On Thursday, Chris and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary by doing one of our favorite things: We ate well. There were shared plates, a glass of champagne, an incredible dessert, and a dozen raw oysters from Washington state, the mid-Atlantic, and South Carolina. As a life-long Easterner, it was hard to concede victory to the west coast oysters on the plate, but I had to. They were just better. But they were all good, and we were all smiles, for we had tested that whole “in sickness and in health” vow and come out on the other side. In celebration, I wore a black and white dress that I’d had forever and that Chris really likes, and when I looked in the mirror, I realized that at my age, it had become a little too short and a little too low-cut (both of which may explain why Chris likes it). As I wore it, I figured that the anniversary meal was a perfect send-off for a dress that had served me well.

I did not think of the oysters again until Saturday, when something inside me was just not quite right. I went through my regular routine in some discomfort, and by 8:30 p.m., the time we came home from dinner with friends, I told Chris that if I made it through the night without a trip to the hospital, I would be surprised. I am not one for dramatic pronouncements like that, for I have a healthy dose of the pioneer spirit in me, and a little before midnight, I became convinced that it was only food poisoning (which I’d had a few times before). Then this thought arose in my mind: What kind of knucklehead eats oysters — even west coast oysters — in a month that has no R in it?

And then the dam broke.

Five hours of absolute hell followed. I could not stand up. I could not sit down. I could only lie in a fetal position on the floor, a pose I punctuated with frequent trips to the bathroom to vomit violently. My belly was distended, and I had the chills. There was pain everywhere in my body. A little before 5 a.m. Sunday morning, I decided I did not want to die on my living room rug, so I drug myself up the stairs, woke Chris, and asked him to take me to the hospital. My ever-sensible husband began to run down a list of questions that felt decidedly health-insurer approved, at which point I offered to summon an Uber — quite possibly in a tone of voice that could peel paint.

And that got his attention.

By 5 a.m., I was doubled-over and staggering into the emergency room, stopping first to allow the on-duty officer to check my purse and to summon me through the magnetometer. I clutched a plastic grocery bag just in case. After a time that seemed like forever but was probably 30 minutes, I found myself lying on a gurney in the hall of the emergency room — moaning, shivering, and using the hospital-approved bright green emesis bag — and after 60 minutes, I got the first of three morphine and anti-nausea doses fed into the line running from my left elbow.

If you are going to be in tremendous pain in an ER in the early morning hours on the weekend, I highly recommend both the painkillers and the lack of a private room. The ER hallway, especially after the drugs kicked in, was compelling television. Police officers and shackled arrestees paraded by steadily. People had been in some terrible fights. There was a crazy man (apparently a regular visitor) who parked himself in the bathroom next to my stretcher, kept the door unlocked, and made noises that did not sound quite human. The nurses would come and go, and when the doctor finally came to see me, she asked where the pain was. When her hand reached the lower right side of my abdomen, I let out a loud shriek. She ordered a CT scan.

And there it was: acute appendicitis.

A hospital can mobilize pretty darn fast in an emergency, and by 10 a.m., I was being wheeled into a surgical prep area. The operation was short and done by laparoscope, and I was in a private room by noon.

I tell you all of this not to gross you out — and if I did, I’m sorry — but to pass along several things I learned. First, as my family physician told me when I was describing the symptoms that eventually got connected to cancer, pain is never normal. As I was pondering the length of my life on the living room rug that morning, her words stuck with me. I am grateful for her wisdom, because if I had postponed going to the ER, my appendix could have ruptured. That may have alleviated the pain, but then I would have been facing the possibility of a septic abdominal cavity.

Second, that I had appendicitis never crossed my mind until the doctor touched the magic spot. I am just glad that I got to the hospital when I did — after 24 hours of symptoms — because it’s a short time frame from the display of symptoms to rupture: 48 to 72 hours. If you have what seems to be the worst case of food poisoning in the world, please — remember my experience.

Third, if I’d known I was going to have appendicitis, I NEVER WOULD HAVE EATEN MEXICAN FOOD FOR LUNCH AND DINNER. Oh, lord. That may have been my greatest tactical error in the whole ordeal.

