Several years ago, and well before I was diagnosed with cancer – a stage IV(b) high-grade serous endometrial carcinoma – I read Eve Ensler’s beautiful, heart-wrenching memoir: “In the Body of the World.” To be honest, it was not (and still is not) my usual reading fare. I can count on one hand the number of books that I found to be so challenging, or as Isabelle Allende writes, so soul rattling.

Now, as I stand nearly three years to the day from receiving that diagnosis, and as I resume cancer treatment for the first time in nearly a year, I have started to revisit some of Ensler’s writing.

She wrote a brief and moving chapter on getting her port inserted to facilitate her chemotherapy treatments. I, too, had a port inserted. It was not a difficult procedure, and it facilitated some of the treatments I received over the last few years, both the chemo and even the dyes used for my regularly scheduled CT Scans, and it will facilitate the treatments to come.

At one point after my six rounds of chemo, I asked if/when my port might be removed. I cannot say enough nice things about the gentle and honest way my Oncologist helped me know I would need to keep it in.

“When I thought port” Ms. Ensler writes: “I thought water. I thought ocean. I thought summer. I thought harbor. I thought ships and cargo. But I mainly thought of leaving, of departure. Funny, I did not think of arriving.”

This week I arrived. After an extended and enjoyable “medication vacation,” (i.e. no medical interventions), I find myself back at the UNMCC Infusion Center to begin the next phase of my cancer treatment.

We knew this day would come. Even on “vacation” we were tracking the progression of the cancer (which   B”H* was slow but unfortunately not zero). Kelly and I were in conversation with my team each step of the way.  Future treatment options were discussed, best guesses, and regular testing were all used to try to extend my “vacation” as long as it seemed prudent to do so.

For those keeping score, I have made my way through (like so many do) quite a few options on the check list for cancer treatment:

Surgery - check

Chemo - check

Oral, non-chemotherapy medication - check

Radiation - check

Prayer - check (though never without medical approaches taking the lead)

This next phase of treatment, and the next item on the cancer check list, is Immunotherapy. Under the guidance of my new Oncologist, I have started a double whammy of drugs. One takes the form of a daily pill (whose list of handling instructions and warnings/side effects rivals the Mishnah** in length, though thankfully not the Talmud***). The daily pill even comes with a blood pressure monitor for at home tracking.

The other takes the form of an infusion, which I will receive once every three weeks to start. If all goes well, the infusions will decrease in frequency to just once every six weeks. My port helps make this needed arrival possible.

I will stay on both of these drugs as long as they are effective and as long as the side effects are manageable.

So as of this week, after an extended break, I have arrived back at my port. It’s been here, in my chest, all along.

I turn again to Ensler’s words about her port:

       “A hard foreign object under the skin separates you from those who remain only flesh.                                                     It gives you secret powers and access to a new world,  a world where there are no more countries                     or claimed borders, where life happens and death is near,                                                                                                            where the only real harbors are the ones we carry in our chest.”

My port has reopened. Hopefully, so have my harbors – both the harbors carried within and the harbors that friends and loved ones open to us.

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With thanks to Josh Rosen for his editorial work.

*b'ezrat Hashem (“with the help of God”)

**6 Volumes

*** 36+ Volumes