I only have to drive Colorado Blvd. once a year now. I noticed some new restaurants that look delicious. I’ll have to try them another time…
Same waiting room feet. New shoes. Same knots in my stomach.
Familiar, known, jaded…
unknown, new, naïve.
Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.
A new nurse named Jennifer. As always, the nursing staff are wonderful. She liked my tattoos. Her daughter is a Marine. A little plaque on her wall said, “be kind always.” She was. She was successful on the first try. That isn’t always the case….
Same exam room posters. There haven’t been any updated ones with any new knowledge; I find that interesting. Surely there is new information?
Same triggers sitting there waiting. The waiting feels both exactly like it did that very first day and very different with all of the “me’s” that have shown up every day since. I notice the screen saver on the computer. It has a very interesting meaning to me now in this waiting.
Time stands still as February 24, 2025 is August 30, 2017 …while also embodying to my very core, my very cells, every.massive.second.between.
The dualities that today’s appointment held are so interesting to me…
I am so grateful to have an oncologist that seems the same as the first day I met her. She looks the same. She dresses the same. She listens the same. She cares the same.
But she’s lived a whole lotta days since, too. And has seen what she has seen. Heard what she has heard.
I thought of the days she’s shown up for 100s of other cancer patients. I haven’t seen her in a year but she shows up to that office every single day. What would that be like, I wonder…
Some of her patients have almost certainly died. What is that like?
And then I thought, “damn. I have an oncologist.” Which led me down quite the spiral.
I’m grateful for her. I hate that I have to have an oncologist, though. I know the weight of that word. I acknowledge the heavy that she carries with it, too. And with such kindness. What has made her kind?
Sitting there talking through my chronic pain and lived experience of chemo forever marring my internal systems and hearing her say, “It’s hard to hear, and it’s hard for me to say, but I think now it’s time to accept that this will be what it always will be.” Fascinating….In such a way that my thought was, “Finally. Finally it can just be known. Finally I won’t have to strive to ‘fix’ something that has broken and will now always be. Finally I won’t be perpetually letting myself down. Finally I don’t have to argue my point.” There was a sense of freedom that came with it… I didn’t hear a “giving up” but rather “I finally see”…a “settling” …an “I won’t argue.” Which means maybe now I can, too. …Finally see. Settle. Stop arguing.
Trauma doesn’t live in the same construct of time as we do. My body knows…and I mean, IT KNOWS…what has occurred in this place and yet in that remembering, it doesn’t differentiate days…years…
There is a burden of knowledge that comes with trauma so I sit there knowing what I know and yet, I actually don’t know. Yet.
Hearing her words, “I find nothing of concern” in the very same room I heard, “It’s advanced. Surgery, chemo, radiation, lifelong surveillance will be necessary.”
Time colliding in a confusing paradigm. The sensation of, “I’m glad nothing is of concern” while holding, “I must always be concerned.”
The duality of “I trust all is well” with “I can never fully trust again.”
The dualities that today’s appointment held are so interesting to me…
I was driving home thinking about the next appointment I scheduled. February 23, 2026. It’s already on the calendar. And while I’m not already living that far ahead, I do find myself wondering what all will happen in between. And I wonder…Will she be there? Will I? Will there be new restaurants to try?
Thanks for reading. 🫶🏼🩵