The Anniversary

My freezer and fridge are full of fancy food. I have a quality steak. I have a lamb roast and lamb chops from a local farmer. I have frozen mussels, and scallops, large shrimp, salmon. Frozen salmon ravioli I made from scratch. I have fresh noodles and bok choy and some pork shoulder to thinly slice for a stir fry. I have garden fingerling potatoes and sweet potatoes.

I keep thinking about a cake.

Lately I’ve been thinking cheesecake. But there is a bakery that would make me a fancy rustic cake with fruit filling and confetti sprinkles on top and that is tempting.

I am at an anniversary point, a milestone, something that requires celebrating, and I am ambivalent about it. I just keep buying fancy food.

It has been five years since I was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. At the time, the oncologist said the average lifespan with a scan like mine was 2-3 years. I said, “No, five. I need five.” Soon after, I met a woman who was in year 11 and started thinking about living to 60. And who knew what treatments– there was a lot of talk about immunotherapy– would be available in a decade.

Five years is important in terms of improving the statistics. I am now in a new category, the five-year-survival rate. Women being diagnosed now will hopefully see a higher percentage of those living five years. The oncologists might start saying the average lifespan is 3-5 years. For me, hearing 2-3, I thought, “Well, that’s long enough to treat, to kill it.” It was different than, say, months, even 18 months. When they express the lifespan in years, well, you have some living to do! You have some cancer-killing to do.

I got into remission after that first terrible year. They removed my port, through which I received my 24 weekly chemo infusions and which came in handy for blood work and contrast dye and during the debulking surgery. I was in remission for two years. At that three-year mark I was preparing to go back to chemotherapy. Since then I had chemo for six months then had a break for six months, then chemo again for six months, then a nine-month break on a maintenance drug. A month ago I had a reaction to the maintenance drug, my platelets crashed and my hemoglobin crashed and my white blood cells crashed and I ended up in the hospital with pancytopenia for a couple days. My first hospital stay since surgery.

In another month we’ll have another scan, and probably return to another round of chemo. I’m okay with that. I have a chronic disease and we just kick it back then rebuild then kick it back again. I’m still responsive to the most effective forms of chemotherapy. I have options.

So how does one mark this milestone? I’m still here! Taking inventory, as I do, I can say my quality of life is quite good! I have good work, I live in a beautiful place, I’m starting leeks and shallots in the basement again, I am surrounded by people who love me. A Covid vaccine is coming. I broke my ankle and had surgery in November, but now I’m walking around, even driving, in a brace and gaining strength and doing some “hurt foot yoga.”

After the broken ankle, I had some trouble with my stomach. Six weeks ago my main goal in the morning was to not throw up, and I employed all kinds of strategies and superstitions related to that goal. I didn’t have an appetite and had trouble eating for a couple months. It was probably partially the maintenance drug and partially the ankle business.

But now I have a freezer and fridge full of fancy food. In the past two weeks I have made pizza crust again, and pizza sauce, and salmon ravioli, soba bowls, and chocolate cake. In my fridge right now there is leftover salmon chowder, leftover chicken masala, leftover venison chili. It is safe to say I am back and I am back Big Time. The first outing I took in months was to a suburb of the Twin Cities to return the knee roller I borrowed from my friend Joanne. We met in the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s parking lot. It had been three months since I’d gone grocery shopping. Next was the Asian market, the Co-op, and today, the meat market. This is a huge part of getting my life back after a pretty dark winter with no weight on that ankle, stuck in a dark guest room, and feeling, really, pretty sick.

Time for a celebration.

Or, you know, I could just keep on as I have been.

No cake.

A series of good meals cooking up the fancy food. Putting more weight on that foot. Working my way back to Downward Dog. Planting the plants. Watching for the lakes to thaw and kayak season to return. Getting vaccinated for Covid. Overseeing construction of the new garden and new chicken coop. Year six.