Looking at it now, I feel like it began
with me being thrown in the back of a car, blindfolded and then
dropped on a back road in the middle of nowhere (which, given where
we live, and if I'm going to be honest with you, could actually be
just a couple of miles from our house), and told to find my way. Not
my way home, mind you, but find my way to the next thing that
happens. Get on that cancer path and go, mister.
I was allowed to take the blindfold
off, so I can at least look for guideposts. Since I have no idea what
I'm doing, let alone where I'm going, useful guideposts can be few
are far between.
I suppose that “the next thing that
happens,” is generally some special moment in time, some event that
has an anniversary or something else special about it, and I get to
check it off the list of things I wasn't sure I was going to live to
see.
I was first diagnosed with multiple
myeloma in September, so the first big thing I wondered about would
be whether I would see Christmas that year. This was very early on,
obviously, yet, to this day, I have never been given a prognosis, nor
do I want one. Still, it became quickly apparent that we were talking
months, years even, rather than weeks.
It's been just about 2 ½ years now,
and Sheri and I are pretty happy about that. We've had three
Christmases together; plenty of birthdays for ourselves, our children
and out grandchildren. We saw our oldest grandson, Jacob, graduate
from high school. Well, we didn't actually see him. I was going
through a period where I was really too sick to travel, but at least
we celebrated it, and there were pictures.
Sheri and I have had all that time
together, to enjoy each others company and help each other over the
rough bits, not the least of which was her current broken
leg/ankle/sprained knee adventure.
And I was able to reunite (by phone)
with a person who has been my friend longer than anyone currently in
my life. That's Peters, whom I've mentioned before. At one time
Peters was not his real name, it was his radio/TV name. But I guess
he had it changed at some point in the 20 years we were out of touch
and now it is his real name so I can't really give him a cool
pseudonym like Walter or Sheila or Wanda June or Hank.
We met when he was doing news and I was
the nighttime disc jockey at a small radio station in New York's
Fingerlakes. We stayed in touch, no matter where life took us, for 20
years, then... we didn't, and now we do again. I'm glad I was around
for that to happen.
He's currently head of my Greater
Boise, Idaho, Area fan club. Besides him and his wife Bonnie (that is
her real name), I'm not sure how many people that entails, exactly,
but I have a feeling he isn't going to go broke spending money on
postage to distribute the club newsletter.
I suppose you're probably wondering
what's got me thinking about all this, since it isn't really a very
cheery subject, or is it? Discuss.
Well, on April 6, I will have been in
this country for 53 years. 53 years. We arrived from Scotland on a
Saturday morning at New York's principal airport, when it was still
named for the Idlewild Beach Golf Course that it displaced.
At first the anniversary was a big
thing and I kept track, always aware when the date was approaching.
Somewhere in the purple haze that was the early 1980s of my life, I
stopped caring about it. I was here to stay and I'd been in America
longer than I'd been in Scotland. Those seemed like the only good
reasons to keep track.
So, my cancer journey continues, and
we'll continue to make check marks on the way. Though I've never
asked “Why me?”, no matter where we were in the journey, I would
be lyin' if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind: Would I have
cancer if we had stayed in Scotland? But that's quickly followed by,
“Who cares?” What I have is beyond my ability to express
gratitude for, so what does it matter that I've also picked up a
crappy little disease?
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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