From New York 2

I am at a cafe in New York with internet access, just catching my spiritual breath, or trying to. Joseph's second bronchoscopy was successful yesterday and they removed the rest of the carcinoid growth in his lung. Endoscopy is an amazing procedure. They can go inside you with a tube, image and treat a condition without invasive surgery. In most cases you can go home the same day. Recovery can be uncomfortable, though, and Joseph has some difficult days behind and ahead of him. But I think we're so lucky that we caught these two conditions early enough to deal with them.

I feel like I am in an emotional typhoon. While we were in New York for my mother's funeral and to help with family affairs, Joseph went for a medical check-up. It turned out he needed two endoscopies, which turned into three when the first could not be completed in one pass. All in five days! Mid-week we decided to celebrate Valentine's day, which maybe we overdid, and Joseph had to undergo the colonscopy preparation--a purge--the following day. It was a nightmare. He's amazing though, he pulled it off, though, understandably, he's not the happiest of campers right now. I ducked out of the apartment to give us a break, it's pretty small and there's "no room for disagreement" there. (G,D&R)

I am alternately sad, relieved, unsettled and confused and then sometimes I just feel good just to be alive and feeling all these things. There are moments of pure desolation and then some small but exquisite thought scatters by like a snowflake. I feel so lost sometimes and then lost turns into something OK. I wrote a poem about that years ago, Get Lost, under entirely different inspiration, maybe I should read it again.

Its amazing, when you're a writer and you have these moments of realizing you've written into your own future.