2015, hike!
Jun. 16th, 2015 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grinninfooleI last posted near the Winter Solstice, and now it's less than a week to Summer's. Sigh.
I'm waiting around at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. My brother just had an endoscopic procedure to put a stent in his liver. It's been a bit more than a year since the diagnosis, and nine months since we learned it's too advanced for a cure. Six months of chemotherapy followed, then a couple of months hiatus while he built up his strength and we waited to see what effect it had had on the tumor. Yesterday, we learned that the cancer rebounded aggressively, and MU needs to restart the chemo next Monday. This sucks, but is not unexpected--MU's had pain, worsening and increasingly constant pain, for the last couple of weeks--and we think it likely that the chemo will again be tolerable and effective in controlling the disease.
As for me, I'm in a comfortable but difficult limbo. I resigned from my job managing the store in Northampton, because I took nearly 3 months off last year, and we just can't sustain that if I have to do it again this year. Dropping everything to help my family was the right decision, but it's created problems for me. I'm muddling through financially, but the great swaths of unstructured time pose real challenges for me. I'm good at thinking of things I could, should, or even need to do, but the 'executive functioning' that lets people actually set goals and accomplish them doesn't work so well for me. It doesn't help that my long-standing ADD meds seem to be causing some irritating nervous tics, so I need to switch to something else.
Still, I have had time to watch a crapload of stuff on Netflix and Hulu. It's not an actual accomplishment, but it has been pleasantly diverting.
I'm waiting around at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. My brother just had an endoscopic procedure to put a stent in his liver. It's been a bit more than a year since the diagnosis, and nine months since we learned it's too advanced for a cure. Six months of chemotherapy followed, then a couple of months hiatus while he built up his strength and we waited to see what effect it had had on the tumor. Yesterday, we learned that the cancer rebounded aggressively, and MU needs to restart the chemo next Monday. This sucks, but is not unexpected--MU's had pain, worsening and increasingly constant pain, for the last couple of weeks--and we think it likely that the chemo will again be tolerable and effective in controlling the disease.
As for me, I'm in a comfortable but difficult limbo. I resigned from my job managing the store in Northampton, because I took nearly 3 months off last year, and we just can't sustain that if I have to do it again this year. Dropping everything to help my family was the right decision, but it's created problems for me. I'm muddling through financially, but the great swaths of unstructured time pose real challenges for me. I'm good at thinking of things I could, should, or even need to do, but the 'executive functioning' that lets people actually set goals and accomplish them doesn't work so well for me. It doesn't help that my long-standing ADD meds seem to be causing some irritating nervous tics, so I need to switch to something else.
Still, I have had time to watch a crapload of stuff on Netflix and Hulu. It's not an actual accomplishment, but it has been pleasantly diverting.
