When I first rode my bike around east Baltimore after moving to town 13-odd years ago, I often rode through the Perkins Homes public housing development. I wondered to myself why the city let public housing and the people who live in public housing live so close to the ritzy neighborhoods of Harbor East and Fells Point. and here we are, and Perkins Homes is gone, being rebuilt like this. It is like being in a whole new place I barely recognize, and I also know that once it’s finished, it will feel like it has always been here. Because we get used to things, for good or ill.

And I have spent the past month getting used to having cancer. Again. I have cancer again, and it has been ungodly hot, so I haven’t been riding my bike around. Today, though, I’m used to having cancer again and it was in the 80s, so I rode my bike down the hill, take a left, a right, another left, through Perkins Homes, on my way to Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center on Caroline and McElderry. I needed to get a shot of nuclear medicine that will make my lymph nodes light up so my surgeon knows which ones to grab when she is operating on me tomorrow. I got a parking spot right in front.

I got my shot and headed back to my bike to ride around for a bit. I stopped for lunch, back on the bike to the Safeway in Canton to get puzzle books for my boo and peanut butter cups for me, and then zigged and zagged my way back home. I have ridden these exact streets a zillion times, and I thought about many of those times on my ride today. Like this picture–I remembered riding through there on cold winter days, that one house that had the reindeer on the roof year round, the space that couldn’t hold a business so I watched one after another come and go. I wish the Handlebar Cafe were still there. It was a perfect bike riding day, and my body could do it. I am so incredibly lucky to live this life, in this place, with this bicycle. I felt like myself for the first time in weeks.

I have my double mastectomy tomorrow, first thing in the morning. I have had a lot of feelings about this surgery in the past six years. Today the feeling is mainly curiosity. What will my body look like? How will it feel? What does numbness at that scale “feel” like, or does it really feel like nothing? Will I have to learn a new sense of balance, losing these giant breasts that have weighed me down for as long as I can remember? I’m a little bit excited.

I’m not sure when I’ll be back on my bike, but unlike my first round with cancer, I absolutely know that to be the case. Cancer is scary, but I’m so much less scared this time. I know what it’s like to go through this stuff, and, more importantly, I know how it ends. There’s an other side to this. I know, because I was on it.

There’s another side, at least for now. If cancer metastasizes to other parts of my body, the other side will look a lot different. I never forget that. And I also know that I will be wasting the part of my life that isn’t that yet if I worry about it. I can’t believe I can put that out of my brain. I never thought I’d be able to put that out of my brain. But here I am, doing it. It has taken a lot of work to get here, and I’m proud of myself. And yet, it is always there, and that’s ok. It’s good to know that. It makes life even richer, if you can believe that.

I’m not sure when I’ll be back on my bike, but I will retake this ride and see what has changed, again. It’s all temporary, and, as one of my cancer friends says, it all belongs. See you on the flip side!