Jeannine Hall Gailey's Blog, page 55

AWP LA 2016 Recap: alien flowers, writers, and speculative women

AWP 2016 Recap:

Back from LA and AWP 2016 (I got in at 4 AM yesterday, and I’m still a bit zombie-esque) so I can finally recap it for you!

Had a wonderful time doing the panel on “Women in Spec” with Lesley Wheeler, Nancy Hightower, Sally Rosen Kindred, and Margaret Rhee. The room was packed (and about 112 degrees) and the audience response afterwards was really positive. I really enjoyed hearing the panelists talk about their inspirations, their publishing experiences, the way they found community in the speculative writing world. It made me feel more optimistic! We made an audio recording which I might be able to upload from my phone. I loved talking to people after the panel, too. It made me feel so hopeful for the future of women’s writing in this genre!

 

Thanks to everyone who worked hard to make this AWP happen! The bookfair was large but not as crowded as Seattle’s AWP. I sold some books at my signing and was happy to see lots of old friends (although never as many as you want to see, isn’t that always the way?) I got to see most of my publishers (Steel Toe Books, Moon City Press, Two Sylvias Press) except Judith from Mayapple Press and of course James from New Binary in Ireland, and talk to a few magazines I’d recently had acceptances from, which was fun. I picked up some contributor copies, swag, and a couple of new books from friends. (See the Rumpus mug and Moon City Press t-shirt? Cool, right?)

AWP Swag and Books

I was navigating all of AWP in a wheelchair and with a cane, and that made the whole experience a little more difficult (although at Seattle’s AWP I had a broken elbow and was recovering from pneumonia, so…) It also meant I couldn’t run up and hug friends from across the room, and fewer people made eye contact with me (what is it about wheelchairs that does that? Wheelchairs aren’t contagious, people!) I heard several publishers say their sales weren’t as good as at AWP’s past (LA isn’t really a book town like Seattle or Minneapolis – when I lived in SoCal, it was hard to find books at the actual library) and there was a decision not to make the bookfair open and free to the public on Saturday which may have had a negative impact that way. It’s always nice to just to be around other writers talking about writing, though!

Here are some pics from parties and bookfair!

I wish I’d been walking w/o my cane or wheelchair – I’d been doing really well until an injury right before the conference – and that our travel plans (cough, Virgin lost my wheelchair for an hour and the rental car didn’t have a car available big enough to put a wheelchair in, cough) hadn’t messed up my plans on Thursday to register and get to at least one evening keynote or reading – but these frustrations were reminders that traveling with any kind of disability is tough. I hadn’t flown for six years – and I remember why now! A bad immune system and any kind of mobility problem – from an inability to walk large distances to carrying a suitcase – make travel extra difficult.

I stayed a bit away from the conference in Hermosa Beach which meant navigating LA traffic – never a pleasure. But I got to make up every morning and look at the blue Pacific ocean (our ocean in WA is always gray and uninviting, even in good weather) and watch the sunset in the evening. My flights to and from both had problems, especially the incoming flight from Virgin (we actually had to change tickets home on the fly because Virgin screwed up our tickets home so much) and I think LAX is the worst airport I’ve been in since LaGuardia. I probably won’t fly again for a while, which means my next AWP will probably be Portland’s in 2019.

I was obsessed with the fascinating alien flowers blooming in strip mall parking lots, by the side of the highway, in office parks. Something about the California landscapes always makes me feel like an alien, a mutant hybrid, which is actually pretty inspiring.

Just for fun, here’s a link to a poem I wrote about California that was published in LA Weekly that sums up the frustrations and beauties of LA:

Introduction to a California Poetics

Where I’ll be at AWP 2016

Here’s where you can find me at this year’s AWP LA 2016!

I’m flying in on Thursday, hopefully in time to register before registration closes at 5.

On Friday:

I’ll be doing a panel at 1:30: AWP Panel F222: Women in Spec: Women Writers in Speculative Poetry and Fiction. 1:30-2:45. (Jeannine Hall Gailey, Lesley Wheeler, Sally Kindred, Nancy Hightower, Margaret Rhee), Room 505 LA Convention Center, Meeting Room level. Should be fun!

