It’s been a quiet week on Harold Street. I re-started standard of care chemo last Wednesday and after my steroidal protections wore off, I retreated to bed. I felt lousy and exhausted. Sitting up for ten minutes seemed an accomplishment. My extreme response surprises me since the treatment, Gemzar and Avistan, is pretty light in the world of chemo options.
Am I so weak as I continue to stabilize from my January/February deterioration that I can no longer tolerate chemo? Or after five years of heavy treatment is my body just declaring its limits? I have chemo again this Wednesday, my birthday.
I feel unsteadily perched on a tight rope – on one side is the land of advanced terminal cancer, where I have learned to live well, on the other side is end stage cancer, which I have tried so hard to avoid. 
But aren’t we all on some type on tightrope? And how much control do we truly have?
With love, marcy 
“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” – Susan Sontag
livingly dying 