WINTER IS COMING


It's been a long time since I've written on this blog.  I guess I haven't had anything I felt like writing or that anyone else would want to read.  (Not that this will be anything earth shattering).

I cannot believe that it's November, the leaves for the most part on are the ground and the skies are looking more and more like winter.  It's dark at 5:00 and it seems like the time is going faster and faster.  Soon the holidays will be here and gone and then the real dead of winter begins.  Ugh.  Do not like winter.

I am beginning to feel the stirrings of discomfort in my upper back and shoulders and my chest.  The last PET scan showed some growth in the spots (I still cannot bring myself to call them tumors).  I feel like crap in the morning and usually don't even get out of bed until 10:00 or later.  Then it takes at least an hour for me to begin to feel half human.  The pain usually subsides after I move around a little.  Maybe things have to settle back in place after lying down for 10 hours.

This week I will have a CAT scan to see what's going on.  If things have progressed the way I fear they have, perhaps I'll be able to get radiation on certain areas.  Will know more by next Friday.  Tom's brother who has lung cancer and has just gone through his second dose of chemo is now in the hospital with a compound fracture in his spine.  At first they thought it was spinal stenosis, but after doing several tests at another hospital they made this diagnosis.  Sounds to me like the cancer has spread to the spine.

I guess what scares me more than just dying is what I may have to go through before I take my last gasping breath.  And I worry about how I'm going to manage things here at the house and how Tom is going to cope with all this.  I told him today I feel like soon I'm not going to be able to do the things I do around here.  He said, he'll help.  I said, no I will need more than help.  I'll need someone to do.  He's not in the best of shape either.

Up until now, I've been able to keep a pretty positive attitude going.  But slowly I feel these worrisome thoughts creeping into my conscious mind.  I've been reading a lot to keep myself occupied but it's really weird how every book I read has someone dying from cancer.  Currently it's Gone Girl and the mother of her husband dies.  Before that I read "The End of Your Life Book Club", a story about a mother who is dying and her son who accompanies her to her chemo treatments where they discuss the latest book they've read.  Now this last one, I sort of knew it would be about dying, but Gone Girl,  Bread Alone, and any of the others, I was surprised.  Maybe I shouldn't be.  Cancer is everywhere and if you or someone in your family doesn't have or had it, surely you know of someone who has.

Well, we all have to die from something but why can't we just go peacefully off to the next dimension?  I would like to go to bed and dream myself into oblivion.  Just not wake up.  Poof, I'm gone.  Like someone took an eraser and rubbed me out.

I need to begin visualizing that scenario instead of the awful ones I keep picturing in my imagination.   I will work on that.