Welcome to my Caring Bridge site. Here's what I posted on Facebook just over a month ago, when I first found out that I had HPV-positive squamous cell throat cancer. I will be using this Caring Bridge site for updates, if you're interested:
Dear friends. Social media is a new phenomenon in our lives, so it's with a little trepidation I send this out to you. I would prefer to speak with each of you individually. And I hope you will feel free to speak with me via email, if you are so moved...
I've been diagnosed with squamous throat cancer, and will be entering treatment soon. It happened rather quickly, and I just had it confirmed today. So I will be stepping back from all my jobs and projects to focus on my own healing. That includes not being on social media much, if at all.
Having been with Mary and my dad when they took their last breath, I've been close up with death. It comes for all of us. So it's not with fear that I enter this curve in the road, but with an elder's eyes -- aware that each joy, each adversity is an opportunity. I won't be battling cancer. I'm not at war with my body. But I will be paying close attention to myself, something that I've found surprisingly harder than I ever thought possible, so easily does life's busyness distract us.
If this next adventure leads to health, I will be back on line. But for now, I send you blessings. And this little poem:
PALEOHIPPIE CANCER
-for Kyra
Let’s skip the call
My throat’s sore so it’s easier to write
At 74 I’m ready for the next adventure
Getting wheeled through the hospital
sidebars up & all prepped
for Surgery Room #1
A laryngoscopy & two biopsies
Banded on the wrist
like an old coot doing decoy duty
The floor nurse
introduces the operating room
nurse to her set-up team
Trippy listening in
Just before going under
“Treatable”
the docs attest
Starting to grok
pulling a Yul Brenner
after all those years of uncut locks
“Have the Tables Turned”
asks the cancer survivor of the
yet-to-be-treated cancer
patient?
Time to right those tables
Jump up on them
Bloom
As long as it lasts
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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10220837148295334&set=a.1303215057284&type=3&eid=ARC7KAuHq4Q7UQqWxOJwzXNvxpPggaLJuWWHhusAxT0U63D8JByInvX4FK_kc9VRtAUrv-agcpsLdBAr)
Photo from the Robert Report -- one of the best regional blogs
