Respite

This timely, but busy and all-too-brief, interlude between the onslaughts draws inevitably to its close: tomorrow I start radiation.

Appointments will be early each morning, freeing me to work afterwards on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays; Tuesdays my appointments are a bit later and followed by checkups with my radiation doctor. Friday afternoons are reserved for R&R.

The timing of this cease-fire was fortuitous, encompassing several ship movements (=Port Services), a multitude of special events with high-ranking, VIP guests (=Parking, Base Security), my predecessor's promotion ceremony, our base's change of command, and to cap it off, a unit celebration at Six Flags and a wetting down (at which, for the first time in quite a while, I could actually drink something more potent than water, now that water tastes like water again). Also in these busy days: a visit from my aunt, uncle, and cousins (coupled with a dual-birthday party) and a visit from my mom (carefully timed and coordinated).

Of course, amid the détente, I parleyed with the medical professionals more than once: three pre-radiation appointments, a PET/CT scan, bloodwork, and a shot of blood-cell-boosting Neulasta broke up my "lazy days" of summer. (I realized today that for the first time since I joined the Coast Guard, my May-through-November isn't being spent on some sort of alert status for Atlantic basin tropical storms, leave only stringently granted and always recallable, ready to deploy teams or get underway, my internet homepage set ominously to the National Hurricane Center.)

My body has been quick to shake off symptoms, though my hair's still too scared to grow and I could use a few good sessions at the gym. Most of all, I'm dreading breaking the news to my aggrieved bones, skin, and internal organs that twenty exciting days of rigidity and radiation await them. I'd much rather focus on work, deskbound as I am, where my increased presence over the past couple of weeks has only highlighted the areas under my responsibility where I so urgently need to focus. The attention I patch on the problems during my all-too-brief appearances only briefly buoys the issues, raising them to bob desperately above the surface, while the barnacles of a hundred daily shortfallings keep dragging them down, ever so slowly.

Cancer treatment is a hell of a way to get out of meetings and paperwork.