Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Grundoon Goes GammaGirl
My favorite moment was when the 350 pound lead bowl, attached to the titanium frame which is screwed into my poor little skull - don't drop my head, please! - (COLANDER? I SPIT ON YOUR TIN FOIL COLANDER!) "DOCKS" with the gamma knife machine. "Houston, the shuttle has docked, and the air locks are connected!" And ALL FIVE of the geek doctors came out dancing to Light My Fire, courtesy of the Gammagirl CD Kevin made.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Twenty-three things to do on steroids
Many bothans have died to bring you this information.
1) Alphabetize your CD collection. (2:30 am)
2) Paint your toe shoes with cobalt blue watercolors. (1:30 am)
3) Fold laundry load dishwasher forget what you were doing fold more laundry leave in pile on end of bed so it gets kicked and unfolded. Never put away.
4) Give wertperch all your credit cards and checkbook, so you do not spend money, because you are effectively hypomanic, and you need the money to close on the house.
5) Do not spend money. I tell you three times.
6) Start an ENORMOUS oil painting of yourself from the first cleavage calendar. Get scared of creepy stare-y blue-green eyeballs in self portrait.
7) DO NOT SPEND MORE MONEY.
8) Find Pogo books at comic book store, and ask wertperch to please please PLEASE let you buy them. Gloat to pogophile friend. Consider selling all Heinlein pulps on Ebay. Wish for a copy of grampa's comics, which would solve all the loan complications.
9) Read the paperwork for the house. Realize favorite clause is the warning that living in a development with a golf course on the north end (Yeah, are we yuppie, or what?) is the warning about ERRANT GOLF BALLS all caps, in bold. HOW DUMB WOULD YOU HAVE TO BE NOT TO KNOW THIS?
10) Drink heavily. Booze offsets the effects of the steroids. Ask doctor(s) if there's a problem with drinking gingerale and vodka, with candied ginger, starting at, oh, say, 10:30 in the morning. Docs say, for three weeks, if you are controlling the hypomania, then yes, just don't take benzos at the same time. Consider this as good advice. Celebrate by DRINKING. Thank you, Jethro Bodine. Toss me a PBR.
11) Sort more CDs. Fold clothes. Consider alphabetizing the books. Try to resist. Start cleaning up the backyard, find an old pot full of glorious orange Oregon dirt. Dye everything white in the house orange with Oregon iron oxide. Find that wertperch wants to kill you, even though you've dyed his boring white tee shirts. You talk too much.
12) Aphabetize the books, and start boxing up the ones you don't want. Anyone want any books? If you pay the shipping, I send to you.
13) Cook strange things at midnight. Have stomachache the next day. Drink all the booze in the house, which isn't much, except for wertperch's exotic beer stash.
14) Take hydrocodone on an empty stomach. Hurl. Eat cheerios. Hurl. Visit new house, and christen it by hurling in the master bath. Consider peeing on the corners, it would show about the same amount of class.
15) Try not to kill wertperch, or cause wertperch to kill you.
16) Try to resist the temptation to chase bad drivers down the street, and go generally postal. Go to the grocery store with cancer survivor across the street (GliomaGirl), using stroller to haul booze. Don't take babies. Realize that both of you have the attention span of a gnat, and cannot have anything remotely resembling a normal conversation. Have fun anyway. Notice the tellers looking extremely disturbed about the six large bottles of booze that you are putting where the baby's butt would be. Get the giggles. Talk loudly about cancer survival, complete with head wounds. Realize that we probably do not project the image of responsible moms. Make garbled fuckfuck noises. Drink, not so heavily, upon returning home.
17) Spend many, many minutes on phones with LARGE BUREAUCRACIES, medical, and bankinal, realestatinal.. Try to decide which to hate the most.
18) 3:00 am - surf furniture stores. Do not steal credit cards back from wertperch. Consider freezing cash card into a block of ice.
19) Look for cocktail dresses actually named after cocktails. DO NOT BUY THE COCKTAIL DRESSES. Realize menfolk of family have better taste, and furthermore look better in cocktail dresses than grundoon does, and have found cooler dresses. Wonder if menfolk are all really gay. Think it unlikely.
20) Shop for large caliber handguns and chainsaws.
