Diary Entry

Cancer Gadfly: Limbo

After a series of stable scans, and almost 4 years of monthly chemo, last week my cancer treatment was abruptly cancelled. No doctors, nurses, blood draws, or infusions, not, at least until the next scan, 3 months from now, delivers its verdict. Since my cancer belongs to the “treatable but incurable” variety, I’ll never be fully done with the scan-to-scan existence. Not even my eminent oncologist can say for sure whether my nodules (term of art) are dead or just playing dead. It’s cancer limbo.

Normally, limbo doesn’t have much to recommend it. My beloved Webster’s Third (circa1966) spells it out.

Limboyellow

But nothing about cancer is normal, and stable, they say, is the new good. Once you accept that, limbo starts to seem appealing. If I were the sort of person who could be happy, I would be. Believe me, I’m trying. In the meantime, however, I note that the timing of my new status couldn’t be better, under the wire for inscription in the Book of Life, and for writing my own book.

Shana Tova


Nancy K. Miller. Diary

Welcome. Some musings on my current preoccupations with the worlds of illness and the worlds of books, the vicissitudes of living with cancer and the need now, in my eighties, to imagine what new writing might be. 

View Diary posts related to the My Multifocal Life project.

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