So it was....

Thursday morning dialogue:

Doctor: Did you call the surgeon?

Me: No, should I?

Doctor: Yes, about the cancer. The cat scan shows it hasn't grown since the picture taken at the colonoscopy. 

Me: I will call right now.

That was the first time the Doctor actually referred to what the pictures had shown in my body as "cancer". How was I to take that. Wasn't "cancer" what only happened to others? At that moment, my body felt nice and loose. Still, I made the phone call, and will see the surgeon on Monday at 3:30. After that.....?

Yesterday (Thursday) was pretty easy. Spent the day talking to my "support group" of four or five friends, those who have asked to remain informed as things change. Sometimes figuring out who to call when, it seemed like I was planning for a party, or something like that. Late in the evening, stomach cramps began. Still continue now, though not in a terribly intense form.

Had trouble sleeping last night---today, up at 5 for my usual "coffee journey" over to the grocery store 4  blocks away. After that the day moved very slowly. At about 10, felt a need to sleep--that would make sense after last nights craziness. Lay down, for some reason before I fell asleep a memory: of a trip that I would make to Baltimore in late October 1964. My first trip back to the college I had graduated from the summer before. Now I was a student at Yale School of Drama, feeling very outside of things. At Hopkins, I was in the middle of everything, artistic and socially. The group that I had been part of must have had about ten students and others moving in and out. Only two of us--my friend Don and myself---had been seniors. Still missed the "heat" of the world at Hopkins,  the sense, perhaps, that every encounter I had with another person defined me,  the rage I felt when I saw a guy who I felt was much less interesting then myself with his, permanent girl friend, even as I tried to negotiate the much colder world of the Drama School. Stayed over Saturday into Sunday. Tried to get involved in the social "action" as much as I could. On Sunday morning visited J....the woman who was most important to me the year before, now a Sophmore at Goucher college. 

As I remembered it this morning, sleep deprived and all, thought that it must have been difficult to be suspended between the two worlds. The Hopkins whirl --that is, being tested and involved, emotionally and erotically, was much more familiar to me, but now it was stopped.  Still, these were my friends who I shared so much with the year before, and they were still there. Was I envious? Probably. Yet what could I do? I had shown so much strength the year before, that I had to move on. Could I return to Baltimore, get some kind of job and hover around the campus? A joke---it would have been admitting I had failed as a theater person. And I was not going to do that. So after seeing J... I returned to New Haven and continued my time at Yale. 

About four weeks later, after a long talk with my parents, had to admit that there was a strong possibility that I would not continue there---I would return to New York and (if I could avoid being drafted) be on my own. The first major transition in my life was about to take place.

Time to return to the reality of the moment. Friday about 11:30---one errand planned for today, that is all. Try to get as much from each moment as possible. Everything leads to Monday afternoon.