And if it’s bad news then maybe it’s just time to lay my burdens down. I’m not ready to pick up this fight again, to watch myself waste away. Maybe this is just my time, and it’s about time I accepted it with grace.

It would, after all, make things a lot less complicated. If I missed the road sign the first time around, I should probably give it a good hard look the second time. Maybe it’s time to stop being so damn stubborn and scared, and just make sure I’ve said good-bye to everyone I need to.

And god I want to carve the pain out of my flesh and make it stop. It’s dark down here and it hurts and I just want to let the blood loose to wash it away.

please please please please please

Today I get a collection notice from the hospital.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the crap I’ve been getting from the insurance company and the hospital for weeks. I had thought that the hospital bills were taken care of because of that random $7000 write-off from the hospital charity department. So this comes as a complete surprise.

My brain just goes ffftt whenever I even attempt to think about trying to make sense of all of this. I made an appointment with the medical claim consultant for Monday because I really have no idea what else to do. I look at all the paper and just get confused.

I’d been feeling tired and depressed all week as it was. Goddammit.

Monday was a series of cognitive tests, among other things, which per my doc do not indicate any sort of organic problem (although he’s decided that I’m bad at math, ha). This still doesn’t explain the forgetfulness or the difficulty in processing complicated things, but at least the actual brain cells aren’t broken. I’ll have follow-up with the social worker next week. Doc is pushing for me to see their psychologist, however. Both have tossed out meds as a possibility, but frankly I’m not remotely depressed enough for the side-effects to be worth it.

Okay… the math thing still bugs me. Mental math just shouldn’t be that hard for me.

Anyway. Wednesday was Spirit night in class. Although the oracle exercise was painful (take it as a roadsign on the path — I’m not ready for such things yet), the trance afterward showed me good things. My place of power has become very solid. It’s familiar to me, so perhaps I saw it in dreams when I was young. It’s a nice, safe zone for me to be in when I need such things. That, and both cats decided to join me there last night, unprompted. I had always joked that my boys were my familiars, but it’s kind of nice to have confirmation that they want the job.

They were both extra cuddly this morning too. I gave them proper thanks in the form of snuggles and tummy rubs.

It shouldn’t be this hard. But my brain just won’t work anymore.

And it happens so often now, this forgetfulness. I’ve walked all the way out to the street from the office — a trip that takes me five minutes and eight floors down an elevator and an escalator — before realizing that I’d left my wallet in the drawer of my file cabinet. I misplace things. I am utterly stumped by such questions as: “What did you do last night?”  I have mental to-do lists and then completely forget what’s on them once I have the time to get anything accomplished. I feel cloudy and unfocused more often than not.

If this were usual for me I wouldn’t worry. But it’s not. If it were just once-in-a-while, I wouldn’t worry. But it’s all the time. And more than anything else, my brain, my competence, my intelligence is who I am. And now I’ve lost great big chunks of me and who knows if I’ll get it back. I grew up fat and ugly but at least I knew that I was never stupid. And now I am.

falling asleep already.  i’ve only been awake for eleven hours.

hate, hate, hate everything.

And Sunday night I notice that my legs were swollen. Not just end-of-the-day kind of swollen, my ankles were huge and there was a quarter-inch dent where my sandal strap had been. Monday morning I get up and hope the swelling won’t return, but no such luck. My skin was so taut it was itching, and now a half-inch dent at the top of my boots. Called Doc and he told me to wait and see, and call him if it didn’t go away on its own. I’ve been wrapped up in compression bandages from knee to ankle for two days. They’re off now, so far so good…

I have so much to catch up on and no energy to do it. I work all day with annoyingly little to do, so I feel like I’m twiddling away perfectly good time that I could use for something I need it for, but there shall be no surfing for job openings from work. Ms. Micromanagement freaks if I spend five minutes checking email.

But then I get home, get through a run with slightly less staggering than before, and am wiped for the rest of the night. Even washing the dishes is too much. I am hating the wig and only wearing it now so Ms. Micromanagement doesn’t can me for not having a corporate-enough haircut.

I feel fragile. And I have so much shit to do.

Granted trying to work, even part-time, the week after really has gotten to the point of hideously awful by now, given that my body at this point wants to just throw up its hands at all of the toxic crap we’ve been pumping into it. Enough already. I’d start sweating and shaking by around noon or 1pm, and come home absolutely exhausted with my limbs burning like I had a hundred rats gnawing on my bones. And I was only working six-hour days, after taking Monday off completely to give myself a little extra time to recover.

I’m being intentionally lazy this weekend. I am hoping that the burning goes away completely by… well, by this morning would have been nice, but at least by Monday morning so I can move around the Faire without wanting to curl up into a ball.

This is soooo frustrating. I can lie on the couch, sure, but I don’t need to sleep. I’d rather be doing something, but then I run the risk of having the sweats sneak up on me and laying me out when I’m in the middle of it. Sigh.

I can’t wait til all of this goes away. I’m getting so fat that my tummy is uncomfortably in the way. I want to be able to run again. I want to stop being hot all the time. I want my hair back.

Gah.

On the one hand, my last chemo session ever is in a week and I am elated. I am so anxious to put all of this behind me.

On the other, I have been miserable this week. Recovery from chemo, even to get to a minimal, I-can-get-out-of-bed level, takes so damn long now. It was today, a week, before the burning in my limbs quieted enough to not be annoyingly distracting. Monday morning I woke up at 5am bloated and in so much pain that I thought my gut was going to explode. Three hours and a disgusting cocktail of magnesium salts later, my bowels go to the opposite extreme and I spent most of the morning running back to the toilet.

I haven’t been able to sleep. Night sweats, hot flashes, thanks to chemo making me menopausal two months ago. More frequent now and it takes hours to get to sleep, and every night this week I’ve woken up multiple times because I’m too damn hot and sweating — and this is with a prescription sleeping pill and air conditioning. So I am constantly tired even aside from being run-down from chemo. I lie down at night exhausted and between the acid-ache in my body and the sweats I just can’t get to sleep. I don’t think it’s been earlier than 2am any night this week. Then waking at 4am, and again at 5, and again at 6.

And I wonder about the aftermath. What will it take to get my body back, the whole one, that could run 4 or 5 miles a day, drink occasionally, dance, push myself mentally and physically without completely falling apart. This body is broken and how long are the repairs going to take? The drugs made me gain weight so I’ve got 20 pounds or more to lose (I’ve been afraid to look at the scale). When will the hot flashes stop? When will the aching go away for good? When do I get my hair back? How do I recreate myself to be more like what I used to be? Can I do that?

What happens next?  Where do I go from here?

I’m tired and I want to sleep and I am wide, wide awake.