Tuesday July 24 – I’m all out of whack…

First, let me apologize for the horrid grammar and just plain post of last night. I was tired, trying to hurry, and felt like I had to get it out there rather than wait until I had more time. I reread some of it this morning and I can do better than that. I wanted to go in and edit the post completely! Rewrite. Nevertheless, I’ve already published it, so I am going to let that crap stand as it is. That is my brain, tired, cranky and rushed.

Today I am still filling rushed. I had planned today out so I wouldn’t feel rushed and get everything I wanted to accomplish done before Support Group tonight. Alas, the well made plans of Mice and Men… I started off sleeping way past my alarm. It even woke Robert up before me. I hit the end button on the alarm and promptly went back to sleep after I received the stink eye from Robert for waking him up.

I had listened to the first segment of a 21-day meditation series offered through Deepak Chopra’s Meditation Center and Oprah Winfrey. I listened to it before falling asleep. Well, let’s be honest here, I listened to it and fell asleep. The chime sounding the end of the meditation woke me up. It was the best night of sleep I’ve had in a long time. Didn’t wake once! At least not until my watch alarm woke up Robert and I got the onion eye…

When I did wake up I took a look at the time and figured great, I have plenty of time to wash, dress, take my morning pills, and eat breakfast before I have to leave for my massage with Janel this morning. I promptly picked up my phone to see its charge level and was drawn into the entanglement of the interwebs. Snarled in Facebook, my Noom app, the news headlines, and entwined in emails. I didn’t do my Morning Pages, and when I finally freed myself from the sticky World Wide Web, I was now slightly rushing to get ready to go.

After my massage I figured I would come back home, pack up the gym bag and go swim. Come home from there, eat lunch, start a load of laundry; check emails, work on decluttering my desk some more; call a computer repair place; change the load of laundry; go to Radiation Therapy; drop off that computer at the repair shop; decide if I want to continue with laundry or just worry about the first two load; maybe write a little bit; grab a snack and head to Support Group. Nope, was called by Nathan as I was heading home from that massage that felt so good, asking me if I could change my time today. They were having scheduling issues and asked if I could come in about 12:30 instead of my 3:10 time. Ok, yeah, I can change my time to help you with the scheduling conflicts.

That did not leave me enough time to get to the gym, swim, shower and clean up. I was now home and noticed Robert was still working in the backyard. I told him of my new time today. He was frustrated, there was no way he could cool down, shower and dress in time for that 12:30 appointment time. I told him I could take myself today. I called the repair shop I had found online that is on our way home from the hospital. Yup, they can repair my Dell Laptop no problem. I had reached out to Dell last night, but because the laptop is no longer under warranty or insurance, they didn’t care where I took the darn thing and wouldn’t even recommend anyone they would use in our area. How nice of them. They did say they could order both a motherboard and the AC charging connection and give me some directions on how to repair it myself. Insert eye roll here.

I figured, OK, get in at 12:30, 2 minutes in the front lobby at most, head back, don the gown, maybe sit a minute, get called back to treatment, walk in, 1 to 2 minutes to adjust me to the right coordinates (Scotty, can you read my coordinates, beam me up!), tech exits; 1 minute and giant “gamma ray, super human power emitting machine” (a girl can dream!), warms up, beeeeeeeeeeeppppppp, the jagged teeth move into boob shape and first zap is done. Few seconds later and the second beep sounds. Machine rolls over me and then those two extra-long beeps sound and done! Wham bam, thank you ma’am. I could come home, eat, and still get to the gym to swim after I drop off the laptop.

Yeah, again, best laid plans… Sat in that waiting room for 23 minutes (granted I arrived early). Elderly Asian woman who arrived with her daughter after me was called back before I was. I took a deep breath and went back to my best scoring Classic Bejeweled game ever! 1,495,000 points, a new record for me to strive for. I have to play Classic Bejeweled because there is absolutely NO Wi-Fi or data signal available in the radiation basement. Finally they called me back. I started to change, took a quick pic of the tattoo for today, donned that gown, and sat once more in the changing/waiting room. I was able to edit the picture I took so it could be somewhat seen in the picture and make out what’s happening. I was getting ready to start yet another game of Bejeweled when they called me back to treatment.

I had Benny and Alex today. I swear, more people have seen my boobs naked in the past year then have seen them naked in my whole life prior to this! There is no dignity in childbirth or cancer. Childbirth is just a wonderfully chaotic messy affair, with clothes and naked body parts everywhere. There is no such thing as a neat and clean childbirth. Only at the end of childbirth you usually have a beautiful little being in your arms with wide eyes trying to focus in on your face, and you don’t have a care in the world other than that wee bit of humanity that just exited your body, howling at the indignities and overwhelming onslaught of new sensations. You don’t care that you may be completely naked; sitting in a giant puddle of amniotic fluid with all the windows open, so the garden party being held by the director of your little community hospital can see birth in all its glory because you were so hot. You just don’t care about anything else in the world. Even when the doctor or the nurse tells you about all of this going on around you, you don’t care. You are lost in those deep, newborn blue, wide eyes, lost in the enormity of the universe, lost in the wisdom this little god being is trying to tell you before they forget. Lost in the monumental vastness of the love you feel for not only the one in your arms, but all humanity. Birth brings you a connection to the universe that is hard to duplicate after those first few glowing minutes end.