On Saturday:

I’ll be doing a signing from 2 PM to 3 PM at the Two Sylvias Booth (#835) in the Bookfair. Come by to chat, say hi, get a book, whatever! We’d love to see you (and Martha Silano will be there earlier that afternoon if you want to catch her!) Plus, Two Sylvias Press always has a great booth and great swag!

Where you can find my books:

This year, only two of my four publishers will be at AWP, so you can find Becoming the Villainess at the Steel Toe Books Booth (2141) and She Returns to the Floating World at Two Sylvias Press table (#835) – but even though Mayapple Press won’t be there this year, you can find The Robot Scientist’s Daughter at the SPD booth and I’m going to bring some copies with me.  I’ll also be bringing copies of Unexplained Fevers from New Binary Press. And I’m looking forward to meeting the folks at Moon City Press who are publishing Field Guide to the End of the World in November!

I’ll try to get to some offsite readings and parties as well as wandering around the bookfair, so if you see me, say hi! And if you want to get together for coffee, let me know. I’m hoping my energy holds up all the way through Saturday night

I’m so excited just to be able to go. Today I’m trying to schedule the hospital test for my liver for right after I get back, but I’m so happy to have this reprieve to just go and be a writer for a little bit. Of course, I’m dealing with another little ankle sprain (!) and woke up yesterday with a terrible sore throat (elderberry, licorice, and liquid benadryl are what I’m using to make it go away…) so I’ll be mildly impaired but not totally out! At least the chipped tooth and computer crisis (three viruses – a trojan, a worm AND an exploit – on my MacBook Pro! Grrr!) have both been resolved – thank you virus software and emergency dental appointment.  Now I just have to make sure my brain is working in literary mode!

Here’s what I look like right now, even though I’m not always standing under a cherry tree. These are pictures from Easter, which was blustery (a funnel cloud appeared – and a rainbow! Nutty weather!) and it was about 45 degrees, so I am definitely looking forward to dryness and sunshine in California!

Prepping for AWP 2016 and for more Tests

I’m so excited for this year’s AWP. It’s not just doing the panel, which I am truly enthusiastic about, or the parties, or the book fair. It’s the idea of celebrating – in a land of sunshine and seawater in what is usually for Seattle-ites a dim and blowsy month – being writers together, loving reading and writing books. If this sounds a little squishier than my typical cynical post about surviving AWP, it’s because it is.

My recent health scare (still ongoing, more on that later) has kind of illuminated parts of my life that are important to me, that give me joy and meaning, and dang it, AWP – the chance to be with other writers, while it may be stressful and chaotic, is also a magnificent chance for accidental magic – catching a reading of a writer who might be your new favorite, or running into someone you really admire but have never met and managing to string a half-decent sentence together, the chance to actually see and hang out with friends you love but never get to be in the same space with, for geographical reasons.

Here’s Entropy’s Guide to AWP 2016, which lists our panel (Women in Spec, April 1 Friday 1:30!) as one of their picks (thanks, Entropy!):

http://entropymag.org/entropys-guide-to-awp16/

It also includes good links to other advice about AWP. I think mine boils down to: eat, drink, sleep, and wear comfortable shoes – do NOT take a vacation from self-care, and your body will thank you. Let good things happen spontaneously inside of trying to plan out every little thing – it took me several years of going to AWP with detailed plans to figure that one out. And enjoy yourself in the city you’re visiting – get out and go to the beach, a museum, a great restaurant – and LA has a great restaurant scene as well as amazing dives. (I personally am staying far out from the LA downtown center in order to make sure I actually do some sightseeing. I may be allergic to the sun, but I still love hanging out in Santa Monica and Hermosa Beach, especially.) Also, come visit me at the Two Sylvias Booth at 2 PM on Saturday at the bookfair if you get a chance! I lived near LA for a year, so I got to visit often and so it feels like I’m going back to an old familiar place, which is kind of nice. Also, looking forward to being able to get ahold of really good fresh corn tortillas (hard to find here in the Seattle area, but plentiful in SoCal.)