21) Write really complicated emotional stuff, and decide NOT to post all of it. Lose battle. Post it anyway. Cry all day, and have nightmares. Take extra-strong sleeping medication, and still sleep for only four hours.
23) Search for cobalt blue suede boots and chaps for GammaGirl superheroine costume. Find them in England, on Ebay. DO NOT BUY THE CHAPS. Decide to wait until AFTER the house closes. Wear gammagirl wig and tiara to POOlates class.
23) Dance ballet class, on pointe, for 2-1/2 hours. Still get so wired that you consider going to the ER for help, after talking to all medical offices for more than 20 minutes, and still not getting answers. Try not to kill wertperch. Go out for a beer, drink mai tais, and find out it's salsa night at the Grad. Call the ballet dancer who might be available. Go and salsa for two more hours. Get happy. Dance with sweaty boys, and do the ballet/hiphop/salsa with Maia. Consider the merits running away to Morocco to become exotic dancers. Drink more mai tais. Find out that next day thighs will hurt, a LOT, and it's still worth it, because you haven't gone postal. Lather, rinse and repeat. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
----that is all----
Thursday, February 25, 2010
The hardest loss of breast cancer
Why I'm up AGAIN at 6 am. Nightmares. I am dancing, and I even went out salsa dancing on Tuesday night - it helps. Trouble is I'm getting really physically exhausted.
I'm going through something really emotionally hard at the moment, and it's giving me bad dreams. wertperch and I have never told anyone else much about this, but back in 2005 when I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I was pregnant; probably conceived when I was in England. When I wasdiagnosed, the doc said there was no way I could postpone chemo for 7 months, and also no way a fetus would survive the chemotherapy. Probable miscarriage, undoubtedy birth defects, yucky stuff. Adriamycin, in particular, is a class C teratogen. In other words, it can cause severe birth defects. In addition, the pregnancy hormones at the time were causing the cancer to progress faster. I had an estrogen positive cancer, meaning estrogen made the cancer grow more quickly. I also had the most aggressive cancer cells , by staging. Very mutated, growing very fast. "We're going to take a big ba, and we are going to hit you as hard as we can." My doctor said it was pretty much a choice - if I wanted to hang on to the baby, the cancer would probably kill me first. Kevin and I talked about it, and he said I want you more than I want that baby, and Tessie and I need you more. It was a pretty black and white decision at the time.
So I had an abortion. A D&C, about six weeks into the chemotherapy. It was actually about a week after wertperch and I got married, in May of 2005. My doctor kindly postponed it a week, so I wasn't in physical discomfort during the wedding. (Keeping in mind that I was flooded with chemotherapy drugs at the time.)
Well, yesterday the imp saw me crying, talking to a friend in ballet class, and she asked me why - so I told her. And she is furious with me - for not telling her, for not having the baby, for not getting her opinion at the time, for potentially having the baby and dying and leaving her. I realize this makes no logical sense, but it's also a huge loss for her. She wants a baby brother or sister more than anything else in the world. Remember, she was 6 at the time.What is the right time to tell her? There isn't. There never was, and there isn't. And it's bringing up this incredible amount of sadness and loss for all of us, on top of everything else.
Kevin and I wanted that baby so badly, I haven't the words to express it.
The part they forgot to tell me was that chemotherapy destroys both ovaries and eggs. If I had known ahead of time, I potentially could at least have harvested some eggs, in the hopes of carrying a pregnancy later. The chemotherapy made me perimenopausal, so now there's no chance of getting pregnant - and the odds of having bad birth defects if I did are really high. I think the doctors didn't offer it because since my cancer was estrogen positive (then) pregnancy hormones would be bad, no matter when. Now that the cancer has mutated, it's no longer an issue, but it's pretty moot at this point - I'm 45, the ovaries are toast, the eggs, well, what was the old ad? This is your brain on drugs? Chemo kills fast dividing cells, and it doesn't differentiate between those we want, and those we don't want.
Needless to say, I had a rough night. Bad dreams, where I was at an adoption agency that more or less resembled the DMV, and they pretty much just said, your paperwork is not in order, so you can't have that baby. Sorry. They took a picture of my license plate, and the tags were expired, and they would not tell me what paperwork was missing - I "was just supposed to know that". Sorry. Then they'd send me to another line, where every clerk looked like Roz from Monsters, Inc., and they all went on coffee break when I got to the front. You know the drill.
