Suspense

It’s a little like being in labor, this treatment. There is no way out but through for me, and I know how it will play this time. I am not unafraid of the return of old symptoms as the medication runs its course, searching the disease out in its hiding places. But yesterday, when nothing felt different from one of my normal down days, I began to want the old symptoms. To know that what I am doing is working. One can only take so much early labor before begging for transition. I suppose my patience level is shorter than it should be.

Today I feel the effects, and I feel my body descending into the old, worse places, as if the infection is reminding me, “if you leave me alone, I will just live here without bothering you like this!” But I know it. I know how it has been steadily weakening me, how desperately need it gone. Function has been so important for so long, but now, now I don’t have that luxury, or I risk losing it altogether.

It’s a metaphor, the way all this mess goes. First the die-off and I don’t want to live, then the life I’ve been hoping for and unable to live because of the sickness holding me back. Something about “losing your life to find it.”

So I wait, letting the medication do its work, letting this part of my life be my praise, though my mouth doesn’t open easily this morning and my arms feel like lead weights, though my thoughts are sluggish and all I can do is what I can do.

I don’t know what to expect on the other side of all of this, but I suppose that is a metaphor too, this walking out on faith, hoping for a promised result.