In medical news, I got to see – finally – a liver specialist this week, a really good one. He was nice and reassuring and called me “young and healthy” several times, which I really appreciated – although, for the young part, well, he couldn’t have been more than five years older than Glenn, ha. He had an idea for hospitalizing me for one more test before trying the biopsy. He also ran down the odds of things the solid growths could be besides metastatic cancer (yay! adenomas, hyperplasias, etc.), and the odds of something going wrong bleeding-wise with biopsy. I like numbers, so I found all the information reassuring (well, the part about the likelihood of a bleeding event during a liver biopsy was sort of alarming, but I guess not totally unexpected.) So I’ll be going back to the hospital for a whole day/night thing soon, when I get back from AWP, but I’m going in with my eyes open, and with all possible precautions taken. Hopefully this test will give us enough info – positive identification of the kind of growth that is non-cancerous – to avoid the liver biopsy all together. That’s what I want you guys to think good thoughts about, if I can ask that of blog readers.

That and me not getting sick/injured before/during/after the AWP trip. This will be the first time I’ve flown in over five years! Last time I flew, I was in a wheelchair, an arm brace from a sprain AND I caught pneumonia, so you can see how that might have made me a tad anxious about flying again. Not only am I flying, I even got TSA pre-checked and found out I basically have invisible fingerprints, so I could have been an international jewel thief all this time. Ah well. Missed my calling there.

I’m looking forward to inspiration, walking on the beach, and spending a few days celebrating being a writer with a bunch of other writers!

The Spaces In Between

Between seasons, between houses, between health and illness, between life and death, between books…I’m in between a lot of things right now. I’m trying not to dwell on the bad possibilities, only the good. I’m walking again and getting stronger, which is good for AWP (because getting around the airport and convention center in a wheelchair is a drag, and I should know, I’ve done LA in a wheelchair before.) I’m trying to spend time outdoors when I can and celebrate the stuff worth celebrating. We went out on a rare sunny March day on St. Patrick’s, taking pictures of the early spring blooms (rhododendrons! cherry blossoms! azaleas!) and checking out Open Books for a poetry boost. Here’s a pic of my haul from Open Books:

We had good news from my mother-in-law, thank goodness, back at home after a long stay in the hospital and knowledge that her cancer surgery was very successful, and my grandmother is on the mend from her fractured back vertebrae. My parents actually went out to see my grandmother and got to visit the campus of Missouri State University, the home of Moon City Press, who are publishing my next book, and picked up copies of Moon City Review.

Going to a liver specialist – actually a liver transplant specialist – on Monday for a review of all my tests and any more recommendations before the biopsy. It’s the first time since the diagnosis (non-diagnosis?) of growths “strongly suspicious for metastatic cancer” in my liver that I’m actually seeing a liver specialist, not a gastroenterologist, primary care doc, or hematologist/oncologist. So I’m hopeful that maybe he’ll bring a new perspective and give me some hope about what else could be going on.

You may know we sold the house last August and we’ve been shopping for houses ever since, unsuccessfully, being outbid by people with just more money overall and way more cash. That’s been a little frustrating. We lost another bid last week, and are going by a house today. Try, try again!

I’ve been working with Moon City Press to get blurbs together, a cover, and a description of the new book for the book catalogue – all due at the end of the month, eeeep! And that’s while I’m still wondering if I’ve been doing enough to promote my book that came out last spring, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, while contemplating a November launch of Field Guide to the End of the World (my next book!)

Getting taxes and my AWP panel PowerPoint together are on the agenda for this weekend. I’m hoping for some unexpected good news to kind of balance all the rough news we’ve had the past couple of weeks. I’ve dreamed about being an acrobat and a ballerina in the past week – along with a lot of battle dreams – so I think there’s something I’m dealing with about balance, risk, and dealing with assorted dangers. Spring is coming! I feel well enough to eat and move around and do the things that make me happy, which I am grateful for. I read three books of poetry and finished Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders. I think to myself: the discomfort of being in between is temporary. I’m trying to capture the small moments of wonder inside those spaces.

March-ing Through Chaos

So this last week has been pretty chaotic – my mother-in-law got colon cancer surgery which includes a week-long hospitalization back in Ohio, my grandmother in the hospital for a broken back vertebrae, and of course, countless interactions with doctors on my whole “does your liver indicate you have metastatic cancer or not” thing.

At this point I have been granted a little bit of a reprieve, at least for a few weeks, in that I am going to be meeting with a hepatologist to discuss a possible new test called a FibroScan (low risk, but maybe only tells us if I have scarring instead of cancer in the liver, which would be a good alternative to cancer) and running allergy challenge tests with a few of the meds I’ll have to encounter with the liver biopsy.