Kevin and I didn't talk about it at all until at least a year later - we were so overwhelmed with all the other emotional repercussions, I think we just set it aside, and left it for later. I finally told a close friend who was struggling with infertility about a year or so ago. Secondary infertility is different from primary infertility, but it's still real, and it was still a loss. Of a very, very wanted baby.
So I'm sad this morning. Weepy. Maybe making a quilt might help. I could make a little baby doll quilt. I think I need to grieve, and acknowledge the loss somehow. Her name would have been Caroline Grace, or Helen Grace, if a girl. Wertperch and I never decided on a boy's name.
I don't, these days, have a lot of fear of death. I'm physically so strong, that any chemical, any radiation, any star wars technology they throw at me, I seem to just sort of bulldoze my way through. I don't suffer a lot from the emotional baggage during treatment, I seem to save that up for when I'm between bouts of chemo. But oh, I wanted that baby.
That baby is the biggest thing I gave up because of breast cancer. Losing a breast was a piece of cake in comparison. Breasts are mostly decorative, and the fake ones nowadays are pretty good. I can even adjust the size, depending on whether I'm doing yoga, or going out salsa dancing, and looking a little more bimbo.
Reconstruction is just not really an option. MORE surgery? Elective surgery? That puts me back in the hospital for a week? I'm more likely to visit Machu Pichu. I think I'm much more likely to get a tattoo of a tough old wisteria over the scar than let them cut me up even more. But I don't know what tattoo to put over the other scar, the invisible one.
Baby, we miss you. I'm sorry.
This post is for Sarah, and for Grace.
I'm going through something really emotionally hard at the moment, and it's giving me bad dreams. wertperch and I have never told anyone else much about this, but back in 2005 when I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I was pregnant; probably conceived when I was in England. When I wasdiagnosed, the doc said there was no way I could postpone chemo for 7 months, and also no way a fetus would survive the chemotherapy. Probable miscarriage, undoubtedy birth defects, yucky stuff. Adriamycin, in particular, is a class C teratogen. In other words, it can cause severe birth defects. In addition, the pregnancy hormones at the time were causing the cancer to progress faster. I had an estrogen positive cancer, meaning estrogen made the cancer grow more quickly. I also had the most aggressive cancer cells , by staging. Very mutated, growing very fast. "We're going to take a big ba, and we are going to hit you as hard as we can." My doctor said it was pretty much a choice - if I wanted to hang on to the baby, the cancer would probably kill me first. Kevin and I talked about it, and he said I want you more than I want that baby, and Tessie and I need you more. It was a pretty black and white decision at the time.
So I had an abortion. A D&C, about six weeks into the chemotherapy. It was actually about a week after wertperch and I got married, in May of 2005. My doctor kindly postponed it a week, so I wasn't in physical discomfort during the wedding. (Keeping in mind that I was flooded with chemotherapy drugs at the time.)
Well, yesterday the imp saw me crying, talking to a friend in ballet class, and she asked me why - so I told her. And she is furious with me - for not telling her, for not having the baby, for not getting her opinion at the time, for potentially having the baby and dying and leaving her. I realize this makes no logical sense, but it's also a huge loss for her. She wants a baby brother or sister more than anything else in the world. Remember, she was 6 at the time.What is the right time to tell her? There isn't. There never was, and there isn't. And it's bringing up this incredible amount of sadness and loss for all of us, on top of everything else.
Kevin and I wanted that baby so badly, I haven't the words to express it.
The part they forgot to tell me was that chemotherapy destroys both ovaries and eggs. If I had known ahead of time, I potentially could at least have harvested some eggs, in the hopes of carrying a pregnancy later. The chemotherapy made me perimenopausal, so now there's no chance of getting pregnant - and the odds of having bad birth defects if I did are really high. I think the doctors didn't offer it because since my cancer was estrogen positive (then) pregnancy hormones would be bad, no matter when. Now that the cancer has mutated, it's no longer an issue, but it's pretty moot at this point - I'm 45, the ovaries are toast, the eggs, well, what was the old ad? This is your brain on drugs? Chemo kills fast dividing cells, and it doesn't differentiate between those we want, and those we don't want.
