Evan interpretive dancing to bed in his tropical-themed underwear. Eating a sandwich on a rock overlooking Half Dome. The time I won a pie on the cake walk game at the St. Matthew’s parish Easter festival.

I don’t have a cage over my face. I’m not in this tube. Is that the Mmmm song by Crash Test Dummies in my headset? How do people do this? How am I doing this? Adam had to do this a lot. I understand now. Will they let me keep these blue pants? They are hella comfy.

Not to brag, but I got an MRI this week. I got an MRI as a precaution, to rule out the episodes I had had the day before were not due to an anomaly of the brain. The best guess is seizures, most likely a sign of toxicity from one of the chemo drugs, Cytoxin. My symptoms included the feeling of being in a disassociative fugue state predicated by feelings of deja vu followed by numbness, ringing in the ears, weakness, and exhaustion. Alone in the patient room, Covid restrictions not allowing for a guest, I had an episode while listing these symptoms to the PA. “It’s happening right now. I’m going away.”

I’m going away.

She sat quietly with me as it crested and fell, different than how Evan had been holding me all morning, different than what I needed. “I’m right here, you’re right here, you’re not going anywhere.” he would repeat as I’d float off into a dream I was sure I’d had before, not knowing where I was going, if I would come back.

After the first episode, I wrote this in a notebook:

I just experienced a deja vu that scared me. A returning to a dream within an awake state. An awake fever dream. It hurt, in a subtle way, waves crashing over my body. I called out to Evan. How do I explain this? I do not understand it. “This is the closest to death I’ll be until the end” I said. He took my temp, normal. He said I lost my color, that I disappeared from my eyes, that they were darting everywhere. I’m weak. The smoke is heavy, no outdoors today. What do I make of this?

“Why is it taking my mind too?! It can’t take my mind, it can’t. It’s all I have. Please, please. Who do I ask for help from? Please help me. Please.” Evan would just hold me in my slump, tell me it is okay. That he is right here.

Showing off the comfy blue pants. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm.

I had an episode in the waiting room of the oncologist's office, in a small chair in a small, unfamiliar waiting room. After I came back, recovering, sweaty, and slumped against Evan for support two women walked in and sat in chairs across from us. They began discussing the vaccine, how it is a hoax, how it infringes their freedom, fuck the governor, fuck mandates. A break in their conversation they must have looked across and taken me in - bald, white, weak. “Excuse me, sir,” they yelled across to Evan, “sir, we are praying for you. We are praying for you both.”

We arrived at this moment, in this waiting room, in these small chairs, after hours of calls during the in-between lucidity of episodes. Cancer patients like me are coached that when we have a medical emergency to immediately go to the emergency room. In Southern Oregon, my home, Covid-19 hospitalizations continued a record streak for the 14th day in a row Friday with 164 people with Covid-19 in the hospitals. More than 90% of those are not vaccinated. Thirty-nine people were in intensive care. I’d been told by nurse friends that over 100 people were checked into the ER. I’d suffer in those small ER chairs, I’d risk my own life with no immune system seeking out that help. Evan spent hours on hold or holding me until our great team got me the help I needed.

“You may not stand idoly by your neighbor’s blood” (Leviticus 19:15) Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, as a response to political leaders offering prayers to victims of gun violence, tweeted “God doesn’t want your thoughts and prayers. God wants you to know that you are responsible to care for and protect other people. And to take action to do so.” Yes, I wanted to yell at those women but what I REALLY wanted more deeply was for them not to look at me slumped in that chair and take pity but to see my suffering, to see how we are all connected and the part they play. The gift would not have been the prayer, it would have been quiet stillness or loving conversation at the least. At most, I hope it would be seeing themselves in my pain and considering how not getting the vaccine impacts others like me.

The last episode was hours after the appointment. It felt like a sizzle, like steam exhaling off my brain. I knew they were gone. That night I tucked myself into a ball, Evan propped my head in his lap and I wept. Loudly, shaking, an absolute pouring out of grief like I have never experienced. Adam was the closest. Adam, who had all the MRIs, who I thought of in the tube this week, whose picture is taped to my hospital bed every round. Adam, my only sibling who was honest and beautiful, who had a 3-year-old daughter, a fiance, a whole life in front of him when we watched him die at 26 of brain cancer on the 12th floor of Mercy Hospital a few miles from the house we grew up in together. He’s the one who told me that when he is in that tube he thinks about all his favorite things about being alive, his favorite memories in detail (that or coming up with hip-hop lyrics set to the beat of the MRI machine clicks and clanks). He’s the one who showed me how one can do suffering with style - that cancer, suffering, doesn’t create character, it reveals it.

Thursday was the most harrowing day of my life and revealed a lot. It revealed the true depth of my fragility, how I (we) don’t have any control and can lose all I hold as ‘me’ in an instant. It revealed the capacity for love between Evan and me. It revealed my incredible restraint to not lose my mind in anger when handed the ‘righteous’ authority to do so and that apparently among my favorite life moments involves unexpectedly winning baked goods. It revealed once again how much I want to live - and a profound peace that if I don’t, that’s okay too. That I’m going to be okay. That we are going to be okay.

The MRI came back normal. On Tuesday I go back to the oncologist to ask questions. I’m concerned about the level of care and safety I’m receiving at my local hospital. The staff is incredible, they are just being asked too much, stretched too thin. I want to know if a Covid booster shot is available to me and if it would even have efficacy considering the hard chemo drugs I’m on. I want to know if this could happen again and, if so, what I do about it, if it’s dangerous, how to know. There are questions of the long-term impact of all of this, but I don’t much worry about that. It is enough to live.

Today, I climbed on the bike trainer and rode. It was a miracle. What we, this body and me, can survive. That I can be training for a 50-mile mountain run then get fucking cancer with all its bullshit then can hit rock bottom in a puddle of grief on Thursday and be all chamois’d up laughing at Amy & Seth being totally overcome with gratitude at a 3-mile flat bike ride, indoors, on a bike trainer on Saturday. I mean, it’s not a they-pulled-my-number-at-the-cake-walk joy but it’s pretty fucking close.

Rocking my reverse Ben Franklin bald head in total bliss. If you gots to yell prayers at me, pray for this hair to just fall out evenly already.

Rock bottom.

Blood transfusion.

C-Bag². Cancer and Covid.