DAY 045 -- "I'm Ready Ready Ready"

Today?

Four little words, hitting me with almost the same impact that seven big words did this past July 1st (See: Day 001 – The Arrival Of Rad Chemo). It seems like it was only a million years ago when I was in the Emergency Room and heard the attending Doc tell me with that deadpan, unceremonious delivery:

“You have a mass on your lung.”

But, today, if it’s possible for language to undo language, my oncologist told me -- after a summer of radiation and chemotherapy treatments (I named my cancer “Rad Chemo”), a lava flow of endless side effects, a physical suffering and a mental anguish that I’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in my life:

“Your tumor has shrunk.”

Yahoo. Yippee. Hooray. (I’ll withhold the exclamation points for now, because there’s still a journey ahead with Rad Chemo, but you get the idea.)

A good news day.

From here on, though, we’ll call Rad just plain “R.C.” to keep him honest, and because I feel like I still have a stowaway inside me. But, let’s say that Shrunken R.C. took a big hit, and on we go now to a long course of Immunotherapy.

This also came on the day that R.C.’s radiation burn finally approximated, and for that I’m keeping the exclamation point!

So, let’s leave this on the upbeat with a song I first heard in boyhood. It was beyond my bedtime, so I had the volume low but my ear pressed on the console box radio speaker, tuned in to the early days of Rock 'n' Roll, and on came Little Richard doing “Ready Teddy.”

It put the hook in me and kept me up all night (“to the early, early night”), and the genre was then and forever a part of me.

For some reason, it’s revisiting me today with the news of R.C.’s asskicking and radiation burn resolution, so I’m going to stream it for a while.

Way past my bedtime.

With the volume UP:

I shuffle to the left, I shuffle to the right,
Gonna rock 'n' roll to the early, early night,

I'm ready
ready ready teddy
I'm ready
ready ready teddy
I'm ready
 ready ready teddy
I'm ready ready ready to
rock 'n' roll.

More as we go, El