Looking Back, Part 1

But first an apology …
I am sorry to have been remiss in updating this blog. Some friends would ask me to write something, and I kept meaning to, thinking I’d get to it soon. Most of us know how that goes, to some degree, but this was particularly bad. I’d especially like to apologize to those who were concerned about my health because they’re not in my area and don’t see me in person, and this blog was how they were following my condition. The last thing I wanted to do was worry anyone, when one purpose of writing this was to do the opposite.
It’s worse in this case, because part of me knows I should have just thrown up a quick post giving the shortest of updates, but I was sure I’d be able to do a better one if I just waited a day or two. (In general I’m not a perfectionist – and in my practice try to do the next best thing when I can’t do what’s ideal; but that is a subject for another post.)
Time sped ahead, as it tends to do, slipping quickly into the future, more even quickly than we realize. (Another reminder to get a move on, along the spiritual path, because time is short. As our class just heard from Shantideva, “This is no time to sleep, you fool!”)
I view my slowness in getting around to writing an update as a version of the secondary Bodhisattva downfall of not replying to others. Will keep trying to purify that: Good thing our annual Vajrasattva Retreat starts next Saturday!

In my defense I will say that because of the fatigue, my main side effect on chemo over these last few years, my days are shorter, and I often don’t get to the important things I want to do. Plus, since February any blogging energy I had went into the Portugal Travel Tips blog, which was easier for me to do because it was just putting together information, rather than trying to write more thoughtfully. Thinking has also been more difficult, another side effect of the chemo. For example, it would take me three times as long to write a dedication for Offering to the Spiritual Guide as it used to. Memory too takes a hit.
You’ve probably heard cancer patients talk about “chemo brain,” which I like to mispronounce as “chemo blame,” an all-purpose excuse for faults whether they’re really related to treatment or not. But I’m kidding, because the trick is to acknowledge there are these potential effects without letting yourself off the hook, as though you’re just along for the ride – the complete opposite of the Buddhist approach.
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When last we heard from our heroine (and that is correct as lowercase, except in her imagination – but she is on her way to the enlightenment that will merit the uppercase “Heroine,” as are all of us Bodhisattvas; thank you for keeping me company and providing support along the way), she had miraculously qualified for a clinical trial that gave her access to an experimental drug. That probably isn’t technically correct: I don’t think I’ve ever heard any Buddhist use the word “miracle,” but maybe I can get away with “miraculous,” as in extraordinary, as in emanated by the Buddhas.
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By the way, I’m back on Dex, the corticosteroid that has often accompanied me on these adventures. I’ve been on and off, and at varying dosages, this drug that helps alleviate side effects but also increases appetite – with subsequent weight gain – and causes insomnia, a tendency to obsessiveness (people are known to stay up all night cleaning), talkativeness, but also gives energy. When I meditate, the monkey mind is much stronger, so I have to use a tighter leash. 
It’s another one of those phenomena I get to see closer up being on different drugs, trying to balance an understanding of what’s happening without using it as an excuse to give in.
So, like everything in samsara, at best a mixed bag. But thought I’d warn you because my writing – obviously a reflection of my mind – is likely to go off on tangents, and have trouble getting back to the main road – if I don’t keep an eye on the map.
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Where were we? Yes, recapping her Buddhist cancer adventure …
Last October she started on this treatment that combined 2 traditional chemo drugs that she knew well with a promising new drug that was said to be especially effective for her genetic profile. She learned about it when she had a tumor wander to her brain, which isn’t the usual scenario for her cancer but indicated that she probably had this mutation, and that there were some new drugs that worked especially well for those carriers. Another one of  those mixed bags: You don’t want a mutation that tends to cause cancer or one that tends to cause cancer to go to your brain, but if you do have it, there are drugs that work better for you than for other patients.
But I was told repeatedly by doctors and nurses that I almost certainly wouldn’t qualify for a clinical trial, the only way to have access to that drug, particularly an early-phase trial like this one, because all the chemo I’d already had or the brain metastasis would rule me out, pharmaceutical companies understandably wanting the most promising patients so that the drug can move forward to approval. So it amazed even my doctor that I qualified for the trial. Not at all ordinary.

Another aside: It’s kinda fun, and interesting to write in yourself in the 3rd person. I’ve never thought of this before in terms of writing, but it seems useful as another way of looking at the emptiness of our self. We commonly, instinctively, think of ourself in the 1st person, as me or I. So what happens when we put ourself into a character of she or he? It’s a bit like becoming That Mountain, looking back at This Mountain. You see yourself from the outside, as others might view you, but of course everyone’s view is different.
Notice how hard it is, because she keeps slipping into  writing in the “I” mode… Anyway, something else to think about it, that might deserve its own post at some point.
Speaking of characters, something else I’d like to write more about some time is playing around in meditation break with imagining myself as an actor, seeing the environment as a set, hearing others speak the lines I’ve written for them …. Simply projections, an unreality.

The clinical trial was going well, with the tumors shrinking and the side effects mild, until a turning point came in June. …

Sorry but I need to stop for now. In the past, I would have just saved this as a draft and made it better, but I am trying to follow my own advice here that often something is better than nothing.
Blogs are serial by nature, so maybe this serialization is fitting.
Stay tuned.