I have never been a prolific writer. I
have always tended to write in fits and starts. Whether it's starting
a short story, or a book, or even other attempts at columns... My
output has always been rather limited.
In this case, though, I've been pretty
thorough. As I've mentioned here what must seem like countless times,
somewhere along the way, many people have come to depend on me for a
weekly dose... of whatever it is they get from this. That sentence
calls out for a cheap joke. But I'm running a little low on them.
Truth is I'm running low on a lot of
things. If some of you have been working on collecting the whole set
of “Finding the Pony” through the Kennebec Journal and/or the
Morning Sentinel, you'll find yourself a little short. Not all my
blogs have been published in the papers, though far and away the
majority have. There is also the variance in my own output.
When I started, there were weeks I
wrote a couple of columns as things happened too fast around my
cancer treatment for one blog to give me the relief writing brings
me. There may even have been a couple of weeks when there were three.
The numbers, and what was going on with
my treatment at the time, don't tell the whole story of my heady
output. The protocol for treating my multiple myeloma, prior to my
stem cell transplant, included a dose of chemotherapy, taken in
capsule form; an IV dose of Velcade, a targeted therapy approved for
use in treating multiple myeloma; and steroids... lots and lots of
steroids.
Steroids, though actually an important
part of my care at the time, also made me manic on a scale comparable
to... let's say... oh... The Tasmanian Devil in Warner Brother
cartoons. They gave me extra energy, made it impossible to stop
talking, and left sleeping as nothing but a pleasant memory.
So, just taking steroids would have
given me extra waking hours and available energy to write plenty of
columns. But the thing is... On top of that, in the beginning I
misunderstood the directions on the bottle of steroids. Judging by
the oh-so-many people who showed me the label and directions written,
as they so kindly noted, in little words even a child could follow,
it should have been ABUNDANTLY clear I was to take them once a week,
not once a day.
I saw more than my share of sunrises
during this time, since I was consistently still awake when the sun
came up. My writing output showed considerable volume, but it also
showed a considerable amount of “Forty Monkeys Given Typewriters;
Produce 'Hamlet,'” with similar results. For each “There's
something rotten in the state of Denmark,” there waaaaay many more
“Tjslkdjf jso pppdfa jhnsasm””s.
Anyway, did I have any idea how many
people would respond to my writing about my journey through cancer?
No. Did I have any idea the impact it would have on people? No. Did I
know people would send me stuff in the mail? No, but that was cool.
In truth, I didn't know if the number
of blogs would even get into double digits, either because of my
heretofore shaky output, or my losing the fight in the very early
rounds.
In the beginning, the writing didn't
come too hard, really, because I was able to address multiple
myeloma/cancer stuff, medical stuff and technical bits of what was
going on around me.
Still, it wasn't long before I realized
that I was going to end up revealing a lot more about me and my
feelings than I had originally intended. And that was because of you,
brothers and sisters, because of you. You had so many kind words and
offered so many thanks for my being able to ease your fears, or help
you deal with a loved one being sick. What was I supposed to do but
keep writing?
Same with Sheri too. As I wrote about
what she had to live through on a daily basis, caring for someone she
loved living with cancer- the second time she had had to do so. Her
son Jason suffered from neuroblastoma twice before he was four years
old (He's now 37)- you told us it helped so many of you deal with the
same challenges in your lives.
And then, somewhere along the way, I
realized I was actually writing about dying from cancer, not living
with it. Doesn't that strike you as odd? It does me. Multiple myeloma
is incurable and it kills people. So, though on the surface, I was
writing about living with all that, in my heart I was obviously
preparing for the opposite. Wow.
Still, here I am still standing, still
writing, still waiting for Godot. I made that last bit up. I am
waiting to see what happens next, though, and I hope to be able to
share it with you, whatever it may be.
There are a variety of versions of
the story that gives this blog its name. The pony is the constant in
all of them. A man is on his way to a party when he comes across a
young boy shoveling ass over tea kettle at an enormous mountain of
manure. The man asks the child if he wouldn't rather go with him to
the party than shovel all that poop. The kid says, “No way man.
With all that poop... there must be a pony in there somewhere.
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