23 Wednesday Sep 2009
The other day my friend Gaelen wrote a very thoughtful blog post called The Reluctant (Cancer) Warrior, and asked at the end of it…
Do you like the battle metaphors for cancer, the idea of being a cancer warrior? Do you see living with cancer as a war? What is the cancer metaphor that works for you?
And it came to me that the metaphor that works best for me is the Sword of Damocles. Just hanging there, you know? And you never know when it’s going to fall and take your life away…
20 Sunday Sep 2009
Posted in cancer, change, chemo, family, friends, hope, life stuff, philosophy, video
A moving – and very real – short film. Very well done.
15 Tuesday Sep 2009
Posted in cancer, change, chemo, fitness, health & happiness, hope, life stuff
So I got the good news yesterday that my CT scan came back negative, which now buys me another three months, and hopefully more. Though I am still a bit concerned because my last CT scan in February also came back negative, and then when they did a PET scan in March they found new metastasis in my liver, and I went back on chemo in April, blah, blah, blah.
The thing is, I am pretty sure I won’t ever be able to make myself go back on chemo again, so these tests have become a different sort of “threat”. Not just that of finding more cancer, but of me not being able to do any more treatment. Sure, maybe I would change my mind if I was faced with yet another recurrence, but for now I just want to focus on the next three months and live them as much as I can.
You see, the doctors don’t expect to cure me. And so, like all people with Stage IV cancer, my best hope is that I will live long enough to see some new treatment developments that might prolong my life in a way that is bearable. For me, being on chemo is not bearable. It’s not living. And so I hope this remission is a long one. Fingers crossed!
18 Tuesday Aug 2009
Posted in books & writing, change, chemo, fitness, food & drink, friends, health & happiness, holidays, hope, internet, life stuff, travel, trips, yoga
Yesterday I read this article called Can You Handle 24 Hours of Solitude? … and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do this. In fact, it’s taken some time to get used to being alone on holiday here in Zahara. I know some of you think this is like a dream come true, but I came here not just to spend some time at the beach and take care of Mini – it was also a personal challenge. I really wasn’t sure how I’d feel being on my own for a whole ten days. And now it’s day four …
13 Thursday Aug 2009
Posted in chemo, culture, health & happiness, rants
There’s a good old rant and discussion going on at HealingMagicHands place about this ridiculous “movement” (feel free to join us there) and it reminded me of this Time article I read last week.
To my mind, promoting obesity as “fun” is the same as promoting anorexia and other eating disorders as healthy lifestyle options.
I have been both obese and borderline anorexia thin in my lifetime and neither of them have felt healthy. I am very overweight at the moment and, now that I am off chemo, I am working on a new lifestyle eating & exercise plan. Not just a diet. Because you cannot successfully lose weight simply by cutting calories – that just fucks up your metabolism. You need to DO MORE too. It took ten years for me to get this fat (at a rate of about five pounds a year) so it would be unrealistic to think I could lose it quickly. Which is why the focus will be on becoming more active and doing more, as well as making a few simple diet changes.
But for the record … FAT IS NOT FUN. And I wouldn’t like to be “accepted” as an overweight lazy excuse-maker who doesn’t want to take any personal responsibility for how I look and feel. I mean, would you?
casa azahar 