Fourth, after encouraging everyone to choose one’s own adventure, I found one that had been chosen just for me. A few days ago I was coming to terms with six scars on my stomach. Now I am coming to terms with nine scars on my stomach. With all of the travel that I had planned for the summer, I am so relieved that it happened at home.

Finally, Monday — the day after my emergency appendectomy — I celebrated six months since my cancer surgery. I was doped up, ragged, and tired, but thanks to the kindness of a nurse, I was happy to have a chocolate-covered ice cream bar in my stomach. Chris suggested that I celebrate the one-year anniversary a little more conventionally (cupcakes, perhaps?), and I think that he is correct. Life changes on a dime — a message that I have proven yet again, having discovered it yet again the hard way — and clearly all my efforts to get back to health were to get me to the point where I could handle another abdominal surgery. Which I did.

Around noon on Monday, the doctor released me. Chris had been tasked with bringing me something to wear home, and when it came time for street clothes, he reached into the bag and pulled out the black and white dress that I had worn to our anniversary dinner. When I asked if he thought it was a little much, he replied that he knew I’d want to look nice leaving the hospital. There I was, belly wildly distended due to the surgery, tape residue and antiseptic goo everywhere, unwashed, tired, slightly defeated. I loved that my husband imagined me dressed in a party dress after one of the most painful nights of my life. I decided that I would like to imagine myself like that, too. So without complaint, I stepped into it — still a little too short, still a little too low cut — and let Chris zip me up. I rode out of the hospital in a wheelchair, head held high.

ALC

In case you are wondering — and undoubtedly, you have not been — Emmet is alive and well and living his best life. He acts like he owns the entire living room:

We accede to his requests to watch documentaries about dogs:

And he somehow perseveres when he accompanies us to Chipotle for Taco Tuesday, despite the fact that he has been invited to dinner but receives no food:

But mostly we walk. Tuesday marked the year anniversary of Buddy’s death, and on our walk the next morning, I thought about Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with metallic lacquer, which repairs the vessel but makes the flaws obvious. It occurred to me that in a heart fissured by the death of a beloved dog, a new puppy is like solid gold that has been poured into the cracks. (Please: Don’t tell Emmet this, or we’ll have to watch more dog documentaries.)

On that walk, and on all of our walks, I think about how if I wrote 1,000 love letters to my neighborhood, it just would not be enough. It was love at first sight for me followed by an enduring love affair. (I have even forgiven my neighbors for the years where everyone clearly hated me, an animus demonstrated by my election as president of the neighborhood association.) There are massive live oaks and swaying Spanish moss. There are parks, whether circular, square, or rectangular. There are plenty of other people out walking their dogs. And within a radius of a few blocks, there are three schools.

Even without children at home, the schools remind me of the rhythm of families. There seems to be a frenzy for months — heavy traffic, loud buses, Kamikaze cyclists, children with bedhead in wrinkled uniforms, tall people coaxing small people out the door — and then it stops abruptly. When I saw some friends sitting in rockers on their front porch and drinking coffee at 7:30 one morning, the door flung open and children in pajamas playing tag on the lawn, I knew that school was over. And I breathed a sigh of relief. It was officially summer.

The last week of May and the first week of June have traditionally been busy times. Through the magic of Facebook and my new Android phone, I am reminded that five years ago, I was on the Appalachian Trail; four years ago, my daughter broke her elbow in a bike accident that forever demonstrated why one does not dangle large shopping bags off one’s handlebars; three years ago, I was in Paris (as with all family vacations, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times); and a year ago, I was confronted with an empty nest, Buddy’s death, and my first cancer diagnosis of the year, for skin cancer.

But somewhere in all of this busyness, I decided to quit complaining about the heat and really enjoy summer. (Living in Savannah, the former pledge is often quite taxing; there are days where it feels like we’re all walking around in a large hot wet blanket.) I was kind of uncertain about what the latter pledge really meant, and some times it just seemed like an excuse to eat more ice cream and ride my bike everywhere. But I heard a friend with small children talk about a book series — Choose Your Own Adventure — where the reader makes choices that determine how the story ends. And that seemed like a perfect description of summer to me.