Needless to say, I had a rough night. Bad dreams, where I was at an adoption agency that more or less resembled the DMV, and they pretty much just said, your paperwork is not in order, so you can't have that baby. Sorry. They took a picture of my license plate, and the tags were expired, and they would not tell me what paperwork was missing - I "was just supposed to know that". Sorry. Then they'd send me to another line, where every clerk looked like Roz from Monsters, Inc., and they all went on coffee break when I got to the front. You know the drill.
Kevin and I didn't talk about it at all until at least a year later - we were so overwhelmed with all the other emotional repercussions, I think we just set it aside, and left it for later. I finally told a close friend who was struggling with infertility about a year or so ago. Secondary infertility is different from primary infertility, but it's still real, and it was still a loss. Of a very, very wanted baby.
So I'm sad this morning. Weepy. Maybe making a quilt might help. I could make a little baby doll quilt. I think I need to grieve, and acknowledge the loss somehow. Her name would have been Caroline Grace, or Helen Grace, if a girl. Wertperch and I never decided on a boy's name.
I don't, these days, have a lot of fear of death. I'm physically so strong, that any chemical, any radiation, any star wars technology they throw at me, I seem to just sort of bulldoze my way through. I don't suffer a lot from the emotional baggage during treatment, I seem to save that up for when I'm between bouts of chemo. But oh, I wanted that baby.
That baby is the biggest thing I gave up because of breast cancer. Losing a breast was a piece of cake in comparison. Breasts are mostly decorative, and the fake ones nowadays are pretty good. I can even adjust the size, depending on whether I'm doing yoga, or going out salsa dancing, and looking a little more bimbo.
Reconstruction is just not really an option. MORE surgery? Elective surgery? That puts me back in the hospital for a week? I'm more likely to visit Machu Pichu. I think I'm much more likely to get a tattoo of a tough old wisteria over the scar than let them cut me up even more. But I don't know what tattoo to put over the other scar, the invisible one.
Baby, we miss you. I'm sorry.
This post is for Sarah, and for Grace.
Monday, February 15, 2010
On Internet Lurve
For Richard, and by a strange concatenation of circumstances, for Laurel
I used to think that falling in love, or being in love required a lot of time. That I should wait, and weigh, and consider, and perhaps make a list of someone's most wonderful (or most irritating) habits, before I committed myself, mentally, to believing that I love them.
I no longer believe that this is true.
I have men friends who claim they "fall in love with" the swish of a dress, sunlight on hair, the turn of an ankle perhaps. Altough I can't say that I experience this, I do find it easy to fall for someone. Perhaps one is visual, the other is mental. Molecular. I don't know.
Bother.
In order to make sense of this for you, I have to work both backwards and forwards.
I am reading a book called Blithe Tomatoes. It's for my book club, which tends to be Books with Wine once a month. But oddly enough, the author is the husband of the woman who sells flowers at the Davis farmer's market, right next to the booth where wertperch and I sell vegetables.
This evening, I couldn't concentrate on the book, much as I like it. My mind is wandering.
Sunday afternoon, two lovely young men came to interview me, grundoon, and wertperch, about how we met, and the strange and wondrous internet site where that took place. We sat for almost four hours, trying not to look self-concious in front of QXZ's big camera, while Walter asked us questions. How we met, when we actually first met "in person", why we think everything2 became a social network without obviously meaning to, how we've met other noders, whether pigs have wings. It was fascinating, emotional, and very hard work.
And the interview did me a big favor, which was to remind me of a number of things and people that I love, and that interest me. What makes people drawn to each other. What creates the impulse to read some anonymous someone's work, until they don't seem so anonymous, and you start to want to know the person behind the writing. Why creating, and creativity, and a creative community, means so much to me.
So as I was reading (-ish; mostly daydreaming), I was thinking about how I missed Laurel, and wished for more people around me who enjoy the making of things, whether that be writing or drawing, cooking or origami, or the building huge concrete earthworks or statues of women.
And I wondered why I had managed to forget, for most of this fall, that I love the making of things, and the process of the making of things with other people.
Which, in my completely convoluted and roundabout daydreaming sort of way, brought me to Richard.
