After which my largest concern got here to go. In 2021, I discovered that once a decade of remission, the leukemia was once again. To relapse after that lengthy is terribly uncommon, and my analysis was once now not just right. I believed, “I would possibly die this time,” and that felt scary. However I had executed a large number of paintings to determine who I used to be, what I sought after or even how I’d do issues otherwise if I were given unwell once more.
All the way through a 2d bone-marrow transplant, moderately than feeling frozen through concern, I invoked an artistic apply to defang it. Medicine briefly impaired my imaginative and prescient, so I journaled in voice memos and watercolors. When my husband, Jon, and I needed to be aside, we stayed hooked up in the course of the lullabies he composed for me day by day. And after I grew so susceptible that I wished a walker, I bedazzled each inch of its drab body with colourful rhinestones. In a while, as a substitute of pity, Li’l Dazzy and I had been met with satisfaction and, extremely, a passing shout of “Cool walker!”
I survived that transplant, however I can by no means be regarded as cured. I’ll be in remedy indefinitely, and it might probably really feel as though the sword of Damocles is striking over me. However giving concern unfastened rein makes it arduous to reside. You’re frightened of rebuilding, as a result of what you create would possibly cave in — however then you definately simply exist in wreckage. And actually, every now and then concern makes it arduous to look when issues are just right.
After I returned house months after my transplant, I opened my closet and noticed one thing shadowy and rodent-shaped at the flooring. I slammed the door and referred to as Jody, who came to visit to research. In a while, he got here downstairs and mentioned I had a major problem on my fingers. I felt seized with panic and requested if I had to name an exterminator.
“No,” he mentioned. “A shrink.” It wasn’t a mouse; it was once a pouch of patchouli.
I started running on my concern of mice in clinician-directed publicity treatment. And it labored. I now not see mice as harbingers of doom. I remember that they’re a reality of lifestyles, within the town or the rustic. And whilst I’d nonetheless wish to have Jody — whom I name “Angel Guy” for the entire miraculous tactics he involves my help — take away the occasional mouse, I don’t really feel I wish to transfer out each time I see one. If mice had been to go back, I may just take care of it.
