Fallout

The preamble to the World Health Organization charter reads, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” And yet, when I asked my oncologist about physical therapy, all I received was a sympathetic half-smile.

I realized I would have to take my well-being into my own hands. So I studied lymph drainage videos on Youtube (How did we ever survive before Youtube?) and found a therapist on my own. He has been working out some of the scar tissue in my torso. I didn’t know that such a thing is possible; the doctors say I have to have additional surgery to cut out scar tissue.

Me after surgery

Say what? You want to cut me open…again…to clean up the mess from cutting me open?

I don’t think so.

I progress with recovery, an ongoing process, a seemingly endless series of baby steps. Just recently, I have noticed some of my muscle strength returning, a glimmer of the joy yoga used to bring me. For months, just turning over in bed and standing up hurt every joint; just imagine being so tired that getting out of bed is exhausting. But this morning I did a seamless transition from core work on my back to downward facing dog. (If you’re not a yogi and don’t know what that means, please feel free to be impressed. A few years ago, that would have been gibberish to me, too.)

While I can’t really complain about the medical treatment I received in general, I have discovered some glaring holes in the system. Women’s health is still a secondary issue, shrouded in mystery, whispered about behind closed doors. And women’s well-being is a non-issue; the very existence of our well-being is questioned. A prime example: Number one on the Japanese list of side effects we and our families might expect to see from chemo is grouchiness, whereas grouchiness doesn’t even appear on any of the English websites I consulted. I would assume Japanese society still expects women to smile, no matter what, a concept the West seems to have ditched. There was a time when women marched and burned their bras for the right to be bitchy. I am grateful to them.

(Heavens. I just deleted two paragraphs about social injustice and bullying and racism and guns and violence and the lunatic fringe, which includes people who decide to move to Hawaii during a volcano eruption. Who would do such a thing?)

Apologies, dear reader. It seems a bit too much at times, coping with the fallout from last year while Madame Pele is raining her fallout much too close to my soon-to-be backyard. May I ask that you do whatever it is you do, pray or chant or meditate or light incense or do a hoopla dance, to send a little luck my way? I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Glassie Come Home

I was waiting for the bus the other day and took off my glasses so I could see my phone. Normally I can hold both in my left hand. Unfortunately, I had my bus card in my right hand and that proved to be too many things for me to keep track of at once. I thought I tucked my glasses into my pocket, but when I was seated on the bus and ready to put them back on, they were nowhere to be found.

I went through a clumsy phase years ago and kept bending my frames by walking into walls and tripping over things and generally being an inept klutz. So I made the investment in unbreakable titanium frames and have had this pair a very long time indeed. It wasn’t the end of the world that they were gone, but we had spent some significant time together and I had grown fond of them.

It seemed a long shot, but we called the bus lost and found office the next day. They said, “We have a pair of gold rimmed glasses. We don’t know if they’re your gold rimmed glasses. You’ll have to come down and identify them.” I imagined a lineup of suspicious looking glasses standing awkwardly behind a sheet of one way glass.

Lo and behold, they were my gold rimmed glasses. I will never know if some kind soul turned them in or if the cleaning staff found them at the end of the day or if the goddess was just smiling on me again that day. At any rate we have been reunited and I am moved that someone somewhere respected me enough to turn in my glasses. I have renewed faith in humanity…except for Pokemon Go Zombies. They are invited to go jump in a lake.