I met Richard at the Strawberry Music Festival. I had travelled down a day and half early, to try and find a slightly more pleasant campsite amongst the other three thousand Strawberry visitors than the one we had the previous year. I thought I had found a fairly pleasant spot, but not long after starting to set up tents, I got booted out of my spot. I'd slopped over a boundary sign.
This kind fellow from across the road said, come down here! I have more than enough space set aside.
I waffled for a bit, never being very good at accepting favors from a stranger, and then decided it was okay. I moved my campsite, taking up a fairly teeny space on the edge of his site, and then joined him and two of his friends for a short chat.
That chat ended up going on for something around six hours.
Richard is lovely. Interesting, funny, and interested. His two friends were the same. They were also experienced strawberry campers, and had a camp with easily 14 tents, two three burner stoves, a keg - a KEG, people - of beer, and numerous luxuries. And they shared me in without even a blink. Every so often, I would get self-concious about taking up their shade, drinking their booze, eating their food, etc, but they managed to not just seem oblivious to the unevenness of contribution, but to make me feel like one of the family.
And I fell in love.
They asked me questions; and really, carefully, listened to the answers. This is one of the few conversations I really remember where anyone really wanted to know, in detail, what this whole metastatic cancer trip is like, and took the time to listen with total care. We shared stories; every so often we'd be drawn away for music, but in hindsight this was by far my favorite part of the festival, this wonderful person, and the wonderful group of people he had drawn around him.
Now, I know, I know, I have to qualify this. I'll try to separate, clearly, the difference between falling in love like this, and the impulse to possess someone. It's very clear to me that I love people, of many genders, and far too many of them to have any concept of possessing, (or shagging) even a few. This is much more about that feeling that this person is someone I want to keep, to continue to know. It's mostly about that internal recognition that I don't actually need to know this person's bad habits, dreams, values; that I can just love them, like that, without trying, and without expecting or demanding anything.
As soon as wertperch and the others arrived, I told him, I've fallen madly in love with our neighbor, I can't wait for you to meet him. At this point, the crowd was much larger, but they also hit it off, just as I expected.
We traded contact info, and promises to keep in touch.
Fast foward to the rest of the fall. The downside of having people tell you how brave you are facing cancer, and how well you are handling it, is that when you aren't brave, and aren't handling it well, it's harder to admit. This fall I was feeling very angry, extremely sorry for myself, and pitiful. And I could hardly stand to be in the room with me. With that said, not enjoying my own emotional state, I couldn't imagine that anyone else could possibly want to be in the same room as me. Depression and self-pity are two of my least favorite states, and I would like to pretend I never experience them. It's a lie.
And I haven't stayed in touch with Richard, because since I couldn't stand myself, why on earth would he be interested in talking with me? What a useless friend I must be.
But I've slowly been climbing out of that pit. Slowly, sloggingly, covered with mud, but climbing out none the less.
One of the other subjects that came up during the noder love interview, was why I thought that everything2, as a community, became such. What is it about these people that keeps me coming back, that keeps me in touch, as no other electronic "place" does?
And I talked about Laurel, and that feeling of love, that here was a person I could value, before I'd ever met her.
This post seems to have no conclusion. It was a strange thread of ideas that I was trying to get down, I may try to break it down into smaller bits as I think on it. More soon.
Love,
grundoon
I used to think that falling in love, or being in love required a lot of time. That I should wait, and weigh, and consider, and perhaps make a list of someone's most wonderful (or most irritating) habits, before I committed myself, mentally, to believing that I love them.
I no longer believe that this is true.
I have men friends who claim they "fall in love with" the swish of a dress, sunlight on hair, the turn of an ankle perhaps. Altough I can't say that I experience this, I do find it easy to fall for someone. Perhaps one is visual, the other is mental. Molecular. I don't know.
Bother.
In order to make sense of this for you, I have to work both backwards and forwards.
I am reading a book called Blithe Tomatoes. It's for my book club, which tends to be Books with Wine once a month. But oddly enough, the author is the husband of the woman who sells flowers at the Davis farmer's market, right next to the booth where wertperch and I sell vegetables.
This evening, I couldn't concentrate on the book, much as I like it. My mind is wandering.
