I’ve had a month long vacation from scans, pathology reports and doctors – sweet, but too short. I had an MRI on Monday  and I’ll see the oncologist next week to hear results and his recommendations about chemotherapy.  It has been great to feel myself regaining energy and independence. I still have a ways to go, my stamina is limited and I need a lot more rest and recovery time, but being able to easily enjoy eating, walking, driving myself to the grocery store and going out with friends is a big pleasure. It feels like the most healing thing I can do is nourish myself and I have been having fun cooking. Nothing fancy, just experimenting with comfort foods;  new soups, different ways to roast a chicken, making a really good cornbread and browsing through cookbooks to see what appeals to me. My idea of a good time is visiting the organic herb and  spice aisle at Rainbow grocery, opening the bulk jars, inhaling the fragrance of cardamon pods and noticing the texture of rubbed sage as I scoop small amounts into wax paper envelopes to bring back to my kitchen. Maybe I’ll carry a pinch of sage in my pocket, when I visit the disinfected exam room of the oncologist, to remind me that the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada exist in parallel time with his office and my kitchen.

I’m a slow cook. I need to triple the preparation time listed on a given recipe to come close to how long I need to make it. During my convalescence I’ve come to realize how often I measure myself against standards that don’t suit me. I don’t think I’m alone in this. My convalescence has given me a chance to indulge my inner tortoise without guilt. I am savoring my slowness. I hope I can continue to honor it when I no longer have a ‘good excuse’ for it.

I am afraid of what lies ahead, even if my scan results are clear, as I expect. Either, I will embark on chemotherapy treatment and cope with more illness, loss of hair, and the possibility of doing more harm than good in the hopes of an uncertain cure, or I will gamble that surgery and radiation have done enough, choose no further treatment, and begin a shaky re-entry into the bustling, productive world where I am neither well nor unwell, inhabiting some shifting place in between, knowing full well how unknown the future is.