Emotional Narcissism, With a Few Facts Thrown in For Good Measure

I received an email today from someone who said "How is everything going with your family?...I read your blog from time to time, I haven't found any specific news in a while...", which made me feel rather guilty about the rather sporadic posting and also about the lack of the occasional purely factual update. Of course, the purely factual updates always feel like there's not all that m,uch to report, you know? With cancer, its just basically the perpetual balancing act between the disease killing you, the cure killing you, and the cure killing the disease, and sometimes the tightrope seems to be made of invisible fishing wire.

Maman had a much needed and gloriously long break from chemo, so that she would be able to visit her family in France. Both the chemo break and the visit were miraculous, and when I last took leave of her a week ago she was more herself than she had been since this whole ordeal began a mere (but exhausting) 5 or so months ago. We even went shopping a bit each day, which was really sort of the first "return to normalcy" type thing she'd done in 5 months. She was exhilarated, though still easily fatigued.

I was so thankful to have ma Petite Maman back, even though we both acknowledged that this was probably the last time we would ever have quite like this, with her strength quite this up. Realistically speaking, with the resumption of chemo and the cumulative affects of the poison, it probably was the last time I'd see her quite so "normal". It was so wonderful to get to have that time together, and we spent a huge amount of time together just the 2 of us (Wild Boar wandered off many a time in a wonderfully played and really quite subtle effort to give us this time), which I'm also so incredibly thankful for. It was the return of the ever-close mother/daughter duo that we had been for years now, but which somehow had been superceded by cancer's odious personality. Its nice to have this to hold on to, and nice to know for certain that the changes in her personality and in our relationship were due to the strains of chemo and cancer, and not exactly due to some horrible breakdown of our essential beings. I'm tearing up writing this, because I know just how important that last weekend was, and how much I now treasure the lucid moments, or the moments where she is simply my mother, and perhaps worries about something I may mention. These things that were taken for granted before and are now the gold standard in the currency of life.

I left for New York last Tuesday and Maman resumed chemo last Wednesday. The results of her last CT scan showed a decrease in the size of some of the tumors, but the chemo was attacking her bone marrow big time so they've had to massively scale down the intensity of the treatments...which means that they will not be able to fight her very aggressive squamous carcinoma as aggressively as they have been so there will be less of a decrease in tumor size, but there will be much more of an increase in quality of life. I think that's a fair deal, and that a lot should be said for quality of life.

I keep thinking back to the day in the hospital's basement radiology department, where they confirmed it was a brain tumor, and where, for the first time, we were given a realistic view of the big picture. This tiny cramped room, with the very sweet but incredibly awkward and socially inept Radiation Oncologist, who was hell bent on pointing blurry things out on the CT scan with faulty equipment and the shell shocked parents and little 'ol me trying to ask all of the important questions without having a clue as to what they were....I furiously wrote, and annoyed the hell out of him asking for even the spelling of certain things, hoping that by gathering and retaining all the information I possibly could that I would somehow be more armed for a battle that wasn't mine to fight anyway. The one thing I did not write down, but the things I can still hear so very clearly (although I might be the only one who actually heard it), is that the doctor said her chances of remission were so slim - that essentially, it would take a miracle.

I believe him...somewhere deep down, I don't really believe she'll go into remission. This makes me feel like a traitor of sorts - like I would never have saved the kingdom in Neverending Story, or saved Tinkerbell in Peter Pan. Worst of all, I'm afraid that my non-belief, which just may be realism, is somehow going to ultimately cause her death...in that same Tinkerbell Neverending Story kind of a way, you know? Its hard...its hard to find the necessary balance.

And evidently its hard to write a facts only post, which this was supposed to be.

I am so emotionally narcissistic, aren't I?

Petulant Pissypants

I am in a foul foul fight picking mood today. You probably shouldn't call me, as you probably don't want to be faced with the considerable wrath of Synge. In fact, don't even read my fuckin blog, okay? Because that's just the kind of mood I'm in. Stop! Now! Fine, well I'm just not going to write anymore. So there, you fucking lurker, you. I hate you anyway. You and everything else in this stupid fucking world. And I know I sound like a six year old with a very precocious grasp on profanity and I happen to be just fuckiong fine with that, thank you very much, and you're a smelly poop head anyway. So there. Oh, and nanny nanny boo boo to fuckin you.

