Sometimes I wish I could just climb into a time machine and start over. How far back I’d go I don’t know.

There is a picture of me from the 1970s on a shelf in the office — maybe I am about four in it. I am sitting in a tree in a yellow turtleneck and red overalls (yes, the colours of McDonalds but as I said it was the 70s). Young, wide-eyed and full-cheeked. Fresh, innocent and… cancer free. There is something about passing that photo and looking into my own eyes that I now find very unsettling. I’d like to warn myself. Protect myself. Almost as if I were one of my own children.

I want that innocence back. I want the feeling of living without knowing that I had a life threatening disease back. I want to put the black smoke back into the box and then hurl that box into the abyss. When I think about this I feel like a frozen computer that needs rebooting. Something gets stuck.

But in life there is no rewind. Plus there is the fact that I am a total realist. An optimist, but also a realist. So my mind won’t let me pretend too much. Won’t let me be that four-year-old again. The smoke can go back in the box but the box will always be in the corner, sealed but present.

It is very hard for me to convey what I feel when I get stuck like this. It isn’t so much sadness, but confusion. And a touch of helplessness. Not helplessness against this bitch of a disease, because that I know that I can kill. Just helplessness against being where I am now, against finding myself in this most peculiar situation.

How do I make you understand? I am not dwelling or even obsessing. I am not freaking out about “the cancer.” Sometimes I am just sort of dumbfounded. This is it. This is where I’m at.

Whenever I get stuck, I think about all the good that has come out of this. How I have an easier time saying “no” when I don’t want to do something. How I don’t get quite as stressed about shit that in the grand scheme of things is not that important.

I know who my friends are and aren’t. I know that I am supported and loved by my family. I’ve a renewed interest in exercising and cooking. In savouring. And I find humour in the damnedest of places.

After my twenty-second radiation treatment this morning I went to have a complimentary therapy session (I get four — what a deal!). This is not a counselling session, but rather something spa-like. A massage or acupuncture or reflexology or aromatherapy. It’s one of the nifty perks of being a cancer patient. Which I won’t be for very much longer.

So when I went in to get my treatment and the nice lady ran through the list of things I could get I selected the scalp massage. I figured, hey, I’m pretty much bald, so I will get more out of this now than I ever will again. She’ll really get a grip on that scalp of mine, I thought.

Plus I have that nice crop of tiny little deep brunette (and white) hairs sprouting all over my head (ch ch ch chia…) and I figured they could use some stimulation. Grow grow grow!

The massage was good. I don’t usually enjoy massages except for reflexology, which is just the feet. But the scalp is good too. It occurred to me that the last time I had a scalp massage of any kind was when I was shampooed prior to my last haircut. Five days before one-quarter of my hair fell out and then I shaved my head. So it seemed fitting that I would have another longer and better one when the hair was coming back in with a vengeance.

I was sitting there thinking about that when the therapist started sort of tapping on my head (part of the massage) whereas before she had been doing more pressure points and rubbing. For a moment I felt completely ridiculous. Sitting in a chair, bald (well mostly) having someone tap on my head. It was like she was playing a bongo drum lightly and I was the instrument. But I went with it. And it was good. And I managed not to burst into laughter at the absurdity of it all.