#mass general

‘We all have a part to play … we are begging you to do yours so we can do ours’ — Mass General ICU nurses treating COVID-19 patients urged the public to stay home and to donate supplies to their local hospitals

This summer will mark the 3rd anniversary of my stem cell transplant! It is hard to believe that so much time has passed since that long and very trying period, from June to August 2017. So much has come to pass: so much growth on a personal level, so much understanding and acceptance, so much physical and emotional healing. 

Even if I look back to just half a year ago, I am left scratching my head, asking, 'Who was that?' I suppose this is normal, but I am hyper-vigilant about the passage of time, as I'm sure every cancer survivor is. It isn't so much that I'm counting every second and rejoicing at every tiny gulp of fresh air I am graced with. No, it isn't like that. Naturally, I am fortunate; however, I am graced with, if that's still the most suitable term I want to use here, with the awareness and shifts within myself. Call it "soul" or "spirit"… whatever word you'd like, I won't label it so as not to taint one's vision of how I perceive this "inner" part. 

Several months ago, I was experiencing a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a hospital in France. Really, who was that? I needed that, of course. I needed to bottom out. My body was already working on slowly repairing itself, but I hadn't yet allowed myself to crash on an emotional and psychological level. My inability to hold on slipped and I did… I crashed hard - very hard. As difficult as it might have been, this was when the shifts began to occur.  

3 years ago, I was watching fireworks from Massachusetts General Hospital's cancer ward. I tried to sweet-talk one of the nurses into getting me a beer so I could, like a lot of my fellow Americans, sit and sip a beer while watching the display, all the while exclaiming, "Ohh!" and "Wow!" She said no and gave me another anti-nausea med and an ice cream. The fireworks didn't live up to their hype. I heard good things: a lovely display of colorful explosions from the 10th floor of a building overlooking the Charles River. It sounded amazing. However, various buildings obstructed our view, and we couldn't see The Charles.

There were perhaps ½ a dozen patients and nurses. It was an exciting and also eerie sight, all of us in masks and gowns; the patients seemed quiet, in that middle ground of toxicity-induced psychedelia and being fully present. I shouldn't generalize, but I often found myself in this state, always ready for what I am unsure. All of us were tethered to our IV poles, which pumped an alarming amount of chemo agents into each of our bodies or flooded us with other various fluids. The nurses talked amongst themselves, texted, and did things ordinary people do. I don't remember the grand finale. The other patients and I left the room with the promised vista of fireworks overlooking the Charles, wheeling their IV poles alongside us. I heard the muffled explosions from my sealed-off room, just a gentle murmur that was barely audible underneath the continuous hum of the air filtration system. 

I remember this every 4th of July. I remember that room on the 10th floor of Mass General's cancer ward and the patients wheeling about IV poles, hoping to see a clear view of fireworks but, in the end, not caring. Or maybe I cared in that way cancer patients care about things that, though they would be nice, weren't of the highest priority at the moment. Or perhaps, like me, we all wanted to enjoy the goddamn fireworks while drinking some shitty beers and be normal, feel normal… whatever that was at the time. But alas, we all returned to our rooms to resume our treatment or our sleepless nights of nausea and delirium, or the darkness-induced existential terrors, fears, and tears, to everything (everything!) else that takes precedence over fireworks. 

I don't look back on it now, every summer, every 4th of July, and feel a sort of unease or anger, etc. I think this reaction to other things is natural. Other dates are inescapable; those, too, have lost their bite. The day after Mother's Day 2017, I had a stroke, which paralyzed my left arm, postponed my transplant, and sent me to the hospital for brain surgery. I watched the solstice sun (image attached) lazily creep across the sky from my room at Mass General. 

These are there and solidified in my journey and my personal history. They're not so many pitfalls anymore in the yearly cycle, so much as pitstops that allow me to recess my place within all this and the growth within myself.