Tttthhhhhpppppptttttttttt!!!!!!!!!

Oddly enough, that really didn't make me feel any better.

Fuck it, I'm running away in search of wine.

Tellin' it Like it is!

Although I'm the last one to post this clip (forgive me, I was down south, where it seems my vote DID make a difference, and swing the color spectrum to something far cooler and pleasing to the eye), I still say its worth posting and worth watching a million times over. I love Keith and I applaud him, big time for his passionate and unforgiving revelation of the truth...but at the same time, I ask why were voices and questions such as this not raised all along or have they? Why haven't we seen commentary such as this throughout the entire process, and not just when the wave of public opinion overwhelmingly turned heel with a resounding cry of "my bad" echoing across the land? While better late than never is tried and true, I still harbor more than a little resentment of exactly how late it is, how few the voices still being raised, and how severe the collective toll has been.

Exactly Why I am NOT a Writer or You Get A Prize If You Make It All the Way Through This Post

Every day I make a pact with renewed vigor and determination to do any number of different healthy and life affirming or merely productive tasks that I feel have been grossly neglected in my life. Which of the various tasks are included in the daily littany depends upon the day, but almost always included is writing more. This blog can attest to how overwhelmingly successful I've been with that endeavor.

On the one hand, writing would provide the creative outlet I desperately need and crave, in addition to an emotional outlet, since this is a "tell all" style diary of sorts. It would also be a great oportunity to collect the stories and feelings and crazy roller coaster ride of this journey with cancer....which, opportunistic as it may sound, could later be compiled into something useful, such as ...oh, a one woman show? I mean, what's the good of painful life experiences if you can't magically turn them into a self indulgent horribly trite theatrical vehicle in which you play multiple characters and show the painful, the tender, and the comical all in one heart wrapped package that's too clever for its own good?

On the other hand....cancer and life (or the lack thereof) just doesn't seem funny or interesting these days. There are only so many ways to make "this is hard" sound like something interesting that you might perhaps want to read about, and I think I've exhausted them all and crossed over into something resembling teen angst, which illlicits more of an "oh god! help us!" response than an "hmmm...this blog is interesting" response.

For example (my not so subtle way of bringing up what I really want to write about without feeling like a total loser, just merely a partial one), who really wants to hear about how my relationship with my father is deteriorating faster than the speed of the sound of my damaged childhood sobbing? That sounds about as fun as repeatedly squirting bleach in my eye, which while I've never personally attempted it, doesn't sound fun at all. In fact, it reeks of self-pity, a disease I have neither the stomach nor the patience for.

Am I feeling sorry for myself these days? You betcha. And now I'm about to try and make you, oh hapless reader who is now trapped out of guilt, feel sorry for me too. Because that's what kind of a mood I'm in today. That, and in a mood to spike my co-worker's coffee with arsenic because he is wholly incapable of silence and will not cease and desist, despite repeated desperate pleas, from making little negative comments under his breath to himself every 6 seconds. But that's for another post that I will undoubtedly never get around to writing.

And to make matters worse, I just raided the Halloween candy here at the sdj, despite the entirely-too-depressing-for-words fact that I split my pants Wednesday morning by merely sitting down in a chair. That's right, I, fattty mcfatten, split my pants. Can someone please just severely maim me now? (because, you know, if your brother killed himself, yuo're just not allowed to say "someone please kill me"...it violates some sort of unwritten suicide survivors' rule. plus people tend to worry about you a little more, as if it were a familial trait)

I love that I've strayed so far off the real subject I fully intended to explore, and managed to spend 45 minutes or so talking about absolutely nothing. Well, that and spontaneously devouring an obscene amount of candy in a relatively short time in the hopes that I can burst out of my dress just as I sit down for dinner at the Italian restaurant I'm meeting one of the Wonder Twins at. I'm not sure yet which is the more coveted of skills, but I'll leave you to ponder that (since I've left you with relatively little else) while I roll myself, dress precariously attached, uptown to gorge myself on copious amounts of pasta, all with very thick cream sauces.

And one day I will actually update the 2 year old blogroll withering away into oblivion over on the side there. (No matter that I haven't even had this blog for 2 years, exactly...) That's on the to do list in between clean the space between the stive and wall and work out you lazy slob. We'll see if it ever happens....and if it does, someone owes me a drink just for accomplishing something.

Well, at least I posted....