Which means, hey, I can go to the AWP after all! Unless something else comes in and interferes, which hopefully it won’t. So I’m now trying to get back to doing taxes, making up a PowerPoint presentation for our AWP presentation on “Women in Spec” (April 1, 2 PM – put it on your schedules!) and other run-of-the-mill work.

The thing is, I’ve been distracted and it’s been hard to concentrate. Sending poetry work out has barely happened, and I haven’t been keeping track as well as usual of correspondences and commitments. Things keep slipping. I guess there’s a time frame, dealing with this kind of stuff, where you let the stuff that can slip, slip.

I am very much looking forward to seeing many of my writing friends who live across the country, who nonetheless mean a lot to me and bring a lot of joy just hanging out with them. Part of going through a crisis like this is being heart-warmed by the people who remember you, who write and send packages, flowers, and postcards. Not to be too Hallmark-y, but it’s meant a lot to me to know that people even care. AWP can be about a bunch of politics, but for me, it’s always been about being around these wonderful people – people whose work you’ve loved, and written reviews about, people you’ve corresponded with but never met, old professors and classmates – that remind you that being a writer doesn’t have to be so solitary, after all.

I’ve been trying to focus on as much of the “good stuff” of life as possible – I’ve been struggling to shake a bronchitis infection since the nuclear test, but have been reading a lovely and absorbing book – Julianna Baggott’s Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders: A Novel, which has a character with a bleeding disorder and a bunch of allergies (just like me!), noticing the signs of spring as they happen around me. Since part of my journey lately has been trying to write poems in the middle of stressful situations, here are a few of my recent haiku-ish things:

Cherry blossom petals

in the hospital parking lot

land in my hair.

 

Cut hyacinth

blown over by rain –

stay alive.

 

Daffodils spring up

wherever the shade’s fingers

cannot reach.

Keeping the Faith and Celebrating the Breaks Between Storms

So, the news from the nuclear test was not the good news we were hoping for, about benign growths. This means the liver biopsy is still necessary. I’m somewhat trepidatious about this next step, not only because my bleeding disorder makes a usual-twenty-minute procedure into a 24-hour hospitalization, but because my allergies to medical stuff seem to be on high swing (and I had a pretty nasty day-long reaction to the SPECT test contrast) and it would involve several different new drugs for me. So, not excited. But without it, we can’t know whether it’s 1. metastatic cancer or 2. any (dwindling) number of less dangerous alternative benign growths.

These days, in stormy March in Seattle, we have to take advantage of the brief moments of sunshine in between the rain, hail, wind. These pictures of early cherry blossoms were taken in just such a break in the storms. And here’s a peek at a heron in our pond, surely a sign of good fortune.

It seems like a metaphor right now – for me to take advantage of the times in between hospital trips, arduous medical tests, doctor’s appointments, blood work. I have to remind myself, my body, of why it makes sense to keep fighting, or what’s worth it. Something to help me keep the faith.

So today I went into one of those precious breaks in the rain to wonder through the UW Arboretum (for Futurama fans, “Yes, we have looking at trees”) to catch some of the early blossoms and then to the Aquarium to visit some of my favorite mammals – which run wild through a lot of the Seattle region – river and sea otters, seals, as well as the lovely jellyfish and octopus. Even just hanging out a bit downtown in the tourist area – where I listened to families speaking a variety of languages eat delicious fried fish, ride the ferris wheel, and otherwise enjoy the day, and watched a person with a unicorn head mask play the drums – reminded me of the variety and liveliness of everyday life.

In terms of poetry work, still haven’t got a cover for the new book yet, and I’ve been sending out the remaining poems to journals, and I’ve written just a couple of poems, but that’s the extant of what I’ve been able to do in the midst of everything else. I’m still hoping to make it to AWP, but I don’t know if that’s realistic or not. I’m also really appreciative of this Shenandoah Literary blog post about Becoming the Villainess by Claire Sbardella. I’ll try to keep you all updated on all the news, health, poetry, and otherwise. Thank you once again for all your good thoughts and wishes during this stressful time.

