Something Evil This Way Comes

I don’t want to do anything that might diminish my rep as a miserable old ratbag, so I worry what the cost may be if I post that things have been pretty downright dandy lately.

For one thing, the weather has taken a lovely turn for the summer-ish side of things, and while it certainly isn’t summer yet, I am happy to sit through the dress rehearsals.

And I had a realization just the other day that a year ago, I was in Kaua’i with my sweetie and a couple of really good friends and I had a spectacular time. Which got me to thinking how great it is to go swimming with tropical fish, and also that things have certainly been hard over the last couple of years, but there have been some really wonderful chunks of time mixed in along the way, too.

Over the last year or so, a lot of my stress has come from ongoing medical issues with my family, and while none of those situations have had a wild and Disney-like recovery, and they never will, none of those situations has gotten any worse recently, and that’s a bit of a relief.

And last week, I wrote my last exam for that semester. And that feels like a great relief, even if I did have a moment of temporary insanity that caused me to register for two classes over the summer. I figure I can still drop them if my inner sloth totally takes over.

It was my birthday last week, and my sweetie gave me a Coleman stove, which is so great because I really love to camp and the stove I bought last year suffered from some defect that caused the pipe to erode and snap open. The pipe that carries the gas from the can to the stove. I came quite close to becoming the English Patient while trying to figure out why my stove, which was two months old, wouldn’t light. So, this year, Elaine bought me the name brand replacement and we shall be off in the woods in no time. And I love that idea more than I can say.

I have also spent a chunk of the last few weeks working in my old job, the job I had right at the time of my diagnosis/surgery. See, at the time I had the surgery, I really just thought that the surgeon would cut out the tumour, which I sincerely believed would turn out to be benign, and I would have 6 weeks off work, from May till July, and then I would go back and everything would be same old, same old.

Clearly things didn’t quite go according to plan. But I had only a couple of days notice before the surgery and and it was all a whirlwind. And after the surgery and nine months of chemo and the recovery from the treatment, I got offered a position with a new project that seemed less stressful. But for this last week, I have parachuted back to the old work site and there I am, just like nothing ever happened. Some people remember me, but there are lots of new faces. In some ways, it really drives home the point that the show just keeps on going and going and going. That helps me stay back at a healthy distance, I think.

But my point is, it’s been nice and it’s been interesting and, in some ways, it’s been gratifying to go back. It’s also nice to know that I have my real job that I will go back to. Still, it’s interesting to feel like I have been a part of something important.

And yesterday, I saw my friendly neighbourhood oncologist who said that my CA125 count is at 7. Elaine and I let out the breath we had both been holding for the last week, since the blood draw, and were giddy with the joy that comes from such news and also from connecting one’s lungs with O2 after such a long period of deprivation. Very, very happy about that news at my house.

And now it’s late and the alarm will go off way too soon, even if it is my day off tomorrow. And just a few feet away from me, my sweetie is sleeping and making sweet little sleep noises and all around her are the cats, and it’s all so sweet and right. So much sweetness.
I guess I am gonna lose some Eeyore points for this post, but what are you gonna do?

(comments rescued from the crash)

I got lots of feedback and such for that last post about trying to be grateful while feeling really pissed off and ripped off and more than a bit confused.
Oddly, it seems to be all cancer survivors who wrote to say anything about that post. And really, I think that is both fine and cool.

I think it is really interesting that I am not the only one who is just fantastically pissed off about having gone through this nasty cancer episode. It’s good for me to know there are other folks out there who are a bit pissy about the whole thing, because, as I mentioned, I *feel* like I should be ever so happy to have made it through, this far, to the other side.
And, as I mentioned, I am.
And I also really miss the person I was before cancer came in and bleached a whole lot of sunny emotion from my life.
I don’t really want to say that you can’t understand unless you have gone through something similar. But I think most people actually can’t. I am not trying to be all precious and unique.
It’s just totally weird.
And it happened, and I would like to move on.

Here’s the flipside.
Here’s the sunshine head episode. People who know me in real life may need to walk away now.
But here’s what I have been thinking lately.
I know this cranky man through my work. Being cranky is his day to day approach to life. If a crisis comes up, he has a variety of different personas, most of which are friendlier and easier to be around, and he opens the bag and lets some other aspect of his personality come to the forefront, and it’s very interesting.
It’s very interesting to me to realize that being cranky is a choice he has made and it is his default position.
It’s interesting to me to see how he is happy being unhappy.
And I don’t want to be that beast.
And that’s part of what is freaky about the whole ‘pissy apres cancer’ scene. When does the crabbiness stop being reasonable and when does it start anchoring itself on to your soul and make every day an Eeyore day?

Okay, so anyone who really really knows me should really really turn away now.
Cuz the sunshine is about to become blinding.

Here’s the thing of it.
And this is a message to myself way more than it is a message to anyone else.
Every day we wake up and, to some extent, we get to influence what sort of day we are going to have.
I think the most important thing we can bring to any day we have above ground is some degree of compassion and caring for the people around us.
I think we all have to decide who we want to give our compassion to, but really, that stuff, those fluffy emotions, are the things that make us human and it is those things that we do for each other that make life worth living.

So, there you have it.
The sunshine episode.

Don’t get me wrong; I ain’t got any of this down yet. But it is on my mind.
I guess my point is, I think we have every right to be angry and grumpy and confused and testy and anything else we may feel.
And at some point, I think we have to swim back and join the school we came from, even if we did get pulled up on the deck of the boat. For whatever reason, we got kicked back in the ocean and we got another chance.

So maybe we still got the wound from the fish hook, but it’s way better than being surrounded in mayonaisse and sourdough bread.

We have a second chance and we gotta get swimming.

(comments rescued from the crash)