dreams of celebration

fantasizing about After Cancer

I’ve been indulging myself lately in thinking about after.

After my birthday, After I’m done with chemo, After I beat this. In five years, when all my scans are clean…

My last round of chemo is in August, and it’s starting to feel really close.

On her middle finger, a woman at cancer camp wears a large square-cut pink ring, haloed with tiny diamonds. I used to hate pink, she confesses in our support group. But now it’s pink everything. Her perfect acrylics are Barbie pink. Even my license plate is pink, she says.

What color is yours? she wants to know, meaning my cancer. I tell her I think colorectal is blue.

After I say it I instantly hope she doesn’t think that’s the reason for my hair. Though then again, who cares if she does? I begin fantasizing about the giant blue ring I will get when I finish treatment. Maybe a Montana sapphire. Maybe I can find it myself mining in Philipsburg. It will go nicely with the alternating diamonds and sapphires I wear to commemorate Violet’s birth.

This fantasy about the extravagant ring purchase I will justify with cancer in some imagined after leads me to another vision. A vacation fantasy. A lot of different vacations.

My kids don’t fit into most of these fantasies, and therefore in order for the logistics to work my husband also cannot be present.

In my fantasies I am alone.

I think of friends who might come and then realize their lives are too busy, they are too pregnant or their kids are too small for the math to math for them either. A trip makes no practical sense.

That’s why I need cancer to justify it and open up my fantasies.

Once I beat cancer, my fantasies begin, and I’m off. I’m lounging on a beach at an all-inclusive resort, sipping strawberry daiquiris and reading novels on a cushioned chaise lounge.

I’m drinking coffee and journaling on a balcony with turquoise ocean views. The pool has a slide which I laughingly try, losing my overlarge sunhat along the way. There’s a beach with the perfect size of waves to be exhilarating without being scary, and there are no sharks. Just a large friendly sea turtle who swims with me.¹

me, younger, on a beach, fantasizing about a future that did not include cancer

The hotel sheets are thick and white and cool, and the pillows are squishy and delightful. I get massages and facials and eat pineapple by the pool.

In another fantasy I go on a garden tour in Coventry.

Sometimes I’m painting al fresco in the stone courtyard of a French chateau.

I do have some fantasies that include the kids, where we have our own camp exactly like māk-a-dream, except there’s a lake.

And actually it’s Rockywold Deephaven Camp on Squam Lake in New Hampshire, and it’s perfect, and all the cabins are free and there are no mosquitoes, just the calls of loons and kayaks for everyone.

The logistics are easy and uncomplicated. All my friends and family attend, and each gets a house the exact perfect size for their family—all for free.

Everything is free in my fantasies. Otherwise I’d have to start thinking about the opportunity cost, about delaying my other fantasies of a hot tub or a basement renovation. I hate when my fantasies come into conflict.

Maybe for my fortieth birthday, I think, trying to solidify my vision, root it in the real. That’s five years away, and I’ll be officially off the hook if I make it five years, I remind myself. Beating cancer is a thing worth celebrating.

But how big of a play can my cancer card actually make? Can it take me to the beach? To the Cottswolds? To the French countryside?

If I’m honest with myself, I’m not persuaded my hand is quite that valuable.

Any argument that tells me exactly what I want to hear is immediately suspect.

The after feels flimsy, and my fantasies of celebrations and parties and vacations and commemorative jewelry quickly get subsumed by other, more dread-filled fantasies. Persistent fatigue. Scanxiety.² A return of the WAD. The daily drudgery of childcare, and the drying up of help and sympathy. No more justifications for hiring cleaning services or ordering takeout.

The crushing expectation that I should be Better.

Whose expectation? Mine, of course. Though I will unfailingly project it onto everyone around me, too.

I have the expectation that I should be Better already, while still in treatment, so why should I expect this to vanish the moment I finish chemo? I can only realistically expect the internal pressure to multiply and combust.

Thinking about after is hard, and scary. I don’t know how to structure my thoughts, how to imagine how I will feel.

They³ say that ruminating on the past is depression and mulling about the future is anxiety. We can only be happy in the present moment. So live right now.

Good advice. Sounds true.

But what about when the present moment includes needles and nausea and a flaming asshole that can’t be relied upon to do its job with any amount of consistency? I don’t especially want to hang out in the present. And I can’t seem to escape into the future, either.

When I start to fantasize in a positive way about how great it will be to be done, a niggling voice crowds out happy images with practicalities. You’d probably get bored on the beach alone, anyway this voice says. The flight would be so long and expensive, I remind myself. What if you fly all the way there and then feel sick and exhausted the whole time? What a waste. Better to stay home.

Who is that after person? How does she fill her days? How does she feel? Does she have energy to do all the things? Any of the things?

Will I be able to hold onto the immense feelings of gratitude that I (mostly) have right now?

How quickly will I forget?

1. This has happened to me in Maui and it was delightful

2. A term that refers to the overwhelming anxiety experienced before a scan

3. Who though?? Eh, they’re probably right.