A Spork in the Road

Right after I finished chemo, I received a card with the following text from the inimitable Jeff Dow, who sent me a card every week while I was in treatment and thus, although he lives a dozen blocks from my house, was my most faithful correspondent during the six months of chemo. The card accompanied a lovely tome called The Elegance of the Hedgehog (L’elegance du herisson) by Muriel Barbery.

I reproduce his note here in its entirety, with his kind permission.

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I could not allow the occasion of your last chemo to slip by unobserved. So please accept my small offering of the written word. Hedgehogs, in my estimation, are underestimated, Sonic notwithstanding.

However, don’t make me send any more cards. No backsliding. You’re healthy, stay that way. No more heading down that slippery slope. Not a good place to go. You’ll break Lil’s heart. She won’t be able to handle it. She’ll crack. She’ll sell the house, buy a green 1968 VW Bus and drive north – first to New Orleans where she’ll discover that the Desire streetcar hasn’t run for years. Then she’ll drive to Tucson where she’ll start a commune of retired investment bankers. They’ll live in the Sonoran Desert for eight years, but will end badly when one of the bankers – a New Hampshire native named Sharon – steals her Pez dispenser shaped like Jean-Luc Picard. She’ll drive north to Denver where she’ll become a cat lady even though she secretly hates cats. She’ll start freebasing Little Friskies, and when she tries to buy a kilo of catnip from a less than trustworthy Siamese by the name of Ling Tso she’ll be arrested. The prosecutor will want three years, but her court-appointed attorney will bargain it down to six months rehab plus time served. But in rehab she’ll meet a Canadian emigre named Martina who will convince her to steal a 1976 red Camaro and drive to Montana where they disappear. The police find the car outside Gorman’s Diner in Butte.

So don’t go there.

Jeff

My hair didn’t make it to the end of the play. It was just falling out today, getting carried away on gentle gusts of wind, coming out in shanks when I tried to gently wash it this morning.

So the ever kind and stylish Alicyn cut my hair down to a couple inches, and then James brought over his shears, and Lil cut it down to refugee length. I’m now a happy fuzzhead with a wig and scarf for the weekend show and lots of headgear possibilities.

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Despite all the evidence of this blog, I am not in fact a person who is normally obsessed with myself. Until I got my passport to Cancerland, I did not even weigh myself regularly. Now I know my weight, my temperature, my blood pressure, my current Complete Blood Count, my Complete Metabolic Panel. Now I get very, very excited about bowel movements.

I’ve also become a person who is totally fine with people sending me stuff on a regular basis. Cancer Swag has revolutionized my attitude towards receiving gifts. It used to be that when someone nosed around about sending me a gift, I felt awkward and tried to get them not to do it. Now I’m like, “Here’s my mailing address, and I suggest UPS 2-day shipping so it gets here faster.” It’s getting so that when I tell strangers I have lymphoma I also hand them a list of books and DVDs I don’t have.

I knew cancer was big money for the medical industry. I didn’t realize Amazon and iTunes made out so well on the deal.

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