Hello Fellow Travelers!
One of the strongest effects of this post-tumor time is that I am profoundly grateful each day when I wake up! I'm pretty darned happy to wake up at all! I'm embarassingly grateful for my PS and my friends and family. Polishing my nails and floors are off my list of "things I'll probably never get around to doing anyway," so now I don't worry about them. The new pastel nail colors make the model (or Kardashian) look like she stuck her hands into some cupcake frostings anyway. I'm pretty happy just to be here! I'm pretty happy just to be anywhere! Cancer teaches you to set your level of expectation low. Really low! When setting the expectation level, if merely "being not dead" indicates "success", your standard is right in the post-cancer ballpark!
It's probably another reason I feel so great all the time! I'm not dying, or getting ready to take "the Big Dirt Nap" either. Last week I had a test done to determine if there was some kind of new "growth" of cells in my abdomen, based on strong, increasing pain.
That's when a medical doctor, an M.D. said to me,"Pain means you're alive!" Really? Because I thought it meant something entirely different. Like you're being poked with a very hot stick. You say "potato"...
I was going to ignore this pain, but the last time I did that, I had a brain tumor! One truism I had repeatedly confirmed on this journey is you can't ignore everything, some things don't go away, they get worse! So I quickly arranged for an imaging test and anxiously waited for my oncologist to render a verdict. The best result I could hope for (and the one I eventually got, Thank You!, Hamid!) was that nothing was growing anywhere! I'm still alive!
And getting a little more so every day!
Analysis of the test results revealed the answer to my only question: You know it! Say it with me! "Is it cancer? No? "Then who cares?" And that's the only answer that means anything anymore anyway!
PS - Happy Birthday, Liam!
One of the strongest effects of this post-tumor time is that I am profoundly grateful each day when I wake up! I'm pretty darned happy to wake up at all! I'm embarassingly grateful for my PS and my friends and family. Polishing my nails and floors are off my list of "things I'll probably never get around to doing anyway," so now I don't worry about them. The new pastel nail colors make the model (or Kardashian) look like she stuck her hands into some cupcake frostings anyway. I'm pretty happy just to be here! I'm pretty happy just to be anywhere! Cancer teaches you to set your level of expectation low. Really low! When setting the expectation level, if merely "being not dead" indicates "success", your standard is right in the post-cancer ballpark!
It's probably another reason I feel so great all the time! I'm not dying, or getting ready to take "the Big Dirt Nap" either. Last week I had a test done to determine if there was some kind of new "growth" of cells in my abdomen, based on strong, increasing pain.
That's when a medical doctor, an M.D. said to me,"Pain means you're alive!" Really? Because I thought it meant something entirely different. Like you're being poked with a very hot stick. You say "potato"...
I was going to ignore this pain, but the last time I did that, I had a brain tumor! One truism I had repeatedly confirmed on this journey is you can't ignore everything, some things don't go away, they get worse! So I quickly arranged for an imaging test and anxiously waited for my oncologist to render a verdict. The best result I could hope for (and the one I eventually got, Thank You!, Hamid!) was that nothing was growing anywhere! I'm still alive!
And getting a little more so every day!
Analysis of the test results revealed the answer to my only question: You know it! Say it with me! "Is it cancer? No? "Then who cares?" And that's the only answer that means anything anymore anyway!
PS - Happy Birthday, Liam!
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