It's been kind of fascinating to see how the seemingly bizarre can come to seem fairly normal and routine.
If anyone had mentioned to me seven-plus months ago that I'd find myself sitting in a Barcolounger at a clinic in Boston every two weeks getting pumped full of poisons for five hours through a device implanted in my chest, followed by two days of lugging around a purse-like take home pump with tubing that snakes up under my shirt to pump more poisons through said device (I'm currently attached. I always worry that someone on the T or train, seeing those tubes running up under my shirt from a bag, is going to think I'm a terrorist packing a bomb. Perhaps I just don't have quite the, um, look, of a terrorist!) before returning to have the IV tubing disconnected, port flushed, and sent on my way for another couple of weeks, and told me that it would come to seem normal, seem routine, I'd have thought they were crazy. And obviously it is not the norm; most people (fortunately) do not undergo such a thing.
But for someone such as myself who, prior to all of this, had been pretty healthy, never needing much in the way of medical care, certainly not intensive, on-going treatment, suddenly finding myself having to undergo the above... The thing that I've found interesting is how relatively easy it has been to adapt to such things. Changes come around in everyone's lives, positive and negative; new job/loss of job, relocating, new relationships/loss of relationships, marriage/divorce, kids, and yes, health issues too. Some people are great at accepting and dealing with changes; adapting, learning, and growing from them. Others, not so much. More often than not I've been in the latter category, often not accepting, adapting to, or embracing aspects of change until too late. Yet I've been surprised at how seemingly well I have been able to adapt to this- pretty radical- change in my routine, in my life. Much credit for that ease of adaptability must go to my medical team, for taking the time and effort to explain things fully and thoroughly, to acclimate me to what the treatment involves, and for making it as pleasant, comfortable, and seemingly normal an experience as something like that can possibly be. (The worst part? Excepting the sensitivity to cold following treatment, the sheer boredom of sitting there for about five hours, even with TV, books, 'Net access, tunes, etc... That, and the smell; I've come to call it chemo smell. I don't know if it is the smell of the various drugs being used on patients, supplies, disinfectant/cleaning materials, or what, but the clinic has a unique, and odd, smell of it's own.) But also being diagnosed with and facing the illness I have has changed my focus, made me more tolerant and accepting of a lot of things, be they medical procedures, treatments, and everything involved with those, but also human frailties, quirks, and imperfections (tho' it's still somehow easier to tolerate and accept those in others than in myself) and simply not sweating many of the small things that in the past I often would. Saying "life's too short" is a little too morbid; "life's too precious"/"life's worth living" are perhaps more positive expressions.
And really- what choice do any of us have but to adapt to change?
