There’s this game that we all play that the girls and I have coined ‘counting to nowhere.’

We’re all counting down the days until life isn’t so hectic or we regain our health, or we stop grieving a loss. Suppose we could make it to the new year? Then we’ll stop counting, erase our troubles like an etch-a-sketch, and get on with the fun part of our lives. Only we don’t realize life’s passing us by while we’re counting to nowhere waiting to celebrate.

Maybe it started when we were young, and our parents counted 10, 9, 8…You know the drill. We had to rush into the car before Dad got to the end, or, honestly, I think we just left him counting. We knew Dad would get bored and wait in the car until we finally came out.

Or all those games of hide-and-seek. We’d count to 10, and everybody would be gone. But we knew we’d be able to find them.

Or when we’d count down the days until graduation. Usually, those days got big Xs drawn on them.

There was always something worth the wait at the end of all that counting. So even now, as adults, we still play the game. It gets us through the rough patches.

So that’s how my cancer journey started–as a counting game, no different than any other one I’d been playing. (How long until we get our lives back and can see people socially? Get our vaccine? Go on vacation again? Okay, how about travel to all parts of the world?)

I remember saying to Alex right after my August diagnosis last year, how long do you think this cancer thing could last? I was on the verge of tears when I started at five months and counted up from there. I nearly started hyperventilating. “This could be a really long time.” Alex said, “That’s absurd. There’s no way it’ll last that long.” (Ahem, it’s been a year now, but who’s counting?)

And then I went into chemo, and someone somewhere told me to count down. Supposedly it makes it more bearable that way. So I wrote in the calendar for my first chemo treatment, chemo no. 6. It didn’t do anything except make me feel stupid that I wrote the wrong number in there.

But I counted it all down anyway. How many hairs I lost a day turned into other countdowns. How long until…

• I get through hard-core chemo?
• I lose my boobs & have my first surgery, ever?
• My herniated disc becomes un-herniated?
• I’ll no longer have my ovaries and tubes & I get my fake boobs?
• Until my last infusion?

With all these countdowns, is it New Year’s yet? Give me a moment to catch my breath, please.

But I caught a cold, instead. Wait a minute, are cancer survivors supposed to get colds? I thought it was in our contracts that we’re not allowed to get things that ordinary people get.

But after all that counting, I’m doing it again; I’ve been counting to nowhere.

I’ve secretly started another countdown. Maybe it’ll all be over, and I can finally celebrate when I can finally feel comfortable with my new body. I hear from my acupuncturist that it takes about 4 or 5 months for that.

The radiologist must have known about this little game of mine. When I got my port removed at the end of my procedure, the nurse said she would count to make sure the glue dried.

She counted to 10, very slowly making sure she marked each second that passed by.

The radiologist then turned to her and said, “You know the glue was already dried. I just wanted to hear you count.”

She laughed and said he always played games on her like that. But maybe we all play those games.

Whenever I start marking off the days waiting for the drama to be over and the celebration to get here already, I’m like that nurse wasting my time waiting for the glue to dry–counting to nowhere.