There are good days, and there are days when you step on Harris the Wasp.

A little background: When I was growing up we had the phenomenon of the winter wasp. The wasps would grow torpid and crawl around on the floor of the house with no apparent goal in mind. Heaven help you if you stepped on one, because they obviously put all their flying energy into storing venom.

My mother named all the creatures; wasps were, collectively, Harris. No, I do not know how she came up with that name, but my sisters and I have been laughing about it for better than fifty years.  

I’m a bit of a winter wasp myself right now, having had a 44-gram sized chunk “resectioned” out of my right lung. This of course was done due to the positive-for-cancer biopsy that was done on said lung several months ago.

I had two breast lumpectomies from two separate cancers last fall, having been told that my lung cancer (which is also unrelated to the other two cancers in my breasts) could “wait.” For a minute, due to miscommunication between doctors, I was under the impression that we would just monitor my lungs with periodic scans. But no, said the Lung Dude, that other doctor did not know about the positive biopsy. We must operate!

So operate we did, on February 9. At first, all seemed well. Lung Dude and his team came to visit me and told me I’d be out of the hospital in a day or two.

Then my belly started to hurt and get bloaty. Long story short, my stomach had, apparently, spontaneously sprung a leak and my body cavity was filling up with air. On February 10 I had emergency surgery to repair my stomach, which operation has appeared to be entirely successful. The doctors said it was an ulcer that perforated, and added Prilosec to my regimen of drugs.

The breast cancer surgery was hardly painful at all; it gave me a false sense of security regarding the lung surgery. THAT surgery, plus the stomach thing, knocked me on my keester.

Eight days of hospital stay later, I was released on my own recognizance. Since then I’ve been taking all the medicines that the doctors could think of, including a cocktail of painkillers that might give pause to a moose.

I’m tapering off of the painkillers and trying to sort out what meds to take and when. I’m setting micro-goals for my days, for such things as this: “Write a blog post,” “Do a load of laundry,” “wash the dishes,” and “take a ten-minute walk. Doctor’s orders say walk for 30 minutes a day, above and beyond household activities. But I can break it down into three micro walks.

Does Harris feel sorry for himself? Does he remember flying around outside without being menaced by giant feet? Does he get mean gladness out of stinging those feet?

I don’t know if Harris’ sojourn in our house was his last stage of life, or if he was merely resting for another go-round. I choose to believe the latter.

For me, the good news abounds. I have finished my breast cancer treatment except for a long-term medication that I must take, and my lung cancer treatment requires no follow-up other than surveillance. It looks like I can transfer my follow-up care to an oncologist in Ketchikan, so no more expensive trips to Seattle. My lung function is improving daily. My stomach is all in one piece.

So here’s the plan: get through all this nonsense, and enjoy many more healthy years. Harris and me: resting up for whatever comes next.

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For your further edification: here are some crocuses coming up through the February snow: