Where to start?  I have been home for a week and my physical recovery has been going well but I have been struggling with a profound sense of displacement. I recognize my home and my familiar surroundings but I am sometimes alien to myself. My leg feels different after surgery. Is this a permanent difference or something that will resolve as it heals? What treatments lie ahead of me and how will I respond to them? What does it mean to me to be living with cancer again? How do I negotiate the reactions of those around me? On top of all this my daughter will be leaving home for college in just two weeks and creating a new home for herself in the world. That change is unsettling enough for me with out all the rest. I’m having an identity crisis. And then I laugh, thinking how one of my dear friends would respond. ” Idenitity, what’s that?”

Here are some details,

I returned home from the hospital Monday Aug 1st and my daughter got back from London later that night. It’s been an adjustment being together again after such different experiences, but her jet lag matched my post-op fatigue, so we have both enjoyed napping and I’ve enjoyed listening to her travel stories while being jealous of her opportunities. She turns 18 on the 18th and we are flying to Salt Lake City on the 19th so she can move into her dorm room at Westminster college.

I will be returning from that trip to face more specialist appointments and treatment decisions about radiation and chemotherapy. I know the post op MRI showed that all of the tumor has been cleared from my pelvis except for ‘a small nubbin’ ( the surgeon’s description) remaining near my nerve root. The results of the post surgery pathology report and second pathology opinion are not available yet. I should be hearing from the neuroradiologists this week and I have an appointment with a new oncologist, on 8/26. I know that every time my phone rings in the next couple weeks it could be doctors with news I may or may not want to hear.

I’m trying to stay focused on enjoying recovery but the prospect of facing more important decisions and as yet unknown treatment is daunting. I’m struggling to figure out what my new ‘normal’ will be. I have been reading two books this week. One of them is ” Inside of a Dog” a totally fun fluffy book about how dogs sense the world. The other is Anti – Cancer. I noticed that the other David Servan-Schreiber, who died recently, kept his own cancer a secret for many years.

Right now, I’m feeling set apart by illness. Others engage with me as though I already have a new identity. Last week we visited an acquaintance and he remarked several times on how well I looked. He lost a father to cancer. He said that he used to think of cancer as a death sentence, but now he knows its not true, still he can’t help but be surprised that someone who looks so normal harbors a tumor. The instinct to separate is a natural one with acquaintances, and maybe even stronger with those we know well. It is one of the ways we try to keep ourselves safe. When someone I know through Commonweal has a recurrence or dies it reminds me that the same thing could happen to me. It is natural to look for differences between us, things we do or believe differently that we hope will keep us safe. It also imposes an artificial separation between us, creates distance where connection would be more healing. I want to think about and write more about ways we can make connections across the constructs of illness and health.