Surgery tomorrow

I am scheduled for the first surgery tomorrow -- 7:45 a.m., and I have to be there at 6 a.m.! Yuck. Luckily, my oldest brother, who is taking the day off to accompany me to surgery, is an early riser.

Have spent the past two days immersed in paperwork and conversations with health-care providers and insurance people. Apparently, I have microfractures in my spine. It sure feels like it.

But my appetite is good and I am stuffing my face again as usual. I seem to have gone from the terror-despair-and-tears phase to the denial phase: I keep wondering why everyone is making such a fuss. It's not so bad! I was just kidding! I just made it sound serious so I could hear from all my friends! Stop scaring me with your tears and sympathy! (You will have figured out by now that no matter what you say to a sick person, it's the wrong thing; more on that another day.) This state of mind is greatly aided by judicious doses of pharmaceuticals, and is basically how I've operated for the past four years, latching on to the positive generalizations that the doctors toss around, "You could live a good many years" being my favourite: "good many" is a deliciously elastic and unquantifiable phrase that suits me fine. Much better than the Breast Cancer Workbook put out by AstraZeneca that I read this morning: the chapter on relapse says, "In several cases, people live many years after the cancer has recurred." Several cases? Like, five? Ten? Out of how many? Yikes.

Took my MacBook to the Apple Store on Monday, where a lovely young man with a soft Spanish accent (Pollyanna moment) calmly and expertly "fixed" what was wrong with my wireless. I played the cancer card shamelessly, and was impressed with how speedy the supposed repair was. Of course, I took the machine home again and it still won't connect without a cable. More conversations with Sympatico are in order, but I don't know when I'll find the time.

I am trying to organize the flurry of illness-related paper floating around my house into a binder. This is my new small business, I guess: professional cancer patient. I had so hoped I'd left that job behind.

A friend emailed me a link to a blog by a guy named Dana Jennings who edits for The New York Times and is being treated for advanced prostate cancer. A music geek, he has compiled a playlist of "music to have cancer by" ("Notes to Soothe the Savage Cells"). The two tunes on his Top 10 that resonate strongly with me are "The Weight" by The Band and The Staples Singers (I have watched that song on the film of The Last Waltz about a gazillion times, and I always get goosebumps when I hear Mavis Staples's voice soar and rumble through her gut, and mine); and "I'm So Lonesone I Could Cry" by Hank Williams. And Jeff Buckley's rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," though I know it less well than the other two.

I would compile my own Top 10, but I think it would be too embarrassing. It's just as likely to contain songs by the Monkees as by any other musician. I have been so consumed by the bureaucracy of being sick and by the many phone calls I've received from well-wishers that I haven't been listening to any music at all. Finally put the iPod on this morning and right now I'm listening to one of the starkest, most expertly written pieces of pop poetry I've ever heard: "Sign o' the Times" by Prince. And now "Reelin' in the Years" by Steely Dan -- definitely on my Top 10: "The things that pass for knowledge, I can't understand."

My armpit hurts a lot. I can't wait to get rid of this tumour. Here's hoping they get it all.

Pollyanna moment: It's snowing, my neighbour has shovelled my walk, and I live in a nice warm house.