602 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes, 37 seconds

She can't help thinking about her aunt. 1952 or 1953. Forty years old. Dying. No one ever mentioned the C word, just as, in those days, doctors told the families but not the patients. The point was don't let them know they're dying, give them hope, give them strength to live. Nettie knew. Convinced she was dying of lung cancer, that she'd brought this on herself, smoking two packs a day. It wasn't lung cancer, though. She thinks it was breast cancer.

602 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes, 54 seconds

Memorial Day. Which of course makes her wonder if a year from now there will be people visiting her grave. Placing stones or flowers. They've decided they want to be buried in Rhode Island, because his family is larger, because she's closer to his family. His father sends them a photo of himself standing by where his wife is buried, showing the two plots next to it: theirs. They haven't told her father yet.

They haven't told her father about being sick, or about the hospital.

Memorial Day. In 1991, just before her one other major surgery, they decided to go to Washington for the weekend. Originally thought they'd drive down, then decided to take a train, then decided to take an earlier train home. Temperatures in the nineties. The weekend from hell.

Ten years later, after the first breast cancer, they decided on a trip to Nova Scotia. Another hellish journey. But nothing so frightening as this next trip across town. Or his coming back from there, alone.

604 days, 5 hours, 41 minutes, 18 seconds

Leave it to him to remind her of the time, their first year together, when the pigeon shit on her head.

604 days, 10 hours, 31 minutes, 35.2 seconds

She remembers shaking. Actually, she thought the bed was vibrating. It was in a hotel in Philadelphia, maybe six years ago. She thought someone in the room downstairs might be doing something to make the bed vibrate. Then she gave up thinking and just lay there. Her father, whom she'd seen that afternoon, was home in Margate. She'd thought maybe he'd stay with her, or at least have dinner. That's why she kept the room a second night. But he wanted to get home right after the doctor told him his mind was fine, there was nothing to worry about. Wanted to get home while he still remembered where home was. Maybe it was seven years ago.

604 days, 10 hours, 38 minutes, 14.5 seconds

Middle of the night, last night, she woke in a state of panic. 2:34 a.m. Not asleep more than an hour. Normally, she would still be up and working at that time, but nothing's normal. She twists the wedding ring around her finger, takes a Clonitin, decides to wake her husband. Arms around her, he's quickly back to sleep. She's calming down, but still shaking, sleepless, searching for that giant brass ring again, the hell with the rest of this.

604 days, 10 hours, 51 minutes, 12 seconds

Sixteen years ago ago, when she went in for surgery, they removed all her other jewelry but taped down her wedding ring, crosswise, only a hint of gold visible. The ring was just fifteen months old then, and it still felt new. What will they do this time, the surgery three times longer, her finger somewhat swollen from where the ring's grown tight against it? The surgeon says the numbness in those two fingers might be coming from the larger lesion in the brain. She knew she should have had her head examined when that finger first numbed. Knew in the back of her head, where the tumor is. This could have been caught over a year ago. It was around then that she lost the ring, or thought she lost it. Only to have it turn up two days later in the unmade bed, pulled off sometime in a nightmare she couldn't remember. And this hospital bed? And this nightmare?

604 days, 13 hours, 59 minutes, 4.6 seconds

Four days until another 100-day mark. Four horrendous days. Four days of Clonitin to try and keep her calm. At midnight of the 600 mark she'll be unable to eat. Around six a.m. of the 600 mark she'll be heading for the hospital. Around noon of the 600 mark she'll be in surgery. Around five p.m. of the 600 mark she'll have no idea where she is. The very next day the month will be changing. She's supposed to start another section of this blog then. God only knows if she will.

605 days, 1 hours, 27 minutes, 54 seconds

Her fortune: To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. His fortune: The weekend ahead predicts enjoyment. She hates the sun.

605 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, 53 seconds

Immunity, the water bottle says. Fruit20, berry-pomegranate. This is a new one. She's become addicted to these flavored, no carb, no calorie waters since she discovered them four years ago. But they keep changing around the flavors. Immunity, she thought it a stroke of good luck at this moment in time. Enhanced with Antioxidants C & E, plus Vitamin A. She drank all of two bottles before the nurse advised her to stay off Vitamins C and E. Immunity. It was probably just a catchy name anyway. Like they name plants and wedding rings.

605 days, 13 hours, 34 minutes, 49 seconds

It started in Vermont, so picturesque you could believe the whole world started there. Originally it was going to be the two couples. Then her husband backed out. So it was the three of them. Three on a match. And while her friends were hiking she drove into Middlebury. Saw the Backwards Bush clock for the first time (she didn't think to buy it). Saw the hand sanitizer lotion in her friend's backpack. Better than soap, she said, and you can't always get to a bathroom when you want to wash up. She started using this last year when two close friends were dying.

