To life!

I miss real green. California tries, but it’s not quite the same. I miss the deep blue-y green of back East and the omnipresence of tall, leafy trees that aren’t struggling for water and dependent on sprinkler systems. The ivy that grows freely up the telephone poles and races down the wires like leafy squirrels, too exuberantly full of life to hold back. Such an abundance of growing in that rainforest climate. I only allow myself to get wistful about it when I know I’m about to go home to Maryland and actually immerse myself in it all, and thank goodness for Stitches East and books to sign as an excuse to go!

Early this past spring, a routine check on my bloodwork showed that all hell had broken suddenly loose, with my white cells crashing and my bilirubin zooming. I had tolerated my chemo just fine for four years, and we didn’t know why I was reacting now. My beloved Dr. R. wanted me to cut my dose.

Now, that is the one doctor whose judgment and intuition I absolutely trust, and yet, that was a hard pill to accept: I have been through what Crohn’s can do. I don’t want to go there again. And steroids do nothing for me, I’ve already done the Remicade, so I’m pretty limited. Eh, a few white cells missing, I’ll just stay home and lay low a bit for awhile, right? To me, 2.2k was just a number.

He called and we discussed it a moment again. I was resisting, and he said, in anguish, “I don’t want anything to happen to you!”

Now, to some, that might have seemed less professional. Less detached. To me, it was doctoring at its purest: he knew what I did not, he had seen consequences I had not, and how I did meant the world to him. I had to change that dose. I couldn’t inflict the suffering and worry on him if I did not. No hedging.

And so I did. Eventually, my white cells climbed, a good news/bad news thing, and my lupus started to creep up on me, landing me in the eye doctor’s first a few months later. There’s always this immune/autoimmune tradeoff. Then, the Crohn’s started waking me up at night. Not bad, not bad yet, but I didn’t like the trajectory. I went to the lab for the latest check, and I made an appointment with Dr. R.

I wanted my dose back up. He was not quite entirely convinced. We compromised at 3/4: but only, he said, if I would go get an expensive test my insurance probably wouldn’t cover, after being on the higher dose for awhile.

I did. We just got those results back.

For the first time in I think three years, my bilirubin count is right in the middle of normal. Look, Ma, no jaundice! My white cell count is where it needs to be. It was the best news I think it could possibly have been.

And there was a note from Dr. R yesterday from the clinic: “Excellent therapeutic range…” And then the part that really spoke to me: “Keep knitting and stay well.”

Indeed I shall. Indeed I shall. And I shall fly home and celebrate amidst family, old friends, my fellow knitters, the trees, and the changing of the seasons.

Till then, as I wait, I am knitting with a large photo my brother Bryan gave me of our old back yard in Maryland, propped up next to me on one side. On the other side–I haven’t been able to make myself ball it up yet, it’s so gorgeous as a hank beaming in happy possibilities–I’ve been keeping a surprise gift next to me, sent by my friend nhknittingmama Amanda, in Blue-faced Leicester she hand-dyed. In just the most exquisite shade of green. A shade that I went all over Stitches West last February specifically searching for. I have been sitting knitting surrounded by the happiest of deep greens on both sides.

Thank you, Bryan. Thank you, Amanda. And thank you, Dr. R, for inscribing my name in the Book of Life for yet another year, and many to come. I wish you and your loved ones a blessed Yom Kippur.