I keep sitting down and starting to write, getting halfway through it, getting distracted and then when I come back to it it’s no longer relevant. So, I’m going to try to write what I want in the next half hour before I start dinner, hopefully I will succeed. I’m not even going to look at the date on my last entry and try to catch you up, just a few choice details.
A year of monthly chemo has done amazing things for me. My breathing is better, my joints are better, and everything just feels a hundred times better. My hair is thinner, but what the hell, nothing’s free.
My other major problem this year was the evil g-tube that I was using to clear my stomach so that I didn’t aspirate in my sleep. It was one of the most painful things that I have ever endured. Constantly infected, constantly leaking acid on to my skin, leaving it raw and sore. I dealt with that horror for nine months before I found a doctor that was actually willing to touch it and together we decided that my reflux was no longer bad enough for me to need the tube. So they took it out, leaving a second four-inch scar across my stomach and another healed stoma. So now the pain from that is gone too.
Unfortunately, during my August/September in the hospital, they stopped giving me my anti-depressants and I failed to restart them once I was discharged. Over the following few months I sank further and further into a depression that slowly overtook my life. I was miserable by Christmastime. Burying myself in books and movies, becoming more and more isolated from everyone around me. Things came to a head, I won’t go into the details, but there were plenty of tears. I got myself some emergency psychiatric care and got back on my meds. Now, a month later, I’m really starting to see a difference. It’s becoming easier to motivate myself to do simple household tasks. I’m not sad all of the time. Life is just getting easier.
On the other hand, I’m stuck in a weird place. I’ve been so sick for so long and now I’m feeling so much better. I don’t know how to get back to normal. I’m working at it and just trying to take small steps. Things are changing, slowly. I have a lot to figure out. The last time I felt this well I was 21 years old, now I’m 27. The life around me now is nothing like the life I was living then, everything has changed. So I’m working to figure out who I am now, what I do now. I’m starting by going back to school to finish my teacher certification. It’s only two classes over the summer, but then I’ll be student teaching and taking a teaching seminar in the fall. We’ll see how it goes, hopefully smoothly.
And look at that, it’s exactly thirty minutes later and I’ve finished writing. Hopefully this will become a trend.
