Radioactive but doing well

Well I'm radioactive and must carry a card now for 1 month. I will set off detectors employed by homeland security in toll booths and the like. I could be pulled over by a black car... and
they might say: "Paper's please!".

It's quite possibly the end of the cancer and I'll just need non-invasive tests and scans
every 3 months, then 6 months, then yearly. What an experience this has been!
Starting at the end of February driving through an 8 inch snowstorm to get a biopsy.
And then flying off to Orlando knowing I might get bad news. Then getting the bad news on
a payphone with Disney music playing. The shock of a big ugly tumor - you look in the mirror
and you see death just growing out of your neck. Ring around the rosy indeed.
That song came from the Black Plague. Radiologist chatted for 15 minutes with me...
cute asian man. About 35. He said my post-surgery scan showed I'd gone to world-class
surgeon. Phew!

I'm in isolation for 7 days but can go out to the store... just not stand next to anyone because
I might damage their thyroid gland. I'm not afraid of feeling a little sick. I've been through a lot
and I want to say, more needle sticks in my arm in 3 months than seems just ... I could never be a junkie! Today is a lazy day and the skies are bright blue. Yesterday big thunderstorms ended our heat spell. 90, 94, 97, and yesterday was 96 in New Paltz. We'll be back up to the 90s soon.

You know, I really discovered myself a bit more with this illness. It's a transformative event.
I can see the negative self-talk because with an illness that happens a lot....
So you get to observe yourself a lot more - as I got closer and closer to panic, I got a chance to
practice over and over the kind of self-management I needed to get by. Death Panic gets only so bad, and then it crashes. The next time it came, I saw the death panic ramping up and I caught it sooner. Fear is exhausting.

It's like, the panic isn't me. It's a habit. When I was young I couldn't see the difference between myself and my thoughts at all. These late life epiphanies....
And death panic underlies so many of our other fears. To actually get to deal with death fright
and live a few more years or more... that's a great gift. Not that you still don't lose your cool and
want to give someone the finger who cuts you off in traffic. But the temper just runs out of
power so quickly now... 2 seconds later you're chuckling to yourself. But this tumor was really
of epic proportions... almost like it came down from on high. I flatter myself, perhaps...
but this was a big-honkin' cancer, huge with 2 different forms of Thyroid Cancer inside it.
The other side of the thyroid? Clear, clean, not even a benign growth. "unremarkable"
said the Pathology report. I'm gonna have lunch and go for a radioactive walk.