605 days, 16 hours, 0 minutes, 40 seconds

Two years ago? Three years ago? The friend of a friend called to warn her that her friend was freaking out, crashing at her country home, not answering the phone, not taking care of the animals as promised. And this friend might well be headed in our narrator's direction. A few days after that the friend called, not knowing how to explain the call, except she's learned that this friend at whose house she was crashing has a brain tumor. Hence the personality changes.

605 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes, 41 seconds

Time stopped two days ago. Papers on her desk piled high enough that they rested against the new fantasy clock's exposed hands. She moved the papers, turned the hands, and nothing seems the worse for it.

When she had this workspace built, two years ago, she asked for closed cabinets instead of open shelves, thinking to hide the clutter. Instead more piles up in what little open space there is. Then again, you should see the piles of papers in her father's study.

An article she read talks about how colors affect the mood of a workplace. But everything's oak veneer here. She fools around for hours, finally selects a soft rose screen for her desktop. It's the most she can do.

606 days, 8 hours, 21 minutes, 57 seconds

At least she has a primary care physician now. When she had the last surgery she'd never even heard the term, and had to rely on hospital interns. And of course the PC's leaving for vacation tomorrow (it's Memorial Day weekend, after all). She makes an appointment with an associate. Gets out of the cab with less than a minute to spare. Coughs. Tries to see through the thick mass shrouding her legs and arms and brain. She finds the right address. A fireman holds the door open for her.

607 days, 4 hours, 31 minutes, 38.9 seconds

Four tables pushed together in the patient dining room. People sit and write. She remembers when she led this workshop in the library, two round tables together, eight or infinity, or simply people slotted in with their backs to others. For weeks a man was wheeled in on a stretcher and dictated on and on, hard in that small room that's now a nurses' station. Easier here. Four rectangular tables pushed together, windows that can be openned, plenty of light. There could be six tables, eight tables. Some weeks floral centerpieces are removed so there won't be distractions. Even though it's nearly the end of May, tonight there are no flowers.

607 days, 21 hours, 4 minutes, 33.3 seconds

She has to feel a certain sense of comfort with her doctors. They don't have to be hot shot, cutting edge, top ten of the top 100 bullies, they just have to know what a scalpel is or when an x-ray's upside down. They have to smile. They have to warm their lips before they touch her, just like Grandma's doctor, just like that doctor when she went away to camp.

608 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes, 42 seconds

Yesterday's news: Avandia, a hotshot medication for type 2 diabetes, has been found to increase the risk of heart attack by up to 64%. Six million people have taken the drug over the past eight years. She takes a deep breath. Six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Six million diabetics. Breathe in. Breathe out. She can feel the cancer in her lungs now.

And how close, she wonders, did she come to taking this? Five years fighting off medications, then relenting. Glucophage, then Glyburide for a few brief days, now back to Glucophage. Avandia was never even mentioned. Insulin, possibly, for a brief time, if she needs steroids. On and then off. With a doctor she has complete trust in (not to mention a cell phone number, and a home phone).

And with some other doctor? The endocrinologist at NYU with whom she first made an appointment? The doctor recommended by her gynecologist's nurse? Slowly but surely she's learning her nose is a dog's nose, cold, dripping a bit, but on the right scents. A dog tied to a tree out behind a little dollhouse, perhaps. Safe in Allstate's hands.

Google turns up 1,231 stories on Avandia. Yesterday's news.

608 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, 9.2 seconds

Shortly after Isaac Asimov died, NPR replayed an interview from a decade before in which he was asked what he would do if he was told he had only six months left to live, and he responded "type faster." Looking up that quote on the Internet now, she sees some places state it as six minutes to live.

She repeated that quote when she got breast cancer. The first time. But she never expected it would ever really come down to that. Not for her.

At least 609 is over. Gone. Banished. The worst day of her life. And she'd been waiting so long...

609 days, 6 hours, 47 minutes, 7 seconds

Her parents grew up through the Depression, always looking to save money. So when the ban on cyclamates was introduced, back in 1970, they ran to all the supermarkets in the area, buying up diet sodas for next to nothing. They'd been drinking it for years, so why stop now? But she was away from home by then anyway.

609 days, 7 hours, 2 minutes, 51 seconds

That last Botox, the one that she didn't think was working? Remember, that was on her anniversary.

609 days, 13 hours, 6 minutes, 28 seconds

A headache wakes her in the middle of the night. She has one of her worst coughing fits, despite gulping cough syrup. When she wakes again she has the pervasive sense that he's going to want to attack this as aggressively as possible, hospitalize her for two weeks, give her the chemo and insulin. She pictures all her other organs shutting down. Looking outward, it's a crisp, almost cloudless day. So was September 11.