Sunday afternoon, two lovely young men came to interview me, grundoon, and wertperch, about how we met, and the strange and wondrous internet site where that took place. We sat for almost four hours, trying not to look self-concious in front of QXZ's big camera, while Walter asked us questions. How we met, when we actually first met "in person", why we think everything2 became a social network without obviously meaning to, how we've met other noders, whether pigs have wings. It was fascinating, emotional, and very hard work.
And the interview did me a big favor, which was to remind me of a number of things and people that I love, and that interest me. What makes people drawn to each other. What creates the impulse to read some anonymous someone's work, until they don't seem so anonymous, and you start to want to know the person behind the writing. Why creating, and creativity, and a creative community, means so much to me.
So as I was reading (-ish; mostly daydreaming), I was thinking about how I missed Laurel, and wished for more people around me who enjoy the making of things, whether that be writing or drawing, cooking or origami, or the building huge concrete earthworks or statues of women.
And I wondered why I had managed to forget, for most of this fall, that I love the making of things, and the process of the making of things with other people.
Which, in my completely convoluted and roundabout daydreaming sort of way, brought me to Richard.
I met Richard at the Strawberry Music Festival. I had travelled down a day and half early, to try and find a slightly more pleasant campsite amongst the other three thousand Strawberry visitors than the one we had the previous year. I thought I had found a fairly pleasant spot, but not long after starting to set up tents, I got booted out of my spot. I'd slopped over a boundary sign.
This kind fellow from across the road said, come down here! I have more than enough space set aside.
I waffled for a bit, never being very good at accepting favors from a stranger, and then decided it was okay. I moved my campsite, taking up a fairly teeny space on the edge of his site, and then joined him and two of his friends for a short chat.
That chat ended up going on for something around six hours.
Richard is lovely. Interesting, funny, and interested. His two friends were the same. They were also experienced strawberry campers, and had a camp with easily 14 tents, two three burner stoves, a keg - a KEG, people - of beer, and numerous luxuries. And they shared me in without even a blink. Every so often, I would get self-concious about taking up their shade, drinking their booze, eating their food, etc, but they managed to not just seem oblivious to the unevenness of contribution, but to make me feel like one of the family.
And I fell in love.
They asked me questions; and really, carefully, listened to the answers. This is one of the few conversations I really remember where anyone really wanted to know, in detail, what this whole metastatic cancer trip is like, and took the time to listen with total care. We shared stories; every so often we'd be drawn away for music, but in hindsight this was by far my favorite part of the festival, this wonderful person, and the wonderful group of people he had drawn around him.
Now, I know, I know, I have to qualify this. I'll try to separate, clearly, the difference between falling in love like this, and the impulse to possess someone. It's very clear to me that I love people, of many genders, and far too many of them to have any concept of possessing, (or shagging) even a few. This is much more about that feeling that this person is someone I want to keep, to continue to know. It's mostly about that internal recognition that I don't actually need to know this person's bad habits, dreams, values; that I can just love them, like that, without trying, and without expecting or demanding anything.
As soon as wertperch and the others arrived, I told him, I've fallen madly in love with our neighbor, I can't wait for you to meet him. At this point, the crowd was much larger, but they also hit it off, just as I expected.
We traded contact info, and promises to keep in touch.
Fast foward to the rest of the fall. The downside of having people tell you how brave you are facing cancer, and how well you are handling it, is that when you aren't brave, and aren't handling it well, it's harder to admit. This fall I was feeling very angry, extremely sorry for myself, and pitiful. And I could hardly stand to be in the room with me. With that said, not enjoying my own emotional state, I couldn't imagine that anyone else could possibly want to be in the same room as me. Depression and self-pity are two of my least favorite states, and I would like to pretend I never experience them. It's a lie.
And I haven't stayed in touch with Richard, because since I couldn't stand myself, why on earth would he be interested in talking with me? What a useless friend I must be.
But I've slowly been climbing out of that pit. Slowly, sloggingly, covered with mud, but climbing out none the less.
One of the other subjects that came up during the noder love interview, was why I thought that everything2, as a community, became such. What is it about these people that keeps me coming back, that keeps me in touch, as no other electronic "place" does?
And I talked about Laurel, and that feeling of love, that here was a person I could value, before I'd ever met her.
