A Mixed Bag

First of all, happy new year. My new mantra for 2009 is:

35 and still alive!

If I were overwhelmed by statistics, I would consider this quite an accomplishment. However, I believe that we are all living on borrowed time. That's not to say that learning of my "predicted" life expectancy over a year-and-a-half ago wasn't difficult. It actually worked its way into a piece of fiction I am still working on:

Now I have the number. The number of months they expect me to survive. If nothing else, I had managed to dodge it until now. But there it was and I could not shake the slender curve of that single digit from my mind.

Hopefully, now that I've passed said expiry date, I won't "go bad," but, you never know. There's still time to go Britney.

Anyway, speaking of writing, we are gearing up to begin our next writing series at Callanish (we have a wait list!) and I am hoping to bring a workshop to the North Shore in the spring. Now I just need to figure out what the hell I meant by "inner landscapes"...


I am also really excited to be attending a three-day workshop next week with John Fox, author of Poetic Medicine.

Last, but not least, my PET scan results (just thought I'd make you read through all that other stuff first)...

They were mixed but OK. No new areas of disease, but some reduction and progression in the existing ones. It wouldn't have been realistic to think that the single-agent chemo I'm on would make a big dent, but I always kind of hope I'll get the results and they'll say "spontaneous remission." As I said to my mom after I read the report, it's like studying really hard for an exam and never being able to get an A.

Maybe I need a tutor.