Leaving the Kingdom

 "We each are the citizens of two kingdoms, the kingdom of the well and that of the sick” wrote Susan Sontag. Arthur Franck, who quoted her in his book “The Wounded Storyteller”[1] mentioned another kingdom, a grey area, between those two, where people in remission belong, a place where “the foreground and background of sickness and health constantly shade into each other.”

Remission is my kingdom. I cannot state that I am ‘healed’ although the last PT scan showed that cancer left my body. Now, it is like bad cells have the key to get in, and they could do so anytime. “From now on, wherever you go, you will need an oncologist”, my doctor told me. “For the rest of your life”.

And I am still taking medication. As my cancer was hormone sensitive, I am taking pills that lower my estrogen level as much as possible. Months after the end of chemo and radiations, small side-effects have shown up. My hair has been growing back but my eyebrows almost vanished. This led me to ponder, in front of a mirror, on the appearance of aliens in SF movies. Have you noticed they have no eyebrows?

My hands have neuropathy – a tingling sensation in my fingers that comes and go. My left arm has swollen because of the missing lymphatic nods. “You will need to wear a compressive sleeve now”, told me the lymph-expert rehab therapist last week. I was a bit alarmed. “All the time?” Her answer was not that comforting.  “No, only when you are awake.”

Being in remission does not mean you are healthy. However, this ambivalent territory looks like it. I am aware I am now where I was hoping I would be a year ago: globally ok and back in an appeased life.

Belonging to the kingdom of the sick makes you grateful once and for all that you don’t live there anymore.

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[1] Arthur W. Frank, the Wounded Storyteller, Body Illness and Ethics, the University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1995,