As I write this entry, I realize that I may never again be as free of pain, or as energetic, or as able to taste food and otherwise enjoy life as I am now. During this interlude between the miasma of the surgeries and their complications and the renewed poisoning of chemotherapy, I hope that I can keep the perspective of finiteness in the forefront of my mind from moment to moment in the precious minutes, hours, and days ahead.
During this interlude, my major time sink is spending a couple of hours a day in either physical therapy or at the gym. But I think that this expenditure of irreplaceable time is worthwhile. I am given to understand that patients with advanced cancer not only feel better, but also may live significantly longer if they follow a program of vigorous daily exercise. In my situation, I know of nothing else that does not require a tradeoff of quality of life for quantity of life. The exercise also seems to be helping me to rebound physically from the two surgeries and their complications.
Moreover, I experience a considerable psychological boost from doing something active to fight back. While I know that the cancer is winning and will kill me in the end, struggling against it feels good. If, today versus yesterday, I can lift more weight, stretch over a wider range, and go faster, longer on the cardiovascular machines, am I dying? When I have added more weight to the bench press and am completing the last of the repetitions that I have assigned myself, as I did today: In that moment, I have won. I have won!
As you probably infer, during the more broadly defined interlude between diagnosis and death, the time-consuming writing of this blog is, for me, another way of struggling, of fighting back.
