Tag: blog

50,000 words – should I make this public?

I’ve been writing on this blog for 8 months (exactly). It has been a bit more than a year since I was diagnosed. I have written 173 posts, with a total word count of more than 50,000, and nearly 100 images.

I am wondering if I should make this public. Or at least more public. Not that I am going to blast announcement emails all over the place, but maybe just a link in my bio, or a link off of my homepage. The bizarre thing is that is very much in line with my artwork. Life art on the Internet. I don’t want to make an art project out of my cancer, but I do think that I am putting some of the same creative energy into it, sometimes. Othertimes, I am just bitching, or showing off the holes in my mouth.

Please chime in on the comments.  I’m going back and forth on this.

Sleepy Undertow

I went up to the hospital today.  I had an ultrasound to verify the presence of my veins and blood flow in them.  My Dr did this experimental procedure that I’m not really supposed to talk about.  And this was part of his documentation process.

And I also saw my Psychiatrist, who it turns out has been following the blog.  It was pretty amazing to talk about something, and have him reference something else I had written down in here.  To complete the self referentiality, we might talk this shout out when I see him in two weeks.

I went in to the studio for a bit, then came home and totally crashed.  I got up at 7:30 to make it to my 10am ultrasound.  By the time I returned home at 5pm I was totally spent.  I had a couple of errands to run, and I was getting ready to leave to take care of them when I realized I had a migrane level headache, and was slurring my words.  leaving my to do list and packed bag of things to drop off or mail off, I kind of collapsed onto my bed.

I have taken to napping since I was diagnosed.  I have observed that a short rest-without-sleep will revive me when I get sluggish or dizzy or just plain tired.  BUT, a sleeping nap is more likely to screw things up more.  So going down for a nap is always a precarious thing.  This time the undertow was so strong, I had no power to avoid it.  I lied down on the bed, and really felt pulled down into sleep.  I woke up some time later, and stumbled into the bathroom to take a Tylenol 3 with Codeine, and stumble back into bed.  I finally woke at 10pm.  It was one of those sleeps where my teeth hurt when i woke, and I was really unsure whether I felt better or worse after it all.

Day 19: Are we there yet?

Almost done.  Almost done.  Almost done.

Today was the penultimate day.  I should have geeked out yesterday and called it the antepenultimate day.  Oh, this is what my English Literature degree comes to.

Yesterday, the antepenultimate day, I overheard one of the nurses arranging for hospice care for a patient with pancreatic cancer.  She used the word “nonresectable” which I think means it is inoperable.  My grandmother died from pancreatic cancer.  Hearing the word “hospice” was scary, but also reminded me how well I am doing.  How healthy I feel.  How far I am from giving in and going under.

Today I gave all the nurses cookies (that my brother made) and the URL to this blog.  I gave it to my massage/healer person too.  While it was happening, I wanted it to be private from them, but now that I am leaving, I want them to see it.  Ah… control.

I’m starting to feel like I’m already transitioning back to NYC.  I made a haircut appointment (my hair is wildly out of control.)  And I made an appointment with my NYC oncologist so I can learn how to do the self injection pen.

Wait, did you catch that… my NYC oncologist.  I’m so bi-coastal I have two oncologists…  LOL.

Reiki & Anticipation

A famly friend was over, with her whole family (dog included.)  Her new sister in law is a Reiki practitioner.  (I think I mentioned the wedding a few weeks ago)  So she did some work on me.  A lot of it was similar to what my massage person has done.  Certain ways of holding and touching the feet and ankles, holding & rubbing the belly.  By the time she was done, I was so deeply relaxed I fell asleep for 3 hours.

I guess the idea is that the chi is blocked and the Reiki helps unblock the chi.  So it leads to a quickening of the healing process.  I don’t know whether it was just psychosomatic, but I was very relaxed from it.  Its hard to say.

Not so relaxed now, though.  Sunday night is such an emotionally turbulent time for me.  Tomorrow I will hopefully start the final week of the treatment.  I hope I clear the liver test.  I haven’t taken any Tylenol for two weeks, so that is not a factor.  I feel pretty good; I mean *right now* I have a pit in my stomach and have been crying off and on, but before I started thinking about the blood tests tomorrow, I was felling pretty good.

N.B. I noticed that I had a montly archive on the side of the blog.  It shocked me to realize that I had been here for so long. It has been five weeks, going on the sixth.