2 posts in 1 day? That's weird.

Maybe it's not THAT weird. It's often like that for me--I won't post for a long time, and then suddenly I'll post a whole bunch of times in quick succession--even twice in one day! I'm guessing the date will show up as a day later from the previous post, but don't let that fool ya--it's only after midnight. it's still the same damn day. :P

Anyway. It's been a weird day. A few health setbacks (NOTHING major, NOT at all), and except for dancing, I haven't felt like doing all day except hang out Facebook & my gossip image boards the entire day. I don't mean that in a "oh I'm so depressed" way, but just a neutral "meh, didn't feel like doing anything else". Not that I have much choice of things to do locked up in this room, lol--I played Nintendo for a bit but stopped after getting incredibly frustrated. I listened to a LOT of music, especially Hello Project stuff. I now have some new fave Morning Musume songs that I never knew existed. I didn't feel like watching any of my shows, though. Ah well. Hopefully tomorrow!

Privacy, tranquility, and some sunlight!

I'm doing OK now, but the weekend before last I was so sick that I couldn't even sit up on my own and the ICU team had to come and assess me and they followed me for awhile. Glad I didn't have to end up in the ICU after all, but I got some nasty infections which led to me getting my own private room (where I still am now), which is pretty darn amazing. I have zero stress in here, no noise, and I can sleep peacefully. Also, I have a huge window (as opposed to a wall and a curtain) and not only do I get sunlight, but being up on the 15th floor, I have a pretty nice view of part of downtown Toronto.

It's like night & day compared to the tiny dark room I was sharing with a roommate beforehand, to the point that I genuinely feel that the expression "like night & day" doesn't quite cut it, and I should invent a new idiom to help explain how I feel.

I don't know how much longer I get to benefit from this privacy but I'm treasuring every moment it lasts. A person can actually,  ya know, RECOVER and HEAL in a room like this!

Bond & bones

After being juggled around for awhile between doctors (and yet ANOTHER bone marrow test; my back is just a series of holes at this point), the final decision is noooo, I'm not in remission, I have to be RE-admitted to the hospital for another 4-6 weeks (sometime in the next few days), we're starting over again with induction therapy (called re-induction), and this time they're giving me THREE types of chemo at once, which I've been ensured is a lot more toxic (apparently a good thing--haha gotta kill them cancer cells), but they wouldn't give it to me if they didn't think I couldn't handle it and they're still acting optimistic, so okay.
I passed the cardiac tests, so yay (you need to pass those in order to get chemo, ugh).

At this point I just want to get it over with. We're kinda running out of options with high success rates if this one doesn't work out, so it's not so much that I'm scared right now as much as that my brain has completely went the "well, fuck all of this" route and is in some kind of weird-denial...not complete denial as here I am writing it all out, but it's definitely reached some weird manic area where I've escaped into this happy universe of James Bond and watch another Bond movie every night, and those movies feel more real to me than whatever is happening to me in my bone marrow, and you know what, if reality is how you perceive the world, then fuck it, my world is M16 agents and Her Majesty's Secret Service and the only thing I really gotta worry about is crazy cartoonish villains who want to take over the world.

So yay, anxiety!

Pretty anxious these days...it's especially bad at night, but today I've been anxious all day. My doctors gave me meds for that, but I mean.....yeah. It is what it is. 

I need to do a FIFTH bone marrow test on  Tuesday (long story); the good news is my oncologist thinks I may be in remission after all (an even longer & much more complicated story), and it's more being in limbo in the meantime. Things look good but we don't know for sure. And either way I still need more chemo, we just don't know yet how much and what type, and I still have to wait on the transplant...alllll so stressful. So yay, anxiety! 

I'm enjoying my nightly routine of watching The Simpsons and/or Seinfeld and/or The Office in bed while I chill online, waiting for my sleeping pills to kick in. But lately the anxiety I've been dealing with is starting to creep into my nightly "wind-down" time and the sleeping problems are getting worse. Argh. 

The cabin fever is also getting really bad and contributing to me feeling really down. I miss my ordinary life. I miss going to work and running errands and going shopping.
Tonight was Saturday and I REALLY missed my usual Saturday routine of socializing and going to my fave karaoke place, moreso than usual. 

And also, I miss my mom and I also think about my dead roommate every day. 

All right, enough venting for now. I hope my next entry is a more upbeat one! ;) 

In limbo

Have I already written a post titled "in limbo"? It wouldn't surprise me, lol...

Anyway, still in limbo. Sooo tired of it. I didn't update after my last appointment at hematology but whatever. That was a week and a half ago. Basically they're still confused by my counts: red blood cells are coming back up (and platelets too, yay!) but my white blood cells are not really doing as good. They told me to come back in 2 weeks when they scheduled YET ANOTHER BONE MARROW TEST. I asked them why at this point they don't just do a biopsy, but they said they'd run into the same problems. OK, whatevs. In the meantime I had to return to the hospital for a blood transfusion but in the end I didn't even need one, but I did need to get some fluids because apparently I'm dehydrated.

I'm STILL not used to being bald. I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I'm like THE FUCK....oh yeah. 

I'm happy to be home but also bored of it. Last night I dreamt I was at a bar ordering red wine. Oh, how I wish I could! In the dream the folks I was with were like "um, shouldn't you NOT be drinking right now?" and I was like "yeah, probably not."

