In the Valley of Fear.

ON MONDAY I HAD MY FIRST MRI IN THREE MONTHS. Human beings can adapt to anything, even the most extraordinary becomes routine. One simple hour enclosed in a metal monstrosity, clicking and banging like gnashing teeth, focusing only on stillness and breath. I had become accustomed to a return to normalcy, the mundane, the rote; Punctuated now and then by explosions of apprehension; the endless tests, scans, assessments; the tables of numbers, graphs and projections; trying to remind myself not to grasp too tightly at anything, not to fixate on any instance of purchase in torrents of data. Expectation is the great beast to be reckoned with; an accomplice to this insidious disease.

48 hours pass without a word. I wake to wade into the intoxicating vapours of existentialism, critiquing and editing an essay for someone dear. Then the familiar number on my phone, a request for a follow up with my surgeon. The world falls away yet again: Will this be good news or bad? What data can one trust—my CEA score from Friday: Carcinoembryonic antigen, telltales of tumours, 17 at my diagnosis now down to 1. Within normal tolerances. I want to hold on it, but I resist the urge to give in to blind optimism. Puccini’s “Cristanemi” glides into my umwelt over the radio; art imitating life or mocking it? I can’t focus now. The apprehension is unbearable. The damnable loneliness, a panopticon encompassing my endless minutes on hold with the surgical team; requesting a callback with more information, anything to salvage this now torpedoed day. If uncertainty had form, I would take it out behind the woodshed and put a .30cal slug into the organ of its deception; the epigenetic Motherfucker. My body my salvation, or my body the Judas? Is it robbing me of more time? Of all my time? The contingencies of the worst case a tsunami in my guts. Please don’t be bad news…