This is this, but something more.

Having cancer is a bit like being pregnant.  You go through your day pretty normally, but you have this awareness that is hovering around you - always.  When I was pregnant I would find myself in the middle of doing something and think, "This is this, but something more. Oh, right! I'm pregnant!" Now I'll be in the middle of doing something and I'll think, "Oh, right. Fuck."  So, yes, a bit like being pregnant, but with a twist.

Cancer does allow me to be utterly self-absorbed, and with no apologies.  It's a bit dangerous.  I don't know if I can lose a fight with my spouse anymore, for example.  Who would dare to win a fight with someone who has cancer?  My son definitely calls me more often than he used to.  People are nice to me.  I'm very visible.  All of which feeds my natural propensity towards being self-absorbed.

Then there's me as cancer patient.  I'm the kind of patient whom I would utterly despise if I were not myself.  I don't know if I would be jealous or just annoyed, but I would definitely hate me.  I'm friends with all of the nurses and administrators.  I stop by to have coffee with them, even when I have an appointment in another unit.  The women from African countries all call me "Auntie."  It's ridiculous, but I love it, and I love them, and when we laugh together there's no place I'd rather be, even though I'm at the fucking hospital.

Shit! (and I hope that not every title will include an expletive)

Morning after ... now the pressure's on!  Do I have to blog all the time?  Do I have to think about cancer all the time?  And now it's up and running and eight people have looked at it.

Breath.

My daughter is in Spain for the semester.  She started a blog her first day.  It's been three and a half months, and she's blogged four times.

OK, off to have some breakfast.  Sun's shining.  If you're reading this, have a blessing-ful day.

Fuck Cancer

Well here we are. I'm actually not sure what I'm doing here in blog-land, but there's this annoying thing in our culture about writing. As in, most immediately, I have cancer, so I guess I should write a book. Or, in other lives, I play baseball, so I should write a book. Or I had sex with someone who's super-famous. Or I did something really great. Or I wanted to do something really great but I just didn't seem to get around to it.

Actually, I had cancer a long time ago - don't get me wrong, I do have it now. I'm not just dredging up the past so that I can dwell among the blogging. Anyway, the point is that I did have cancer a long time ago and I didn't do anything beyond getting cured while raising a couple of kids and holding down a job, and, you see, I thought that was enough. But then, a couple of years later my wife told me about a friend of hers who had also survived cancer. "Cool," I said or thought. End of story. That is until she added, "Yeah. She wrote a book."

Well, shit! No one told me that I was supposed to write a book!  So I want to believe that the living and child-rearing, etc. are enough, but there's still that woman in my head who wrote a book and who's making me feel like I'm losing some contest that I know does not exist.

So I guess for today my message is: you do not need to write about your cancer. You only need to live with it. Unless you feel like writing, in which case you should write.