Greetings, beloved comrades. It’s been a minute, I know.
Cancer sucks. SO HARD. I’m no longer fighting for my life, but I am still fighting for a decent quality of life. Progress on that front has been slow, with many setbacks, though I have made gains and I remain undeterred.
At times on this journey, I have needed to step away from news feeds and social media for my health, both mental and physical. I may need to do so again, depending on what the future brings. If I cannot keep abreast of what’s going on in the world, I can hardly be expected to write about anything relevant, much less deliver the superb quality work and penetrating insight Death to Squirrels™ readers have come to expect – nay, demand. (LOL. I crack myself up.)
Another barrier to writing? Chemo brain. Seriously, it’s A Thing. I lost my “inner thesaurus,” such that words no longer flow easily from my head to my screen, and now take time and work (as well as an actual thesaurus). FWIW, post-chemo my average time for solving the same web Sudoku game at the same difficulty level increased by almost two minutes. That’s a pretty objective indicator that I’ve lost something more than just a segment of my fucking colon.
Then there’s my vision. It turns out the treatment for chronic and severe radiation damage is dozens of “deep dives” in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Neat! And it gave me back full function of my bladder, thank fuck. It also exploded my retinal capillaries, causing hemorrhages in both eyes. I’ve had surgeries and continue to receive treatments for this, but damn. Sometimes it’s just really fuckin’ hard to, you know, see.
As I told PZ, I am not the same writer I was, and I’m not even sure I’m the same person I was. But I feel an urge to do some screaming into the void, and I would prefer to do so in the excellent company that is the FtB community.
But enough whining about ME! Tell me what’s been going on with YOU in comments! Oh! And do let me know if anything culturally or politically significant has transpired in the last couple years. Did I miss anything? Anything at all?
Hahaha
It feels good to be back. ❤️
Iris! **pounce gentle hug** How great to see you again!! I missed the post yesterday due to an execrable habit that I have of not checking for posts from you every hour. Clearly, I need to work on that. As for me, I’ve been dealing with cancer too, but nothing like what you’ve been going through. As far as items of cultural significance: I am hyper focused on one story. The Onion has been trying to purchase InfoWars, and the sooner they succeed, the better, in my opinion!
I’m getting a partial denture.
3 toofs
Glad to see you’re back. Your blog was one that I checked regularly.
Since you went silent, I’ve joined the FtB team myself, although I’ve been so depressed about the current political situation that I haven’t had anything interesting to say for a while. (And others have said it much better than I could.)
I, too, have been diagnosed with cancer; but I’m one of those fools who hasn’t be able to stop smoking, even now; so I have no one but myself to blame, and I don’t deserve any sympathy.
I’m an old fart (I’ll be 80 years old in August), and I’ve lived a pretty good life so far, so I was prepared to die and opted out of major thoracic surgery.
But I’ve been tremendously fortunate in all other ways…small cell lung cancer caught early, currently in remission, no bad side effects of either radiation or chemotherapy, now doing just immunotherapy (a single half-hour drip every three weeks) and CT scans and MRIs every three months. The scans will be done every six months after the next ones.
I participated in a study of the effect of radiation to keep small cell cancer out of the brain, and I got randomized into the group that didn’t get the radiation. I was patient while the doctor listed all the bad things that could happen (which he probably had to do for legal reasons) and then quickly assured him that I was eager to do my small bit for increasing human knowledge. One thing I had to do every few months was take a test of my cognitive abilities, probably similar to the one that Trump misremembered. 8-)
I’m well aware that it could have been a whole lot worse, and I wish you the best.
Here’s hoping that I’ll have many more of your posts to read.
I have no miseries to compare with yours, so I’ll just share the good news.
– I’m finally getting knee surgery in two week, so I hope to be spending the rest of the summer hunting spiders.
– I am officially retiring from the university as of May 2027. Party at my house!
got married to long-term boyfriend over a year ago, wedding sucked but marriage is dandy. back on full time work at the “bail out ocean of human misery with a thimble” factory, but recently approved for full telework, so at least there’s no commute. stressed but still busting stylez.