Some adventures have required advance planning. A few years ago, I decided to start cleaning my own house and banking that money for travel. This decision has had consequences. Some things I expected, like more travel. Some things I did not. If you clean your own house, you must reckon with the mess you make. While I wasn’t exactly smearing ketchup all over my walls, I was faced with the fact that I owned too many things. I have been paring down my possessions, and just as importantly, I have been working hard not to accumulate things. While I am failing miserably in the yarn and fabric categories, I have done a better job in others, and when I went to place something in the laundry closet this week, I was confronted by something absolutely astounding: shelf space. The angels sang.

Another unexpected surprise has been the travel itself. If you scrub toilets to pay for a trip, your notion of the perfect trip changes. Fine hotels and legacy airline carriers are a sucker’s game, and in my current life, I find myself never sitting next to Chris on a plane, sharing a single checked bag with him, and getting unduly excited about the words “complimentary breakfast” in the hotel description. I may be the world’s cheapest traveler, but I am going places. This summer holds trips to Boston and Denver and a road trip with my daughter along the Pacific Coast Highway. I will see all sorts of things beyond human understanding, like the Red Sox on the heels of their World Series season, the Rocky Mountains, and Los Angeles traffic.

There is also a trip to the beach, and this brought up its own conundrum. One of the delightful effects of resection surgery — other than saving my life, that is — is the appearance of my stomach. Your intestinal cavity is apparently a pretty well-packed affair, for when a surgeon removes a foot of colon, you spend a few months feeling a bit like a packing crate that has had one key piece removed. Things rattle around and you feel all jostle-y. Fortunately that feeling has gone. But I have been left with a stomach that can only be described as a pot belly with a little belt in the center right over my belly button. (Yes, It is just as attractive as it sounds.)

This depressed me for a while, I must confess. And then I looked at it one day and decided to use it as a reminder of one very important thing indeed: I DID NOT DIE. (I have even come to view that little belt as a stamped leather belt bearing those very words.) When you view being alive and having a functioning body — belt and all — as a real privilege, misshapen abs seem inconsequential.

I chose my own adventure on that one, too. I have abandoned everything I ever believed in and all my dignity, too, by taking hot Pilates and hot yoga classes. The classes are sort of a good hot in February. They are sort of a terrible hot in a spate of 100 degree weather, just like we had last week. The weather even prompted my favorite instructor to tell us to take it easy if we started to see Jesus. At one point, fearing the good lord’s premature arrival, I removed my tank top and exercised in my sports bra and tights. My shirt came off before I knew it, a glancing thought given to whether or not my current battered 50 year-old body would embarrass me, an almost immediate reassurance that it was a very good strong body in all the right ways.

With a really sweaty tank top on the ground in front of my yoga mat, I made peace with the weird little I DID NOT DIE belt, for the world did not end.

And it answered a big question facing me this summer: Would I still wear a bikini to the beach? I began wearing them about a decade ago, when I realized that even at the height of my body’s beauty I believed that I should not be wearing a two-piece. If that was the case, what exactly had changed? What would be different? I would still feel all wrong, and perhaps unjustifiably so. And why exactly would that matter? Since I did not wear a bikini at 20, I decided to wear one at 40. This year, as a concession to the belt, I have ordered ones with higher waists — a black and white check, a red and white stripe — and as long as I do not care, no one else will either. (In the off-chance that someone says anything untoward, there is the nuclear option: the cancer card, followed by a PSA about the importance of getting a colonoscopy. Nothing says “surf’s up” quite like that.)

It is summer, and I don’t know what your adventure is. For me, it is not complaining about the heat, which I cannot change. It is realizing that imperfections can enhance beauty. It is walking through one of my favorite places, budget travel, a sense of wonder, a high-waisted bikini. It is an excuse to eat ice cream, a reason to jump into a cold pool, and a dog and a belly that serve as reminders that life very much goes on. It is accumulating less and making space for more and hearing the angels sing.

ALC