Delay on the Nuclear Test, some poetry news and a Few Words about Luck

Thank you again for all your continued good thoughts and prayers. Had to delay my scheduled nuclear SPECT test from last Friday to this Wednesday because they wouldn’t let me in for the test at the nuclear lab with a high fever and flu-like symptoms because they have so many immunocompromised patients (can’t blame them, although I literally caught it AT the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance Blood Lab, which last Monday was crowded and full of people coughing without covering their mouths) but it has prolonged the suspense over this test a few extra days. Still won’t know whether or not I need to schedule a liver biopsy til after this test. But it’s been okay – I rested up from the flu, read up a little more on the test, the types of benign growths it might reveal, and even treatment options for said benign growths, just for good measure. It was nice to think about options OTHER than cancer. I think I feel a little less scared. In the meantime, I’ve received real mail, flowers, and even a pink unicorn in the mail from friends – friends that I realized can be a real boost when dealing with serious life crises like, say, a cancer scare. In a way, this unwelcome health discovery has also revealed how lucky I am in my friends and even acquaintances – that a world that can seem indifferent can also be surprisingly comforting. In two days, hopefully I’ll have more news for you – good news, I’m hoping!

After a week of getting three rejections, I also had a little bit of good news about The Robot Scientist’s Daughter – that it is a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal for thought-provoking books from small or indie publishers.

I’ve been writing poems lately about the nature of luck – good luck charms, bad luck omens, the thing we think of as lucky and unlucky. Getting, for instance, the news that you might have metastasized cancer at 42 might be considered bad luck – but only having some benign growths that might require some surgery would really only be average or mildly bad luck. I’ve had good luck in some things – not health stuff, maybe, but in my marriage, my writing life, my friends.

Here are two poems I’ve written in the last few weeks. Maybe not my best work, so these poems will probably go “poof” in the next few days. Think good thoughts for me this Wednesday (hopefully this time I will be well enough to actually get the SPECT test!)

Lucky Fox

The black fox has told me a secret:

Death is a plaything. The fox holds it in her mouth

the way she might hold something she is considering

eating. Death might lurk around every sandy burrow

but equally, rabbits. We cannot make ourselves unhappy

seeking death out, or avoiding it. Life arrives as sudden

as a rainstorm, as uninvited. Kits underground make a sharp

squeaking, waiting for the squirrel or bit of trash

their vixen mother brings home.

The black fox looks long at me, with her white-tipped tail

as bright as the moon, her eyes an eerie grey.

What can foxes teach us? They are painted as tricksters,

but their story may be sadder than that, more rooted in survival.

Small and sharp-toothed, aren’t we very similar, the black fox and I?

Lucky

I said I was lucky. Born with an extra bone,

a single kidney, a love of words. A longing for robotic kittens.

I found a lot of pain along the way – medical mishaps,

loves lost. I might have been too young when I lost a lot of things.

I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals – first, to serve as candy striper,

later, as unwilling guest. The gift shops remain much the same –

bland, full of the same dull flowers and unremarkable greeting cards.

I like the hospital socks, pink and treaded, and the jelly beans.

I like the balloons, their cheery bobbing. I said I was lucky,

though I may be going under. I am not as buoyant as I was.

Nuclear Tests, Finding Spring, and Looking for Cover Art for Field Guide to the End of the World

Not THAT kind of nuclear test. I’m going in for a nuclear test – called a SPECT test – this Friday to get more info about what’s going on with the liver. This test might eliminate the need for a liver biopsy, because it allows them to rule in or out a certain kind of benign growth – but it might not. I’m hoping it does! Because I’ve had allergic reactions to CTscan contrast and MRI contrast, they’re pre-medicating me before putting in the tracer – a radioactive element with a short half-life called technetium. So wish me no allergic reactions and a good result!

I’ve been a little down, still, and a little anxious, so went looking for some signs of spring – outside the little jonquils springing up in my back yard. I saw a red-headed woodpecker about three feet overhead as I went out of my house (hopefully a good luck sign) and after driving fifteen minutes towards Lake Washington, started to see flowers – magnolias about to go, quince bushes blooming, rhodies and redbud and other trees. It was a bright blue February day yesterday, almost up to 60. Even if it’s supposed to start raining again tomorrow, a lovely reminder that spring is close.

I’ve been having anxiety dreams about Friday’s test (among other things,) but I’ve been distracted – in a positive way – by trying to find a good candidate for cover art for my upcoming book with Moon City Press, Field Guide to the End of the World. I’ve been prowling art sites and the internet for things that might work well for the book – collages, apocalyptic landscapes, vintage Field Guide graphics. This book has been tougher than the others to find exactly the right art for. I’m also trying to place the last few unpublished poems from the book and get blurbs. Getting back to doing a little bit of normal life stuff, which has helped my state of mind a bit.

