Besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Praise be to Jebus for drive-thru's and chocolate. Inhaling that Big Mac after 10 days of garlic-drowned crap was a divine experience. Although they totally fucked me on the fries and my little red carton was only half full. Bastiges. I also made sure the very first thing that dissolved on my tongue was a Dove bar. It served so many purposes...

Before I get to the meat and potatoes (mmmm, potatoes), I first must thank each and every person who sent thoughts my way, lit candles, used their super vibe powers, wrote me directly, left comments, or crossed multiple body parts (hope there weren't any injuries). Call it prayer, call it what you will, but I'm living proof that it does work. It's sustaining and important, effective and so incredibly appreciated. Seriously. I can feel it. And i'm SO blessed with the friends I have and the strangers who care. Love you guys.

Here's the deal. I have a shadow. God Dammit. A shadow. In my neck. Looming about like a ghost trying to make trouble. Crap. Fuck. Ballsac. Crap.

What this means, I'm not sure. My scan wasn't clean. It wasn't necessarily positive either. It's a question mark. I hate question marks. They're the total fag of punctuation marks. With it's bulbous head and fancy half-swirl. Homo. I officially hate them. For prosperity's sake and pure spite, I will replace them with the ampersand in this post. Fucker question marks. (And please don't get all bent out of shape because of my disparaging homosexual remarks, I have the blessing of my lovely and very gay best friend).

Here's some medical stuff:

Thyroid cancer is a very slow growing cancer. Many times someone will die of other causes and during a CSI moment, they'll discover thyroid cancer. The kind I had (have&) has a very low mortality rate. Going through all of it sucks ass and changes your life forever and is scary as all fuck, blah blah blah. Most of the medical profession treats you like you have a cold, which needs to change or my foot is going to find itself up so many asses, and I don't have that kind of time or the proper footwear.

You have to be scanned for the rest of your life, but here's the rub. If they find something, they don't know if it's cancer or not. But the treatment is the same. (A hefty dose of radioactive iodine, quarantine, weeks off of my life-sustaining meds and months and months of nasty side effects of pain). They will just assume anything found on a scan could be cancer, even if it's benign tissue. Not a great deduction, in my opinion. Radiation is no picnic, and preparing for it, not-to-mention the 12 months of recovery (ha ha, there's irony for you) are horrible. I have yet to recover from what I want through over a year ago.

The scan is not supposed to be the only tool. There's a blood test that they use as the second marker telling the story. I have anti-bodies, so my blood tests are useless. My body started fighting the cancer and released a bunch of virus-killing anti-bodies, but since cancer isn't the flu, all it does is leave them floating around like fembots when you're looking for a real girl. She's got a nice rack, but it's made out of plastic. So, they can't tell if I really have cancer cells or not. Technology Shmology.

So, here's my plan. There will be no falling apart. There will be no doomsday speeches. There will be no more obsessive, ruminating thoughts about this subject. There will be no more "life on hold", existing in a state of paralyzing fear, floating in a state of limbo. There will be no more feeling like shit almost every day. There will be no more beating myself up like Mike Tyson on crack. There will absolutely, positively, one hundred fucking percent, be no more blaming myself for this cancer. Amen. ~Bow~

I'm not sure what happened when I was standing in that hospital hallway being told of the shadow. I felt hot tears start to fall down my cheeks. I could feel the panic gripping my chest. I had to pull myself together to get a blood test and I did. I walked out of the hospital with a bandage on my throbbing needle-poked hand fumbling for the chocolate that I no longer wanted.

I made a couple calls and as I was telling the story things started the change. I somehow knew this would be the outcome and as my tears dried up, a newly found peace took over. I just knew it would turn out this way. I was only relieved with my clean scan news last year for about 2 days when the overwhelming fear set back in. Listen to your gut people. It knows.

I started to think about my life and feeling so unbelievably trapped all the time because of the cancer. And I'm done. I'm fucking done! I don't want to be scared anymore. I don't want to feel like I've been slapped in the face by some imaginary force every time I hear the word cancer (20 times a day). I don't want to wonder if I can make plans for the weekend because I'm not sure how I'll feel. I don't want to live with this particular shadow over me. I might have one in my neck, but I don't have to fucking live under one anymore.

Of course I'm not so naïve that I think this is some newly adopted full-time attitude. I kind of woke up with an optimism hang-over this morning already. Most of the time I'm a realist. Proudly so. Sometimes an optimist, more often a pessimist. But usually I don't look at a glass to judge whether it's half full or half empty. I simply say, it's a glass, it has water in it. Sometimes I appreciate whatever measurement of liquid refreshment it will provide, sometimes I'm resentful it's not pure Vodka. I try to be a straight-shooter, light on the BS, heavy on the matter-of-fact. And it's time to apply it to this aspect of my reality. The reality I'll be dealing with for the rest of my life, but it's going to be my life.

I had this strange sensation wash over me as I was making and receiving calls and answering questions to my on-line friends. I'm O.K. I'm really O.K. Somehow I don't think this spot in my neck is anything to worry about, but if I have to be treated, it will done on my time-line. Hey doc, I can pencil you in sometime in October. I will control what happens to my body, as much as I can, and I will do my damnedest to control what happens in my mind. I'm totally kick-ass and it's time I make that my mantra instead of "oh shit oh shit oh shit".

I'll be waiting to hear from my endocrinologist to see what he's going to recommend, but in the meantime, I'm good. I'm loving my friends. I'm looking forward to being good to myself to the core. Not just with new shoes and sparkly jewelry, but with a much nicer inner voice. I'm so in love with the most beautiful man on the planet it's sick and I can't wait for the future.

And to the cancer that has interrupted enough of my life in the last 2 years. You can't hurt me anymore. Take that, asshole.



**All the feelings and sentiments stated here are subject to change. I'm still a kook, afterall. Heh.