Been bad again–

05Apr10

Another month has past, and I have still very little to write.  No, that’s not true.  So much, but so little courage to do so!
Well, a few things have drastically changed in my life: first off, I’ve become much more aware of my iodine intake- my goal for the next few months is to really whip my body into shape, that those nasty cells don’t stand a chance of building new offspring of their kind.  I desperately want to hear that I am in remission, and be done with the “cancer chapter” of my life.  I would love to move on to the “future” part of my life, within which I finish my medical studies, make a life for myself, settle, and have an interesting, involved, happy life.
Another point, is that I’ve become more active as far as my social life goes- going to bars, dancing, and enjoying myself purely.  Feeling free.  I seem to have skipped that part of my life the past few years, and it’s nice to “be free”.  This term of free-ness is not easy to explain, it’s the ability to breathe, to know that one can manage one’s time properly and not have to worry about everything all at once.  I think, I actually have my cancer to thank for that- (thanks douche-faced cells!) in that I had to give up a huge part of my life, my feeling of control.  I can’t control my body anymore– or at least the stupid things my cells do- nor can I really control other aspects of my life that relate to it.  With giving up this control battle, I’ve also loosened up and learned to “live”.

Medically speaking, nothing much has happened.  I am awaiting my lab results from the 19th of March– due to come Wednesday or Thursday.  I will also begin again with the low iodine diet in the beginning of May- which shouldn’t be too much of a change up from my current eating habits– of course, with the exception of eating food at restaurants or at friends’ houses!

On a rather unrelated subject, I had a dream about my grandfather last night- it was actually a nightmare.  I don’t really remember the exact circumstances leading up to this point in the dream, but I think I was walking with a group of people on the street and my grandparents or just my grandfather was behind us- I was looking occasionally to see if they were alright, and I looked behind me only to see my grandfather laying on the ground on his side in the middle of the road!  I then ran to him, brought him to the curb, asked him to sit down, and proceeded to give him something similar to an Emergency Room examination.  There were also children playing loudly with soccer balls around us-  the balls kept coming our way and I lost it with the kids at a point, then returned to attend to my grandfather.
For months I’ve hoped to dream of my grandfather, to interact with him again in the world of my imagination- but this dream put me a bit off of that hope.  It takes a lot of strain to remember the times when he wasn’t ill, and when we would just be together.  Perhaps because there aren’t many things in my life that remind me of it- but the boldest memories are definitely of his last year.
One night, about a month before he died, my parents received a phone call at 2am, asking for us to come over to my grandparents’ house to help my grandfather get up.  He had sat down on the toilet and not been able to rise again. (On a sweet note, because my grandmother and grandfather had never seen each other on the toilet before, he refused her help while he was still sitting on the seat.)  He then very carefully made his way onto the bathroom floor, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, and then called his wife in.  My father and I entered at this point, hoisted him gently up, and brought him back to bed.
I recently went on vacation with my grandmother, and we had a lot of time to talk about some of the funny moments we had with my grandfather during his radiation treatments.  It was beautiful in a way because he’s almost been gone for 6 years- and talking about him with my family, those who really knew him, has become somewhat taboo- something that seems to just sadden them.  It’s tragic, in a way, because of what a wonderful influence he was on my life (and at the risk of speaking for my other family members, on theirs as well), and what fantastic memories I have with him.

Well, it’s a bit late, and I ought to do some more studying before I go to bed!  But I can offer some scupdate stuff– in the pictures, on the left side of my neck, there’s a lump– I just noticed it really, but will have it checked out immediately.

Scupdate April 5th 2010

Scupdate April 5th 2010, questionable lump

Better View of Lump-- April 5th 2010

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