Had to contend with some bad family news this week, and of course the kind of regular bad news that scrolls across your phone – the Dow’s plunges, political news, the um, record terrible-for-buyers real estate market in Seattle – but trying to stay upbeat. That’s the thing about spring – especially out here as the daylight is now extending, finally, up to 5:30 PM as opposed to 4 PM – it’s easy to feel the sun and see the water and mountains stretching out, and remember so many of the good things about my life.

Lost Time, Updates on the Rollercoaster Ride, and Emily Dickinson

Time has done some weird stuff lately. In between rushed medical tests, phone consults and e-mail consults with doctors, I’ve been losing hours – not reading, writing, responding to e-mails, but just – lost. I’ll chalk this up to stress, this misspent time. I’ve appreciated all those who have left notes, visited with me, written e-mails and called, those who sent flowers and cheerful messages in my last two stressful weeks. I remember that I am lucky to have quite a community, not only in person but online. You guys really do make a difference, so thank you.

I apologize for not giving updates and answers. Besides a nasty case of stomach flu I caught in between doctor appointments, after various multi-doctor get-togethers, they’ve decided to run some more tests, so I’m going in for some blood work first thing Monday morning, and then maybe a radioactive trace test to see if the liver growths might be some kind of benign solid growth …which may be good news or bad news or just medium or tedious. I am hoping for good to medium-tedious news, an outcome that won’t result in anything scary (or any more tests.) Still hoping to dodge the bullet of possible cancer or even dodge the liver biopsy, if it is possible.

During this time, several of my family members and close friends are facing their own serious health crises with various levels of grace, terror, sadness, anger, frustration. It is more terrifying watching loved ones struggle than it is to struggle yourself, as I realized a few months ago watching Glenn in the hospital. I always wish there was more I could do.

You can’t always protect yourself from danger, or bad news. We can’t ignore pain, or illness, or losing people we love. We are vulnerable and mortal. I read a lot of Emily Dickinson this week, and I realized – I don’t think she was very scared of death. “Because I could not stop for death” is almost a cheerful poem, while “I heard a fly buzz – when I died” imagines, in a sort of disembodied way, the tiny mundane fly on the other side of her own dying moments. I mean, she’s pretty gangster – she has the opposite of fear, she has curiosity. Definitely a therapeutic read during a stressful time.

Here’s a little XKCD comic for a lighter-hearted look at her poem:

We just lost two courageous and terrific writers, Harper Lee and Umberto Eco. It’s a good time to re-read Six Walks in Fictional Woods, or Foucault’s Pendulum, perhaps. “To survive, we must tell stories,” said Eco. It made me think: What kind of stories are we telling – ourselves, others, in our work? What stories will we leave behind?

The Roller-Coaster Ride of Cancer Tests, Bucket Lists, and Stages of Grief

Happy post-Valentine’s Day, everyone. I’ve been dealing with some heavy news, and not sure whether to or how to share it. This post may disappear later, or parts of it will. For now, for anyone that’s been following my health scare from the last post, here’s the follow-up.

After the CT scan in the emergency room about ten days ago, things went from bad to worse. The CT scan showed 4-5 lesions suspicious for metastasis in my liver. The follow-up MRI a few days ago, which is supposed to be a more accurate test, said the news was even worse than we expected  – 10-15 liver tumors, some of them 2.3 cm/2 cm (the larger the tumor, the worse the news, and the more tumors, the worse the news) once again, the report said, “suspicious for metastasis.” I was stunned. I think I’d honestly believed the first test was a fluke, but this report said no, it was no fluke, and yes, something seriously wrong was going on with my body. I got calls from my gastroenterologist and my hematologist – they wanted to go ahead with a liver biopsy, super dangerous for someone like me with a rare bleeding disorder, requiring not only an overnight stay in the hospital with the oversight of my hematologist – a leading specialist in weird bleeding disorders and rare cancer types – but taking some experimental drugs for my bleeding disorder I’ve never tried before, plus maybe blood plasma infusions. I want to slow down, make educated judgements, maybe get a second opinion. I still feel some paralysis when it comes to next steps. Maybe I don’t want any more bad news, and I certainly don’t want to die accidentally trying to get more bad news from a biopsy.

