Am I still me?

What a relief! After I had managed to drag myself off the couch, put on some makeup and work clothes and prepare for a now very rare meeting offsite, my client called to say the candidates had cancelled. Now, this is bad news for my dear client and I am heartily sorry. But I can't lie. I am happy to be spared the ordeal. Back to bed, Thank God!

It is hard to describe the fatigue that is chemo. When absolute anything is an effort, you find stuff out about yourself, and not all of it good. It can be pretty pathetic. I mean, wouldn't you think that being reduced to 10% of your normal output would make you want to do only the most important stuff? Instead, I end up watching stupid tv reruns or cleaning the sink. I mean, who cares if the damned sink is clean? I have freaking cancer! Yet the crazy need to feel you've done something has great sticking power, even near rock bottom!

When you are this tired, you do what is easy. Its kind of disappointing! I know, I know, it's temporary. I get that. This is just a tactical retreat into the land of being poisoned in order to kill the cancer cells before they kill me. I know I'm doing a pretty good job with a shitty situation, all things considered.

And yet. It's morbidly fascinating to see first hand how easy it is to simply let your life go. It just goes away. You wake up, you are tired and feel like crap, and, before you know it, another day in your possibly short life is gone. Just like that. I guess a fair number of us live that way without being sick. But it makes you think. I mean, what is your life? Is it what you do? Some bucket list of actions you've taken, impact you've had? If so, I'm in trouble. Not much output these days!

So what does it mean to be really alive? My Aunt Kathy has Alzheimer's and spends her days in a twilight world of simple awareness. She likes to have her back rubbed, she laughs occasionally, but mainly her brain has deteriorated to the point that it's hard to say whether she, Kathy Keenan, is anywhere at all. Yet, almost every Saturday, my Dad and his other sisters and their spouses gather to visit her and then go out to dinner. They feed her, try to get her to respond, and enjoy each other's company. What still exists of Kathy is their love for her. The space she created in their lives when she was actually an actor on the stage (and was she!) is what remains. Her impact on the world is now created almost entirely by others who choose to make her important, though she'll never again know it.

Although I am still very much alive and plan to remain so, I wonder what has become, temporarily, of who I was? That dynamic, creative actor, the one with fingers in many pies at once is simply gone. She has left the stage, bowed out. All the things she might have done during this time will not happen. They are lost forever. Not such a big deal, but if you think about life as a series of "accomplishments", then I have ground pretty much to a halt for now! I'm not judging myself for this, I'm just fascinated by how different it feels to be me without the energy to do anything but lie around. Some days I wonder if I still exist!

For now, at least, I write. I write, therefore, I am. And, every few days, a small group of people from all over the world stops what they are doing and reads about my life with cancer. I send some electrons out into the world filled with stories and musings, dumping the insides of my brain into the ether. Small ripples into the world from my couch. Will anything change as a result? Will someone act differently some day somewhere because of what I've written? Unlikely, I think. But it's fun to think so. Love to you all.

Colleen