A week later.

I tend to write, at least blog-wise, to exorcise things.  Perhaps I should write here more but sometimes the need to try to scrape something off of my soul by writing it down here is overwhelmed by the need to just not think about this shit anymore, if that makes sense.

It's been a hard week (they all seem to be since I found out about this disease) as things go.  It's amazing how something like this can threaten your sanity, your relationships, etc.  How difficult it can be to know what the right decisions are, and if you are being selfish if you play the "cancer card," how to gauge how much you can lean on your caregiver, if you should cut toxic people out of your life, etc.  Little decisions and actions take on monumental weight in light of having cancer and the smallest thing can, at times, feel like it's what causes it all to fall apart.

I don't want to get into too many specifics here, just to keep things fresh and updated a bit.  I'm dealing with some seriously annoying issues between the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and the one in Arizona, and why I'm not scheduled to see the doctor I was specifically recommended to see there or why they seem to want to start everything from scratch (repeat tests, etc.).  There's a communication breakdown I am desperately trying to fix this week and it's stressing me out to say the least.

Healthwise I'm OK -- it feels like every week I feel a little bit more tired and achy, which I'm guessing is because as my immune system gets overwhelmed a bit by the chemotherapy it can't heal me as quickly.  I've noticed, for instance, that while it used to just take a week for the giant red blotches where I get the Velcade shots to fade now I can still see 3 clearly and the fourth as well if I look hard enough.

I'm tired, though.  I've been desperately working with my spouse to come up with ways to make things more peaceful on the weekends as it feels like either I'm in bad shape physically or we're going at it and that's fucking me up emotionally and mentally.  Either way I don't feel rested after the weekends anymore and working 40-50 hours a week I'm not sure when I'm supposed to be healing and de-stressing.  Like I told her, I feel like between her, all of the drama with our various parent's, having a toddler, my job, etc., I don't have time to have cancer.

Somehow I'm guessing it's going to demand a seat at the table regardless of my opinion, however.