So that’s where I’ve been the last few days, trying to make sense scientifically and spiritually. A friend of mine in medical school has been calling regularly to help make sense of my test reports and doctor’s comments. My neurologist sent me a link to all the things that aren’t cancer that liver tumors can be, telling me she wished me the best and reminding me of the scare I had when they found the mysterious five lesions in my brain. People here on the blog and on Facebook have been as supportive as they possibly could be. My little brother came over the day I got the MRI news to help a somewhat shell-shocked Glenn and I deal with the news. It’s possible what’s showing up on the scans is a kind of fast-moving metastasized cancer – or something serious but other than cancer, like a serious infection or autoimmune problem that would still not be great news, especially for my liver. And I can’t find out exactly what’s going on without doing a test I don’t want to do next.

I started thinking about bucket lists – you know, the things you do if you found out you only had x amount of time to live. Most people think of exotic trips, jumping out of airplanes. I thought of the things I’d really want to do if I had very little time – spend time with friends and family, maybe make time to be with more animals (if someone could deliver a bunch of white fluffy kittens and miniature ponies to my doorstep I’d be much obliged), read, be in the woods. I’ve really, I realized, by 42, achieved a lot of things I’d always wanted – I always wanted to be a poet, and by the end of this year I’ll have five books of poetry out. I married a wonderful guy and this year we’ll have been married 22 years. I have pretty good relationships with my parents and my three brothers. I’m not going to leave behind small children. I don’t have that many regrets. I live in a beautiful place that I wouldn’t really want to leave – I’ve been to Paris and the South of France, I lived in Napa and Carlsbad, on islands like Bainbridge Island and a seaside resort town called Port Townsend – but I’m happy where I am right now. My bucket list wouldn’t include a lot of changes to the life I’m living right now (well, sans painful medical tests and doctor and dentist visits. I’d probably lose those. And maybe the house shopping – did I mention we’re still doing that? And taxes. I’m still worried about them.)

I want to go to the AWP LA, still. The thought of beautiful sunny beaches AND spending time with friends across the country is very appealing right now, I can tell you. Glenn’s Valentine’s present to me this year was a new piece of carry-on luggage (in pink! Valentine’s-y!) – a symbol of hope, of reassurance that I will still be doing things I want to do. I was joking I had gone through all the stages of grief with this bad and unexpected news – anger, denial, bargaining, depression and shopping…that’s a little humor, folks. I know the last one is acceptance. I just maybe haven’t quite made it there yet. I keep hearing the refrain from Liz Phair’s “Polyester Bride:” “He keeps telling me you’ve, you’ve got time/ but I don’t believe him/ you’ve got time…”

I’ve been reading the Bible with renewed interest (I don’t talk about it much here, but I am a Christian, I believe in an afterlife and maybe even a pre-life, the idea that our souls live after our bodies somewhere else, and probably lived somewhere else cool before we were born). I’ve been thinking about wills and living wills, graveyards and tombstones. I’m making plans I didn’t want to have to make for years. I’ve been thinking about the time I spent working with terminal children at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital all those years ago, how they cheerfully confront death, testing, and terribly painful treatments like champions, way better than the adults at the other hospitals I volunteered at. I want to be like those kids – taking the good stuff – playing with stuffed animals, coloring – in stride with equal grace as bone marrow transplants, chemo, and losing their hair. They were not afraid, and they were all pretty much, no matter what religion, convinced there was a Heaven and they were going to go there. They were, to a kid, unquestioningly brave. There’s a lesson in there somewhere for me.

I still have some scary stuff to face. The doctors don’t have all the answers for me. I may have to face already-metastasized cancer, and if this is something bad going on besides cancer, it’s something fast-moving and bad. Yeah, none of this stuff is wonderful for me to face. It’s not fun. I’m not sure how to handle everything, or process it. The science girl in me is doing lots of reading and research, and the poet part of me is sad I haven’t really been able to write about it yet, turn it into art. The rest of me just wants to hug my husband, my cat, listen to Nirvana, and watch things that make me laugh – old 40’s screwball comedies, Mystery Science 3000, 30 Rock reruns. I want to enjoy the things I can still enjoy. I want the maximum amount out of the life I have left.