Cancer on the other hand is none of that. You are baring parts of your body you want to protect. You want to take it home and coddle your body, plead with the universe to take it all away. Please don’t make me bare my body, my soul, to one more person. Please let me have some dignity in all this. And again, you find that damn gown swept aside by yet another doctor, or nurse, or tech, or or or, and it goes on. You share yourself with strangers, and you care, you cringe, your heart constricts one more time. You hold your breath a little longer, and finally have to exhale and breathe in once more. Your gut turns somersaults, and you’re sure everything you ate in the last 24 hours is trying to get out, from either end. You once again put on that brave face, your fake it till you make it face. The one where everyone else thinks you are so strong face, but inside you are breaking into tiny little pieces. Yeah, that is what cancer is, nothing like birth.

All these people who poke at you, prod you, palpate, push, press, and move your flesh around as if it is nothing. They are not unfeeling; they are professional about all this touching and seeing of parts usually left for only your lover to see. They care, they want to help you live. They are invested, even if they don’t show it. But it definitely isn’t birth.

After Benny saw today’s tattoo it was all back to business. I miss Art and Terri. Benny is just not quite as “relaxed” as they are. He’s a little more business about getting me set up. Even yesterday when he was with Terri, she was more relaxed about this whole let’s get you on the table, set up in the right position, laughing, joking, ok, we’ve got you set up correctly type person. And Alex was almost not seen or hear from at all. He finally introduced himself when everything was done. It was like, “Ok, now that I have seen your naked boobs I should introduce myself”. I wonder if I should be making notches somewhere to keep track of all those who have now viewed the “Tata’s” in all their old and new glories. Like notches on my lipstick case, only instead of Pat Benatar’s song where they are lovers she’s taken and discarded, mine is the Tata viewing. I don’t think there is a lipstick case big enough. I might need a very large walking stick!

When I was done, lubed the boob, and put my clothes back on, I ran into my nurse Jackie, who stopped me to ask me how I was doing. Am I seeing any pink yet? Oh yes, since last week, and is this really a blister? I showed her little fluid filled bump on my breast right on the edge of the treatment area. Yes, that is a type of blister you can get during treatment. It’s folliculitis, usually one of the first types of bumps to show up in radiation treatment. Basically a hair follicle that is now inflamed. She did suggest I could apply cream more often if it would make me feel better. She didn’t say it would really help, just make me feel better. She also confirmed that the tenderness of the breast tissue is normal as well. The tissue is being beat up at the cellular level. Of course it’s going to be tender and swollen.

When I left there it was later than I thought it would be, and I still had to stop at the computer repair shop and drop off the laptop. That took longer than I thought it would as well. But he seemed to think it would be an easy fix. I paid the $36 minimum repair fee and headed home. Before I pulled out of the parking lot I did place my order on my Starbucks app for my coffee. That way it would be ready for me when I got there and I could get home. When I arrived, of course it was iced, even though that is not what I ordered. I don’t know what it is with all the girls up there, I order a Venti, Quad, Non-Fat Latte with 1 Splenda, and they all automatically assume I want that cold. I know it’s been hot the past two weeks, but some of us like our coffee hot, even in hot weather.

By the time I got home, started a load of laundry and ate some lunch, I just didn’t have the time to go to the gym and still stay on top of the laundry that really needed to get done. So instead I am spending my time writing a decent post that looks like an adult wrote it, not my tired and rushed 10 year old me that felt like I had to post last night no matter what. It felt like I had procrastinated on my homework and had to rush to get it done and turn it in.

This is funny, as I have been remembering my fourth grade teacher, who for some reason didn’t seem to like me very much. I didn’t care very much for her either, and because I was tired of her always picking apart my stories when we had creative writing, I stopped writing. She didn’t seem to pick apart others stories like mine. And it was always verbally that she did this, so the whole class got to hear her pick apart my writing. I remember making the decision to stop writing for her. I did give in once as I had a story that just had to come out. I don’t remember much about that story, only that it involved a giant and a girl that conquered the village and made friends with the giant who was only mean because he was misunderstood. That story she liked, but I was going to be damned if I would give her another one. I remember that clearly, getting the giant PLUS on my story, and her whispering in my ear that I should write like that all the time, and me thinking I am not sharing another one of my stories with you, you don’t deserve my heart. Thinking writing like that was easy, but not for you Blondie, you have proven I can’t trust you with my soul, my beauty, and my stories. If she had graded me on my grammar, punctuation or spelling, that I think I would have been OK with. She picked on my stories, what they were about, my characters, and the essence. For the most part I stopped writing after that. I did what was required of me in school, but I stopped writing for pleasure.

This blog is the most writing I have done other than for school, just for me. And for you, but mostly this is for me. In this I am totally selfish, this is my blog, and I share it with you. This is my heart, this is my soul, my breath, this is me. Thank you for sharing in it and not butchering me with my spelling errors, my grammar, and I am sure sometimes very bad punctuation. Thank you for accepting me in all my beauty, fear, my messy brain, my anger, hurt, ugly tantrums, frustrations, peace and love. In all the colorful manifestations of my life. And thank you most of all for all the encouraging words, the prayers, and the good thoughts and energies sent my way. Written language cannot begin to express my gratitude in this uplifting for so long. It has been a lengthy haul through this and it means so much to me that you are all here.

Life is remembering your blessings