“You look really good.”

“Thank you. I make an effort never to leave the house looking like a potential “people of Walmart meme.” 
It’s important to me to put my best face forward these days. Besides, not working in an office, I have no real reason to dress up on weekdays. And, I do love funky clothes. I do feel good these days.

Gardening seems to agree with me. Since my diagnosis in 2023, the few months I spend in the garden each year are the healthiest and happiest. That being said, I’m still faced with constant monitoring of my blood with regular lab appointments. I feel like a pin cushion.
Then, a week like this one rolls around. While I might look healthy on the outside, every three months or so, the doctors need to take a look at the inside. I have five medical appointments in the next two weeks.

Picture the comic book character Pig Pen. When Pig Pen shuffled through the Sunday comic strip he was followed by waves of dust. He loved to play outdoors in the dirt. I too spend innumerable hours on the ground pulling weeds and digging in the soil. It’s a quiet time filled with the sound of insects and North Dakota’s ever-predictable breeze.

However, I usually try to leave the dust outdoors. My cartoon character looks like Pig Pen substituting the word cancer for the waves of dust swirling around from my head to my toes. No matter what I look like on the outside, cancer hangs over my head and swirls through every ache or unusual feeling in my entire body. ALL THE TIME.

When the day comes to look inside, no matter how good I feel, scanxiety sets in. Scanxiety is a term coined for the feeling in the pit of your stomach before your next scan, be it CT, PET, or MRI. It’s a confusing feeling of wanting to know what the cancer is doing in your body and not wanting to know what the cancer is doing to your body. The only thing we know about cancer is it is unpredictable, tricky, sneaky, and deadly.
Between these weekly word gushes from my overactive imagination and the connections I have made with classmates and friends over the past year, I’m finding a pleasant distraction from my current day-to-day life and scanxiety.

It’s called, “Do you remember when we…?”

There’s something magical about memories. Since making contact with old classmates and friends, I spend time daydreaming about moments, smells, and feelings of being young again. Those of you who know me well, know that I am a low-maintenance person. Most days when I leave the house I forget to look in the mirror. Some days I forget to put shoes on stepping out the door with bare feet. And, in my mind, I appear to be about 21 years old. That is until I walk by a plate glass window and stop to take a look.

“Who is that old woman?” I say to myself. “She looks like my mother.”

But in my head (everything up there is either a song or a paragraph in a novel) I’m reliving being young again prepared to change the world. To do that I had to leave my small-town behind and find myself. Well, I’ve been here all along and the conversations with my fellow Gackle-ites have been seamless. It’s like yesterday and not 50 years ago at all.

Life was so simple back then. One night I caught a little ire from my parents because I missed my 9 p.m. curfew. It must have been September or October. The air was warm and the sky was pitch black. A couple of us, maybe three or four, got caught up in some stargazing with one of our teachers, Mr. Kisse. 
If I remember correctly we had pie with Mrs. Kisse and then went home in awe of the night sky through a telescope.
It was worth the reprimand.

Living in the magical world of memories is probably common amongst folks of our age. I told someone that being able to ask that question, (Do you remember when we…?) keeps me focused on something other than scanxiety this week. So here goes — I will report back when we review those test results.
I appreciate your words and prayers, I’m honored to be a part of your memories. May they be happy ones.