On Healing Masses and Radioactivity

I made an early decision to try and keep myself open to any form of support be it meals, prayers, alternative medicines, talisman, voodoo charms or hand holding.

In my pocket I carry an angel of healing medal, I wear a cross with healing stones, I have three bottles of Lady of Lourdes water and a necklace, with what has become my mantra on it, which someone sent me with no card and a Canadian return address (it looks like it came from Etsy--if you sent it please let me know so I can thank you properly!).

So when my friend Andy called me and asked me if I wanted to go to a healing mass I said sure. I thought why not? I didn't know what to expect or what I would have to do but I thought I have faith, and there is something very powerful about saying I believe.

Andy drove up from Baltimore. He picked up my friend Dave in Hoboken and my girlfriend Lauren drove in from Brooklyn. We met for tapas and a nice glass of wine. We talked, we laughed, we got caught up.

If any of you knew the four of us in college you would know that we would be the last four people out of our group of friends who would be heading towards a church. There might have been a few times the four of us were in a van heading somewhere, but I guarantee you there were probably some unholy acts occurring as well.

But there we were navigating the Merritt Parkway on a cold New England night looking for a little hope, a little more faith and some healing.

Would it surprise any of you to know that when we got to the church it was pretty dark? There were only a couple of cars in the parking lot and about three other people inside. We sat, we waited, we giggled a little at the fact that we had come all this way and there was no priest to lead us. (Although in a totally unrelated aside, I guess no priest is better than the priest that married my brother and sister-in-law, who recently got arrested for selling meth to support not only his drug habit but his adult sex shop.) And finally we decided to go.

Priest or not priest though, there was some healing that night for me. There was the familiarity of being around old friends, of being able to be myself, of not having to focus so much on the cancer. I even stepped out with no wig. I thought I pulled it off okay.

I am grateful to my friends for making the effort, for being willing to explore every avenue out there, to give me the opportunity to find a way to help heal.

Radioactive

I am radioactive.

I am.

I have a note with my name on it that explains why a Geiger counter might go off in my presence.

I spent my morning in a mobile unit attached to the outside of a hospital getting injected with a radioactive dye and stuffed in a tube for twenty minutes.

The only thing I can say about it is please.

Please. Please.

Please show some shrinkage. Please show that this cancer hasn't spread that the meds are doing their job.

Please make the awkward chatting with the kind-of-off PET scan guy worth it.

Please give me something concrete and positive to hold on to, proof that all the days in the chemo chair are making a difference and that not being able to hug or hold my kids tonight is just a small price that I will have to pay, a few short hours in one short day in a long line of days to come.