There are many reasons writing has been difficult these past weeks. The state of the world is certainly enough to both fill me with words and yet dry them up at the same time as my heart swirls with fear and grief—so much grief. (I’ll write on this eventually because I know I must, just not today) But these last few weeks of October were rough for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that yesterday was my yearly checkup at MD Anderson, which if you don’t know is Houston’s biggest (and probably most well-known) cancer hospital.
I’ve written about my thyroid cancer journey before, although not on this platform and not for a long while. Years, in fact. Like many things in life, even cancer eventually fades into the background, just part of daily living and not something that occupies my thoughts except when I take my daily meds and supplements—and even then, it’s just something I do, like taking a vitamin. But then the yearly checkup rolls around, and suddenly this thing that’s been in whirring quietly, generally without occupying a central part of my brain (although not always), bullies its way into the forefront.
This year, it bullied harder than usual. My allergies have been bad this year; the endless Houston summer, which lasted from about May until we jumped into a sort of early winter this week and dragged out some fleece and our comfy sweatshirts, has played havoc with my sinuses. I’m stuffy and dry-mouthed or I’m mucus filled and sneezing, or the sneeze gets backed up and I cough. Twice this has turned into a sinus infection. Periodically, the whole cycle makes me hoarse, and possibly there’s a reflux situation going on because the whole thing makes me anxious, which is not surprising. Climate change has clearly played a role in the weather and that makes me anxious, too.
By itself, this entire litany of sneezy woes would probably be no big deal. And most days, that’s actually true. I stay hydrated and have a cough drop or two on hand and contemplate whether I should bite the bullet and start allergy shots. Besides, the weather had started at sort of cooling off and the weeds and mold had mostly stopped growing and even the ragweed had begun cool its jets, so great, right?
Which was precisely when my lizard brain remembered that in a few weeks, I would have my annual appointments and scans. (Okay, I’d been receiving lots of emailed and texted reminders, so my brain wasn’t exactly doing the heavy lifting here) The thing about thyroid cancer is that you don’t exactly ever ‘ring the bell.’ You get rid of it through a combination of removing your thyroid, treating any remaining bad cells with radioactive iodine, and then taking Synthroid or another similar drug every day along with calcium and vitamin D and also having yearly blood work, head and neck scans, and check ups because the thing about nature is that it desperately wants to regrow that thyroid and if it starts to have success at this (as has happened once to me) they have to get that stuff out, too. Which basically means you’re totally fine… until you’re not. Which could happen. Even though mostly it doesn’t.
Talked about this with my doctors yesterday, who reminded me that cancer, especially cancer that requires checkups for the rest of one’s life, is traumatizing. The cancer itself traumatizes and then the checkups—each scan that searches out every tiny blip on those cutting edge, super-sensitive machines that help save lives—that traumatizes, too. Even the amazingly speedy way that the results of every blood test and neck scan find their way into your My Chart for you to open while you still haven’t even gotten to your next appointment yet, so quickly that you have to ponder: open it now or let the doctor tell me. And with each one, you are thinking: Is this it? Will it be bad? Was that last round of sinus actually something horrible? (full disclosure, it thankfully seems to be just sinus) As if you don’t already sometimes stockpile old Synthroid that’s not quite the right dose anymore, thinking that if there’s an apocalypse, at least you’ll have something because even when you don’t think about it, that lizard brain still knows that you can’t really get by without it.
You’d think I’d be over this all by now. But that’s not how it works.
All of which is to say, sometimes it’s difficult to focus on writing, even sweet, cheerful writing like the picture book I’d been working on and, actually did finish last week and send off to my agent. But writing—to finally get to the point of this post after what I hope was at least mildly entertaining back story— is EXACTLY what I need. It always has been. To lost myself in the words and the story, to hyperfocus even when focusing is impossibly hard. That’s how it was years ago, when I first got the diagnosis, basically just as my first book had broken out and was doing shockingly, remarkably well. That’s how it’s been through over a decade of life’s ups and downs, not only my own (which perhaps you’ve heard more than enough of by now) but all that the world throws at us. Floods and hurricanes, political unrest and wars, serious family illness and job change and sadly, deaths of beloved ones, and all the rest of what happens to humans in on this planet.
I’ve turned to the words. Even when I was sure they weren’t there, like just now as I sat down to write this. Those two picture books I’ve recently announced? I started both during the pandemic. The picture book I just turned in? I wrote it during this past month while the world burned and I angsted over that and yesterday’s appointments. It’s been like that for almost every book I have on a shelf. Something else was going on, but still, I wrote.
So I say to you: Keep writing. Write it all. Every bit of it.
As for yesterday (which also included hospital parking woes and doctors running late and extra paperwork I wasn’t expecting, and an automatic ordering system in the hospital cafeteria that somehow triple-charged for a single egg sandwich, and an otherwise very nice nurse who observed as she checked my blood pressure that I seemed anxious as though this was a surprise), I’m good to go for another year, in case I didn’t make that clear enough above.
Keep writing, my friends.
Til next time.