But when I view the future through the reality of TWO cancers, I see a different picture. It’s more out of focus and landmarks are difficult to see. I can see death around the edges, where before it was so far ahead of me that it didn’t seem real.
Category: Philosophical
Anti Climax
None of us will beat death, it will get us in the end. I’ve become much more at peace with that truth over the last few years. I’ve lost so many folks who are close to me, maybe that’s why I have such a strong desire to see a grandchild. Or maybe it’s just that I love babies.
Cancer Dancer
While I was going through treatment for Lymphoma I made the decision that once I was in remission I would get a tattoo. The image I wanted was a Charles Schulz character named ‘Number Three’ who dances onstage in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. She’s one of a pair of twins (her sister is named,…
Hope
The quarantine has been easier for me than most folks I know. I can’t really get out and do much, I’m relegated to my bed, or my recliner, for all of the time each day that I’m not moving from room to room. With so many folks in a similar situation (stuck at home) I feel less alone in my recovery, it’s as if the whole world is recovering with me.
Advice, From Within & From Outside
Living Through Reality
I do feel alone quite often, but that’s a function of my recovery. It’s hard to get out and socialize; moving is painful, I get so tired, and being in a crowd (even in a restaurant) seems to unsettle me in a new way. I don’t know if it’s because for 18 months I’ve essentially lived most of my life in a hospital room, a bedroom or my living room, but my Living with Loss group at Gilda’s Club (6-10 people) is about as large a group of people that I feel comfortable interacting with.
Grateful Every Day
We’re buckling down because a ‘once-in-a-decade’ storm is supposed to be coming, although at this point it’s six hours late (and it will probably be angrier for waiting…) One friend is writing, his wife is making Swedish pancakes and the kids are organizing a board game for later in the day.
An Arc
I can’t believe I haven’t blogged in a month! It’s been QUITE a month. I thought that by now I’d be writing about my adorable tutoring students, and how every day I could see in their happy, fascinated faces that I’d made a REAL DIFFERENCE in their little reading lives. Unfortunately, Health ran interference on…
Game Of Alones
It’s a good season of GOT, Gerry would have loved it. I’m loving it. It seems a lovely farewell to a beloved TV series; I wish I had had time to give Gerry the same kind of farewell. I still wake up in a cold sweat from dreams about Gerry dying with no one around him but medical staff, no family, no me. I was functionally immobile from my reaction to strong chemo, but that doesn’t lessen my guilt at not being WITH him at the end. Just because you know something’s out of your control doesn’t necessarily lessen the guilt.
Back In The Hospital
I have no idea, when this whole “cancer” thing is done, whether my body will be as it was before. I’m getting a growing sense that, like Gerry, I will ALWAYS carry the pain of the tumor in my back and the damage done by it’s growth into two vertebrae. Will I always be on pain meds to deal with the constant bone & spine pain? I guess these are things that will be revealed I I continue with my recovery. Which is a lovely word.