Stop projecting!

I’m so tired of people telling me things like “oh we take little comforts for granted!” Or “oh the things we take for granted!” when I tell them how happy I am to be out of he hospital. First of all, you don’t even have cancer so how would you know, but even more importantly—speak for yourself! Stop using “we”. Refer to yourself & yourself ONLY because we all know that’s who you’re talking about here. Don’t include me in your inability to appreciate “the little things” in life. I always have, it didn’t take cancer for me to see that. If it takes a life threatening illness for you to appreciate your home & hobbies, that’s your own personal shortcomings that you have no business projecting on to me.

Ever since I was discharged from the hospital back in 2013, not a single day would go by where I wouldn’t be grateful I still wasn’t in there. Not a single day, over the past 6 years. Yes, I thought about how happy and grateful I was to be alive and not in that hospital every single day for 6 years. The first three years were terrifying because remission is in many ways scarier than the hospital stay, but I was still super grateful to be at home during that time. (But remission is terrifying as fuck, as I'll talk about that another time--though there's tons of posts just about that if you scroll back far enough to 2013-2014, I'm sure.)

Also: it didn’t take getting cancer for me to be "grateful for the little things". I’ve always enjoyed my cozy apartment and little things like video game universes or Christmas decorations or tv series premieres or awards shows—-things that people would also ironically roll me eyes at me for. (Gee, that seems fair, huh?)

Anyway, all this to say—stop projecting your own personal shortcomings onto me, all right?

And by the way. Getting cancer isn't this crazy catharsis where you look at the world differently like it is in the movies. I mean, maybe it is for SOME people, but certainly not for me. Yeah, basic things felt a lot more awesome once I survived the first time--like just being able to return to work and ride public transportation and things like that---but it's not like I had some kind of crazy life-changing mind-blowing CATHARSIS. I guess that happens to some people, but I don't personally understand living your life so poorly or so half-assedly that it takes nearly dying to get your shit into gear. I'm really sorry if that sounds snobby, but WTF, man? Do you want me to put my true feelings out here or not? People always ask how I feel, so here it is---when death is always a lingering possibility, of course not all my thoughts are going to be happy or kind ones.

There are a couple of things I felt differently about after the first time I got cancer, and here they are:

1. Spend more time by myself, or for myself. Spending time with people who don't matter is never a good thing. I've talked about this to a lot of people and have even taught others to change their lifestyles to reflect this. Don't spend time with people out of pity. You're being dishonest and no one wins.

(There are teeny tiny little exceptions here & there, of course, but--tread carefully! There's very little out there that's more hurtful and pointless than a fake friendship.)

2. Eat. Eat eat eat. While I was hospitalized in 2013, I got stuck watching a lot of daytime TV cuz I didn't have Netflix back then. A lot of shows about diets and how to stay slim. I can't explain how that horrified me while I was getting chemo and COULDN'T eat. All I wanted was food. Ladies, a shake is NOT a meal. Love yourself. Eat a goddamn burger or pizza. Life's short. You'll regret all the time you spent starving yourself, I guarantee it.


That's it. It's late and I'm tired and I'm done ranting for now.

Breathless

I'm so out of breath all the time, ugh. Doing the smallest activities requires soooo much energy. I remember this from the last time I had cancer, but yeah. I'm so drained. Taking a shower requires a lot of rest afterward, for example. I can barely help Mike with the dishes, and I can't really prepare any meals.

Anyway! I'm just waiting for my sleeping pills to kick in as I gotta be up in a few hours to return to the hospital for my weekly blood test and meeting with my oncologist. I get my latest bone marrow test results, too. 

I'm so grateful to be at home (and that is an understatement) but I've definitely been going a little stir-crazy (and that is also an understatement!). I really want to go out but I'm not allowed to go to crowded places. I could technically go for a walk but it's not the best weather for me to go outside, as it's been cold and icy and I could risk falling, and considering how I wiped I get just from taking things out of the fridge or putting things away, just walking down the street would be incredibly exhausting (especially if there's ice I need to manage). Speaking of which! Our superintendent is useless and didn't get rid of the ice leading from our door to the street, and it was this whoooole big thing and Mike had to be late from work to help me get from our door to the Uber....anyway, it's a long story I don't feel like typing out, but the long and short of it is, we both had to bug the super non-stop (after repeatedly reminding him of my leukemia and how if I fall on the ice I'm screwed due to my low blood counts) and finally he got someone to remove the ice. I guess he knows it's the tenants' right that there needs to be safe and secure paths to and from our own doors. Dayyyyyuuum.

Anyway, yeah. Wish I could go out. I'll be able to eventually, once my counts go up. But for now, it's just a lot of Netflix and video games and books. Which are all things I love anyway, but it's hard when a) I'm constantly anxious about the cancer, and b) I know I don't have the option of going out, and when I can't break those things up with going for walks or running errands or anything like that. And I really miss working! I'd love to go back to work soon. But I don't think that's going to happen for awhile. Which is scary, both in terms of boredom and lack of income. But I'll figure something out somehow.

I'm getting out of breath just typing this all out! hahaha. Damn red blood cells, you ain't playin'.