Phase III Begins Now

I know. It's been a while. The past 6 weeks have been pretty nasty, and I will go into that later, but in the interest of keeping current, here's a quick update before I go to sleep for a few hours and wake up for a work call. The main point, I've officially started the final phase of this process.

Tonight, I moved in to the Hope Lodge in Boston, which is owned & run by the American Cancer Society and provides a free place to stay for cancer patients who live a long way away from their treatment centers. It's a beautiful place, and because I have a letter from #teambewb basically prescribing Phosphor as an emotional support animal, they're letting me have him with me while I'm here.

First impressions: the room smells like an older man was the last one in here. Not bad, but like I texted my friend earlier, it smells like the nice old guy in his 80s, who wears a Members' Only jacket and holds the door to the elevator, who gets up at 6am every day even though he doresn't have to, and always wears the same aftershave and uses the same hair pomade he's used since Johnson was president. He was probably in the Service.

The T runs by every few minutes, rocking the building somewhat. I'd forgotten how it feels to be living downtown in a real city–the sounds, the concrete. New Orleans doesn't quite count because the high-rises are in a small area of downtown and 1/2 mile outside of the CBD, it's one and two story houses for miles. The loudest public transportation in New Orleans is the streetcar, and that's more charming than jarring. The streetcar is beautiful, but it's a series of single cars on a small handful of tracks throughout the city, not the veritable pulsing veins and arteries of the city, like the T is to Boston. So it's going to be cool sleeping with that near, perhaps getting used to taking it to get around when Phos is in daycare.

There are a lot of rules here, and I'll do my best to follow them. No eating in the rooms; no drinking anything that's not clear. No dog in the kitchens or dining areas. Lots and lots of regulations around the common food prep areas. Loads of sanitizer. No cut flowers in the building at all. There are stem-cell patients here, whose immune systems are so thoroughly destroyed that they can't risk mold spores coming in the building on flowers.

It's weird because I know I'm going through this, but I haven't been able to internalize it yet. I feel like a big faker, even as more and more of my hair falls out in the weeks following chemo. In my head, I don't consider myself a cancer patient even as I still get breathless doing simple things I was able to do before, like walking up a hill or a small flight of stairs. I feel like I'm better off than the really sick people, as I fight to stay awake for more than a couple of hours, and as my muscles feel utterly exhausted and painful like I've been running marathons, when I'm simply lifting my phone up or brushing my hair.

It's crazy what a disconnect your brain and body can develop. Being a resident of the Hope Lodge is doing a number on the brain part. It's bringing it all down to reality. I'm going to have to face up to this whole thing–maybe admit to myself that I actually have/had cancer and that I'm entering the final phase of a vicious fight. (But then, what happens when the fight is over? That's a big part of the mental block and a massive can of worms I'm not ready to open yet.)

Oh, and I had my first radiation today. That, too.

I guess I'll have more for the blog soon. I'm now in a place where I'll be able to be on the computer more and update more frequently. Until next time, friends...