Round and round the mulberry bush

It's been a challenging week.

Saturday morning is the Memorial Service for my friend Marilyn. Many in our small parish have rallied around her grieving partner Cindy. Our choir will sing for her and I will chant Psalm 46. 

Two very dear friends are suffering with cancers of their own, one with a recent breast cancer diagnosis, the other with a very rare T-cell lymphoma for whom the medications have debilitating side effects. My new friend Rob, a long-time (almost 5 years) leukemia survivor, has been in and out of the hospital for months. As for me, my chipper white counts of a week ago have plummeted from 3.5 or so to today's .8. That's point-eight. Not even one. Is this a "post-remission cytopenia" or a relapse? Monday's bone marrow biopsy will tell. Today I cannot fathom the idea of a relapse and a repeat of Induction chemotherapy.

It's been a shitty week.

I have not been an angelic devotee of the Triune God. I scowl. I bark. "Whatcha doin', picking us off one by one?" I've sneered. I have not worked a single Step of surrender nor counted my blessings. I've been a snotty, angry kid. From this space I have endeavored to give with parched lips and cracked heart.

A bright spot was wigging out with a dear friend from church. Literally. When the last of my hair went bye-bye in late November, I rushed around buying knitted caps and bright scarves. I do not go out in public bald. Julie had promised to go wig shopping with me, which at first had very little appeal. Time has passed and so yesterday we did after she had gone out of her way to research proper wig shops. The first wig I tried on brought up a globule of grief with the disconnect between putting on what used to simply be there. I wanted bangs (fringe to my British friends), devoid of the 'oh no!' repercussions of doing it with real hair including revisiting the 2 years it took to grow out my last flourish of those. Aside from the guffaws pointing out the $15 pink or platinum party wigs, we went through the high-end synthetics and on the fourth try found the keeper. Julie teared up; "That's you!" I cocked my head and played with its bouncy bob. I tried on a few more before we drove to a 2nd choice wig shop. They were closed and lost the $253 I then spent at this one in San Rafael. 

I wore it to choir practice that night to hums and smiles. It felt slightly odd and I smiled catching myself in mirrors. At the Cancer Center this afternoon, acquiescing to a blood transfusion due to low hemoglobin counts as well, I wore a cap. I don't want to be there and I'm not about to dress up for them. Aside from the low-counts fatigue, I don't think of The Illness if I can help it. It's spitting in my face when the nurses are trying to find a vein and hook me up for a 2-hour sit next to someone else's blood dripping in. Psychologically it feels worse than having been forced to swallow cod liver oil as a kid. 

I'm poised between two hospitals: Alta Bates in Berkeley with Dr. K. and his staff, and UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco where I met the head of their bone marrow transplant program on Wednesday. Dr. D.'s demeanor was gently welcoming, his brilliance not compromised when he explained things in a manner I could understand. I am moving ahead with the decision to seek a bone marrow transplant even while I feel fear and doubt. My chances of survival are crap with chemo alone. They are doubled but still marginal with a transplant. My head spins, my anger rises. My work and income generation are on hold while I've made a few attempts to step back into bits of its markets research here and there. 

Another friend is returning this week to her native Switzerland, this 14-year California chapter in her life closing with love and goodness as well as sadness. 

Aeons ago I would try to construct Reasons for everything, from death to illness to grievous errors. I'd get my sticky note cosmic rationale collection poised and ready for slapping on. I needed Reasons for everything with no exceptions. Today I have let that go when it is clear that I haven't a freaking clue what in the hell is happening. I don't know WHY Marilyn died last Saturday morning or why I have acute leukemia. Last week, leaving a Camaldolese Eucharist service with two new acquaintances, one of them told a story and then said, "Everything happens for a reason." I paused, took a breath and then disagreed, not with that vibrationally barbaric "I'm going to run over your belief system" fire breath but taking the opportunity to have a voice and then let it be. 

I feel oddly naked and unarmed to confess this. 

I wonder if strength and unarmed vulnerability, even weakness, can coexist.