Category Archives: health & happiness

holter heart monitor

01 Wednesday Dec 2010

Posted by in chemo, health & happiness, hospitals

≈ 16 Comments

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Things haven’t been quite fun enough lately, so you can imagine how thrilled I am about going to get this contraption attached to me today. Will have to wear it for 24 hours (not sooo bad, I think the last time back in 2007 it was for 48 hours). Anyhoo, this is all a result of the 4-hour tachycardia thang last July, but this time my doc at the hospital seems determined to get to the bottom of why I’ve been getting tachycardia for more than 25 years. And although it’s an annoyance, maybe she’ll actually find out and be able to stop it from happening. The other reason is because chemo can damage your heart (along with everything else in your body) so it is prudent to make sure my heart is sound in case I have to go back on chemo in January.

It’s always something…

on the cutting of slack

02 Thursday Sep 2010

Posted by in cancer, change, friends, health & happiness, life stuff

≈ 25 Comments

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Something MAJOR happened to me last June 28th when I was told my latest PET scan came back clear – I stopped feeling so goddamn scared, worried and upset all the time. It just stopped. And I decided that no matter what happened when I had the next PET in January, I was going to take a “cancer holiday” and not only truly enjoy my first summer in three years not being on chemo, but also work on getting ahead with my life and not fret about “what ifs”. Because it’s often felt like a very long and lonely limbo since May 2008. And I think that in general most people got that, even if they couldn’t really know how it felt, and I think they cut me some slack if I was ever a bit over-emotional or said something stupid … I do think most of my friends knew it was the Fear talking. But some didn’t, or chose not to see the scary place I was in, and that the source of any emotional or verbal outbursts stemmed from … well, basically the daily stress of having stage IV cancer and all that entails. Those people are no longer in my life, and I do not miss them, though sometimes the cruelty of their refusal to cut me any slack makes me wonder what the hell that is all about…
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rescheduling

30 Monday Aug 2010

Posted by in fitness, gym, health & happiness, home, life stuff, work

≈ 8 Comments

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As anyone who does freelance work knows, scheduling is important not only for making sure you have enough time to get your work done, but also for having time to do other things you enjoy. Back when I was only teaching English for a living it was easier to organise my time because I simply worked around the weekly scheduled classes. But since I started “diversifying” the line between work and my own time began to get a bit fuzzy. This is good in a way because it means that I am finally attaining a goal I set for myself over 25 years ago – to have my work be the same as what I would want to do anyhow when I got out of bed in the morning – but it also posed the challenge of making the most of my waking hours…

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