free time with superme

When I first found out how long I was going to be recovering from cancer, and especially how long it was going to be before it was safe for me to drive and return to work, I was so dismayed. So much free time! And most of it spent all by myself. People have to go back to work, after all; I couldn't ask my family to stay home with me all day long just to keep me company. And without a car or being able to take myself off anywhere, sitting home recovering just seemed like a prison sentence.

What was I thinking? There are so many ways to spend free time. There are so many things to do. I don't think I've been bored at all since I got into the rhythm of my new schedule; if anything, there still aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do.

This morning I've already done quite a lot. I began my third round of chemotherapy this week, which I've been dreading, given how badly everything went last time. But so far so good. The prescription nausea medications seem to be working, so I'm not puking up my guts every ten minutes or so. That's very good. And of course they have me take that steroid for inflammation for the entire week of the chemo, and the steroids always make me feel like superman. So I have a lot of energy. It's now 8:50 in the morning; I've already gone for my run, had my breakfast (a raisin bagel and an egg--my favorite breakfast in the world), caught up on all my correspondence, and I'm working on oh, I think maybe my fifth cup of espresso. And when I'm quite sure I've coffee'd myself out for the day, I'll make my flax-seed-oil and fruit smoothy--the first of the two I'll be consuming today. With my new smoothy recipe for getting down the magical oils, there's no gag reflex at all. In fact, my flax-seed oil smoothies are rather delicious.

So today's agenda includes recording a podcast for my current Chaucer course and continuing work on my new online summer course. This summer I'm scheduled to teach Introduction to Literature to about fifty students. Not a bad size, I'm thinking. And so I'm busy creating course packs, also all online, to accompany my podcasts on Shakespeare, Chinua Achebe, William Faulkner, Edgar Allen Poe, and all my other favorite poets and authors. And I'm freshening up on all my literary history. Fun. I've always loved the Introduction to Literature course, and this will be the first time in a long time that I'll have a real seminar instead of those 250-seat monster classes.

It feels great to be moving back into normalcy. Who'd ever have thought that getting to participate again in the hum-drum and everyday would feel like such a treat?