Surg and surge
I've got a date for surgery: September 3. It's a Wednesday.
Now that I know plenty about my whole diagnosis & treatment routine, and it's all settled down into a waiting game, I have sort of a low-level nervous panicky thing going on. It's lower and milder than test-taking anxiety, more like pre-breakup anxiety, and not even that strong. It's like the under-tension when somebody I know/love is in trouble or suffering or sick, and there's nothing I can do but think about them and rehash the details of the story, and half dread, half look forward to talking to them soon. I very much feel like I have volume control on this nervous panicky thing, but not an off button. (If I needed an off button, that would be bad, from a sobriety angle.)
But nervous and panicky are bonafide emotions, and I'm glad to be having some that are not quite predictable. I know too much about all this - about powerlessness, expectation, and disappointment, about prognoses and outliers and longitudinal studies, support groups and survivorship, receptor sites and S phase. Disease is profoundly interesting to me - I like to read books about Ebola and tuberculosis on beach vacations - so I don't have or want time to be emotional about what's happening as long as there's new data about disease coming in. And now that there's a pause in the data flow, I'm feeling some emotion. Not much, but some.
If this was happening to somebody I love, I would be focused on my loved one's emotions, their ability to survive it, to not be crippled by doubt and fear, to not feel alone. I think I see that in some of my loved ones' faces lately, looking to see what I need and where I'm at risk. I think I'm making things difficult for my loved ones by not giving them enough to do. I am guilty of having a pretty good time having cancer so far.
I'm used to hearing people who have a similar diagnosis, or who are new in sobriety, go through one or more classic denial stages. The words "deserve" and "fair" come up a lot. As in: "I don't deserve this." "This isn't fair." As normal and human as these feelings are, I don't have them, don't want them, don't need them. If I don't deserve this, that means somebody else does. If it's not fair for me to have cancer, that means it's fair for somebody else to have it. Entitlement BOTHERS me. Cancer does not care about fair, and nobody deserves it. It's a neutral event. Even if I die of it. The only part that I get to vote on is how I behave through it. Which is plenty to work with.
In other news, my Florida landlord found new tenants right away, so I'm getting an unexpected month of rent refunded on the beautiful little house that I don't get to live in. And I forgot to report that I got a registered letter from Nova last week, granting me acceptance into next fall's class. All is tidy.
Now that I know plenty about my whole diagnosis & treatment routine, and it's all settled down into a waiting game, I have sort of a low-level nervous panicky thing going on. It's lower and milder than test-taking anxiety, more like pre-breakup anxiety, and not even that strong. It's like the under-tension when somebody I know/love is in trouble or suffering or sick, and there's nothing I can do but think about them and rehash the details of the story, and half dread, half look forward to talking to them soon. I very much feel like I have volume control on this nervous panicky thing, but not an off button. (If I needed an off button, that would be bad, from a sobriety angle.)
But nervous and panicky are bonafide emotions, and I'm glad to be having some that are not quite predictable. I know too much about all this - about powerlessness, expectation, and disappointment, about prognoses and outliers and longitudinal studies, support groups and survivorship, receptor sites and S phase. Disease is profoundly interesting to me - I like to read books about Ebola and tuberculosis on beach vacations - so I don't have or want time to be emotional about what's happening as long as there's new data about disease coming in. And now that there's a pause in the data flow, I'm feeling some emotion. Not much, but some.
If this was happening to somebody I love, I would be focused on my loved one's emotions, their ability to survive it, to not be crippled by doubt and fear, to not feel alone. I think I see that in some of my loved ones' faces lately, looking to see what I need and where I'm at risk. I think I'm making things difficult for my loved ones by not giving them enough to do. I am guilty of having a pretty good time having cancer so far.
I'm used to hearing people who have a similar diagnosis, or who are new in sobriety, go through one or more classic denial stages. The words "deserve" and "fair" come up a lot. As in: "I don't deserve this." "This isn't fair." As normal and human as these feelings are, I don't have them, don't want them, don't need them. If I don't deserve this, that means somebody else does. If it's not fair for me to have cancer, that means it's fair for somebody else to have it. Entitlement BOTHERS me. Cancer does not care about fair, and nobody deserves it. It's a neutral event. Even if I die of it. The only part that I get to vote on is how I behave through it. Which is plenty to work with.
In other news, my Florida landlord found new tenants right away, so I'm getting an unexpected month of rent refunded on the beautiful little house that I don't get to live in. And I forgot to report that I got a registered letter from Nova last week, granting me acceptance into next fall's class. All is tidy.
posted by Cy at 1:49 PM
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