This post seems to have no conclusion. It was a strange thread of ideas that I was trying to get down, I may try to break it down into smaller bits as I think on it. More soon.
Love,
grundoon
Friday, January 29, 2010
Left parietal lobe
Third time's the charm, apparently.
I have a "suspicious mass" in my brain. Suspicious, as in, a 2 centimeter mass that is presumably metastasized breast cancer.
I'm okay, for the moment. Not entirely surprised, but it is going to mean more treatment, probably gamma knife surgery, and another round of chemotherapy. I wonder what the record is?
The good news is (and I know you'll kid me for this) again, we caught it early. I'm learning to really trust my gut instinct that something is not quite right. I've been having more headaches than usual - this is a pretty minor thing, and not usually how a brain tumor would show up. Good thing I noodged my oncologist into the MRI anyway. Hooray for early detection.
As usual, send me goofy snail mail, and send love and support to wertperch. More as soon as I know anything.
Love,
grundoon
I have a "suspicious mass" in my brain. Suspicious, as in, a 2 centimeter mass that is presumably metastasized breast cancer.
I'm okay, for the moment. Not entirely surprised, but it is going to mean more treatment, probably gamma knife surgery, and another round of chemotherapy. I wonder what the record is?
The good news is (and I know you'll kid me for this) again, we caught it early. I'm learning to really trust my gut instinct that something is not quite right. I've been having more headaches than usual - this is a pretty minor thing, and not usually how a brain tumor would show up. Good thing I noodged my oncologist into the MRI anyway. Hooray for early detection.
As usual, send me goofy snail mail, and send love and support to wertperch. More as soon as I know anything.
Love,
grundoon
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Rain on water
What are you doing?
Nothing.
Outwardly nothing.
Inwardly, I'm being with the rain.
Friends ask me what I do at our summer place. I usually give a fairly flippant answer. We swim, drink tea, eat, and sit around and talk about what we are going to eat next.
But it usually takes me about a week to switch into Matinenda time.
It's best explained that my logical brain turns off, and my sensation brain turns on. Perhaps I should say my Apollonian, verbal, digital, planners' brain shuts up, and my Dionysian, artistic, interrelational visionary brain takes over.
At the moment, I'm sitting in beauty. An afternoon thunderstorm is rampaging itself across the lake, and the surface is changing every few minutes. Dark, smoky emerald green with a mirrored surface. Now the downdraft, and it turns to rough steel, light and dark grey with multitudes of tiny cracks and breaks. The cloud's belly opens, and water sluices out.
Fish start to swim up out of the surface of the water, and skate around in the air. The first few do it tentatively, jumping up, not sure if it will really support them. Then a brave fish decides to see of he can soar, and takes off like a bird. Soon all his fishbuddies are following, and they are so unused to swimming amongst trees, that a game of tag ensues. They zip over our wet heads like hummingbirds. Hummingfish? And fish laughter follows the school/flock.
Wait, where was I? Now the lake has changed again. If anything, the sky is pouring even harder, and the lake surface is starting to bubble like a fountain. The sound on the roof tells me it's hail. We dash out, wanting to feel the cold hardness after the spongy hot humidity of earlier.
The hailstones last the longest on patches of moss. The moss elevates the hailstones a few inches into the air, where the are cooler than on the sunwarmed ground. I throw the hailstones into my tin cup, where the vaguely murky remains of a gin and tonic have been gathering pine needles. Anything that ends up in my cup here, I'll drink.
The chipmunks have a discussion, and coming to the same conclusion that I have, they start to grab the hailstones and ferry them down into their dens. They apparently save the hailstones to cool their drinks - or make ice cream? during the hot weather.
Now a shaft of sunlight has cut diagonally underneath the thunderhead. The heat and rain combine to instant fog. The nearest spot at the end of bay, a grey granite cliff, disappears. Avalon, receding into the mist. We are suddenly isolated, presented with a silver grey lake that blends into a curve of dramatic fog and black sky.
The fog shreds, and the world becomes microclimactic. One of the rays hits a patch of moss near me. Steam rises. I'm only the size of a frog, the moss my tree, the lichen my firewood, the toadstool my shelter. I have spent hours on my stomach, living in my imagined miniature home. A bonsai'd tree, flowing down the curve of promontory becomes my treehouse, as my fingers leap from branch to branch.
