weary with less than half the siege behind her, she summons her far-flung fyrd with a baritone blast from the citadel horn each week. From deep within her demesne their answer resounds in a crescendo rung from steel trapped between hammer and anvil as blacksmiths reshape plowshares to repulse this evil tide.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Strength

As I steel myself for the next attack, I wonder where to conjure greater strength, hers as well as mine. Though her garrison remains her primary defense in this siege, they are not her sole source of strength. Even in war, strength is not measured in steel alone.

My strength comes from her. Each morning she dons a gladiator's sleeve to armor her sword arm, performing tai chi rituals to control her new condition. Each day she confronts the scars on the two visible signs of her gender, her breasts and her hair. When the former betrayed her, she pooled the latter at her feet, shearing it away before it, too, could abandon her. Every other week she faces a fresh assault with a body barely recovered from the last.

For her, strength is delivered in the dispatches of a fellow amazon besieged by a more aggressive force yet still offering words of encouragement and compassion, in hearing the tales of her adventure, in the steel in her spine when she confronts powerful mages and generals who are reluctant to press her attack.

Strength gathers with her band of sisters who laugh in the face of their shared trauma. Like marines in a bivouac, they cope with dark humor, though, unlike the few and proud, their laughter intends to heal, not to harm.

Strength arrives with the courier bearing a daily message from a childhood friend whose love and humor remain untarnished like 24-karat gold.

These are the three faces of her personal Morrigan, avatars of the triple Irish goddess of war. They are the inheritors in Boudicca, immortalized for battling the Romans first as a mother then a queen.

One day the attacks will cease, the scars will fade, the rituals will transform to rote. Her hair will again weave fire down her back. Until that day she is grateful for their voices, as am I knowing that their altos and sopranos will balance the baritones in Valhalla when shining Valkyries ride to reinforce their numbers.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

The Lull

Fortnights form a familiar pattern: attack, fatigue, isolation, then a brief respite between.

Fatigued, we act as novice Buddhists, eating when we are hungry, sleeping when we are tired. Simple actions assume an air of meditation: walking, sitting, learning just to be. We study enlightened felines, Zen masters who practice napping as an art.

In isolation, we train as elite soldiers: when not actually in battle, we constantly prepare to fight. We review strategies, discuss tactics, war-game scenarios, map out operational details. Like artists perfecting our craft, we draw units as colorful blocks, tracing their movement in Japanese calligraphy with bold, broad, individual strokes.

In the lull insufficient time conspires with suppressed energy to plot a frenzy. A backlog of routine maintenance must be tended lest a minor blemish erupt in ulceration, a disruption at some critical moment. There are breaches to mason, gates to reinforce, walls to shore with timber. Larders to restock, animals husband. Wells to dig and clean. Logistics, the inglorious tedium of war.

The lull transforms exhaustion into activity with an animation of diversions. It is the time we feast before returning to the simple rations of the wall. The time we open our gate to visitors and ride out to meet them. The time we celebrate, even belatedly, lest we never celebrate at all. At time life drums a tempo and we dance to the melody unheard by onlookers who likely think us mad.

We spend winter-short days each lull franticly crossing items from a list on a continually unfurling scroll freshly smudged by newly inked replacements, our only surplus in this siege.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III