At the time of my cancer diagnosis I had not yet launched my blog. I’d been working on a blog – or three – Before Cancer (BC): one about EcoGardening, one about LakeLiving and one about other pieces of my life. Cancer shut all that down. Cancer seized so many parts and pieces of my life.
I ended up writing Very, Very, Extremely Long posts on Facebook for friends and family, starting with the breaking news of the diagnosis that was delivered to me by phone in late winter of 2018.
I just didn’t have the heart to tell the same story – and all those shattering details – over and over again to all my people, so my Break-the-News FB post, which became the first of the first Cancer Chronicles, was like writing my traditional long, rambling holiday group letter. Only not. So not.
My need to tell the story as it was unfolding felt desperate, like trying to beat a countdown. After all, this was Cancer and if I was going to write and send my story out there it had better be now, polished writing or not, because, um, cancer.
Telling my story is like flashing people. Flashing – literally – since it’s my breast that harbors the cancer.
Or maybe it’s more like (performance) hopscotch meets strip poker, only I’m not young and agile anymore to put it mildly. And here, I’m the only one who’s stripping and hopping from square to square and It’s. Not. Pretty.
Originally, I had intended to only cut and paste those FB posts, with minor revisions – mostly to flesh out some of the especially spacey-headed writing during chemo-brain, and then radiation-brain rot – and let that story stand as is. But an insistent voice within urged me to add to the public FB posts the private emails that I wrote to intimate friends and family.
And wouldn’t you know it, just as I was patching together the public FB posts and the private emails, it occurred to me that I should mine some of my more personal Morning Writing Practice pieces from my Cancerland journey for details, now forgotten, and for helpful information to share.
Oh, how I wish that I knew then what I know now about cancer treatment.
Since this blog is a memoiresque, slice-of-life, wanna-be Book, I’ll jump around all jiggly and I’ll strip naked and reveal my not-yet-book-ready but truth-telling story in my finally launched, blog: the new and enhanced Cancer Chronicles.