The storm clears.
I swim the distance from this start to the farthest point, my longest swin this summer. The water is pure silk. I gradually become more mermaid than human. I actually taste a change in the water - there is an edge here, where the water becomes less clear, slightly warmer, with a little bit muskier taste. My intellectual human brain knows that I have have entered the corner of the bay where water is more stagnant, and collects pollutants and heavy metals. Our friends down there filter before drinking. My temporary mermaid self knows just via senses, the texture of the water on my skin and the smell/taste. Getting back out on the rocks is so awkward, having to turn my body back from fluid to solid. My bones feel awkward, stiff, unnecessary. My balance wobbles. Oh, to be made of liquid always.
What are you doing?
Nothing.
Outwardly nothing.
Inwardly, I'm being with the water.
Nothing.
Outwardly nothing.
Inwardly, I'm being with the rain.
Friends ask me what I do at our summer place. I usually give a fairly flippant answer. We swim, drink tea, eat, and sit around and talk about what we are going to eat next.
But it usually takes me about a week to switch into Matinenda time.
It's best explained that my logical brain turns off, and my sensation brain turns on. Perhaps I should say my Apollonian, verbal, digital, planners' brain shuts up, and my Dionysian, artistic, interrelational visionary brain takes over.
At the moment, I'm sitting in beauty. An afternoon thunderstorm is rampaging itself across the lake, and the surface is changing every few minutes. Dark, smoky emerald green with a mirrored surface. Now the downdraft, and it turns to rough steel, light and dark grey with multitudes of tiny cracks and breaks. The cloud's belly opens, and water sluices out.
Fish start to swim up out of the surface of the water, and skate around in the air. The first few do it tentatively, jumping up, not sure if it will really support them. Then a brave fish decides to see of he can soar, and takes off like a bird. Soon all his fishbuddies are following, and they are so unused to swimming amongst trees, that a game of tag ensues. They zip over our wet heads like hummingbirds. Hummingfish? And fish laughter follows the school/flock.
Wait, where was I? Now the lake has changed again. If anything, the sky is pouring even harder, and the lake surface is starting to bubble like a fountain. The sound on the roof tells me it's hail. We dash out, wanting to feel the cold hardness after the spongy hot humidity of earlier.
The hailstones last the longest on patches of moss. The moss elevates the hailstones a few inches into the air, where the are cooler than on the sunwarmed ground. I throw the hailstones into my tin cup, where the vaguely murky remains of a gin and tonic have been gathering pine needles. Anything that ends up in my cup here, I'll drink.
The chipmunks have a discussion, and coming to the same conclusion that I have, they start to grab the hailstones and ferry them down into their dens. They apparently save the hailstones to cool their drinks - or make ice cream? during the hot weather.
Now a shaft of sunlight has cut diagonally underneath the thunderhead. The heat and rain combine to instant fog. The nearest spot at the end of bay, a grey granite cliff, disappears. Avalon, receding into the mist. We are suddenly isolated, presented with a silver grey lake that blends into a curve of dramatic fog and black sky.
The fog shreds, and the world becomes microclimactic. One of the rays hits a patch of moss near me. Steam rises. I'm only the size of a frog, the moss my tree, the lichen my firewood, the toadstool my shelter. I have spent hours on my stomach, living in my imagined miniature home. A bonsai'd tree, flowing down the curve of promontory becomes my treehouse, as my fingers leap from branch to branch.
The storm clears.
I swim the distance from this start to the farthest point, my longest swin this summer. The water is pure silk. I gradually become more mermaid than human. I actually taste a change in the water - there is an edge here, where the water becomes less clear, slightly warmer, with a little bit muskier taste. My intellectual human brain knows that I have have entered the corner of the bay where water is more stagnant, and collects pollutants and heavy metals. Our friends down there filter before drinking. My temporary mermaid self knows just via senses, the texture of the water on my skin and the smell/taste. Getting back out on the rocks is so awkward, having to turn my body back from fluid to solid. My bones feel awkward, stiff, unnecessary. My balance wobbles. Oh, to be made of liquid always.
What are you doing?
Nothing.
Outwardly nothing.
Inwardly, I'm being with the water.
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