Sunday morning

I turned down a movie invitation last night because I didn't feel like I had the energy for it. I slept/dozed until about 11 pm, then got up for about an hour. Then I went back to bed.

Can't decide what to do this morning. I need to eat, but I don't want to leave the house.

Rollo the cat is here, hanging close by, and I'm grateful for his company.

iTunes

I've turned iTunes back on after a layoff of a few months. I've got a lot of calm, relaxing music on it. And lord knows I could use it right now.

You can see what's recently played on the last.fm widget at right.

Back Under the Covers

Went to dinner with Diane, and by the time we were done, I was almost too tired to drive home. It's now about 6:20 pm, and I'm back under the covers, ready to sleep.

In Spite of a Good Night's Sleep...

In spite of a good night's sleep, I've been pretty wiped out today. Got to Jimmy's Egg about 9 am, and the Red Cup about 10. Got home at probably 10:45 am, and slept/dozed on the sofa for about two hours.

I still don't especially like being holed up here by myself. But I don't know what else to do. I don't have the energy for the crowd at the coffee shop. I'm still an introvert, and I have largely lived a hermit's life these past few years. It's hard for me to adapt to anything else. Sleeping on Suzanne's den sofa last night, with her and John in the next room, was just the amount of human contact I needed at that moment.

I've come to rely heavily on a handful of friends, but they still have their own lives to tend to, and they can't drop everything to wait on me hand and foot.

My right knee buckled once while I was getting dressed this morning. I didn't fall or hurt myself. It just felt like my body was refusing to do what I wanted it to do. I picked up a glass of orange juice at Jimmy's Egg, and it almost slipped through my fingers.

I don't know if this is caused by the cancer, or if there's something else going on.

I'm eating pretty lightly now, because it seems like the larger a meal I eat, the more likely I'll have indigestion and bloating afterward. So I'm not eating very much, and maybe that's why I'm having these odd weakness issues.

Again, there's some discomfort associated with the indigestion, but no pain at all.

A Quick Update

The past couple of days have been up and down. I have some discomfort, mostly related to indigestion, but no pain. Last night, I went to Suzanne's with John, but I wasn't up for much. I snoozed on a sofa in the den while they watched TV in the living room.

Even though I wasn't in the room with them, it was comforting to know they were close by.

When I got home and to bed, I had the best night's sleep I've had this week.

I have a lot of email I need to answer.

An Overnight Nadir

If you didn't already know it, I get depressed sometimes.

And typically, my depression gets worse as the evening goes on. The "Sitting In A Box" post was written right before dawn, after a night of fairly restless sleep.

The solitude thing is still a problem. This is a bad time for me to spend a lot of time alone. But the previous post was written at an overnight nadir, and doesn't reflect the way I feel every minute of the day.

Sitting in a box

Solitude really sucks right now. I wondered how I would actually deal with this in a real crisis, and now I know: I don't deal with it well at all. Evenings and overnights are the worst.

I don't think I'm wanting a lover. But I am wanting Quan Yin, that bodhisattva of unlimited compassion, to come and sit with me, sleep beside me, ease me through this time.

It would take a woman of unlimited compassion to go through this experience with me 24/7. It would completely be an act of selfless charity, not something motivated by desire or attraction.

I keep telling myself I am one with everything around me, and that solitude is only an illusion. But at the basic emotional level, it feels like I'm just sitting in a box, out of everybody's way, until I die.

My (other) brilliant career

In a comment to a previous post, James Stover referred to a website I once had. I remembered it as 'The MCARP Institute of Situational Journalism Ethics," but that was actually the subtitle. It was called "My (other) brilliant career."

It was sort of a proto-blog that I created in 1999, when blogging was still in its infancy, and I was still ranting daily about the idiocy of TV news.

The original site is long gone, but another former reporter, Ike Piggott, archived it and has republished, with my permission, most of the original content at his site, Occam's Razr.

Here are some of those posts from 1999 - 2000:

Adrenalinholics Anonymous

Mt. Everest Is In Alaska

The MCARP Guide to Sweeps Series Planning

It's A Reporter's Worst Nightmare

I Was Suppose To Be An Anchor

Where There's Smoke, There's Breaking News

There are a few more there. If you'd like to read all of them, visit Occam's Razr and search for the keyword "mcarp".

Stage IV

Had the CT scan today. The cancer is Stage IV. It appears to be in both lobes of my liver, and there's a tiny spot on my lung that may or may not be it as well. The next step is a needle biopsy to confirm the liver cancer. After that, radiation, surgery and chemo. And a colostomy.

Michael Landon

I've been thinking about that last interview Michael Landon did with Johnny Carson in 1991. I remember he looked terrible; he would be dead six weeks later.

I found the interview on YouTube, and started to embed it here. Then, upon reading further about it, I discovered Landon didn't die of colon cancer, but pancreatic cancer.

So, never mind.

Strangely, I feel a little better now.

A chat with a doctor

I talked on the phone this morning with a doctor friend who lives out of state. She asked me some questions about my condition that no one else has asked, including my GP and the GI specialist who did my colonoscopy.

I don't want to go into a lot of unpleasant detail – we are talking about my colon, after all – but after I described my situation, she said, "Well, at least you don't have ________."

I replied that I did, in fact, have ________, and that seemed to give her pause.

She suggested that the next step for me will probably be a CT scan to 'stage the cancer', as she put it. In other words, to see if it's spread to other organs.

See assured me that tremendous strides have been made in colon cancer treatment in the past 30 years, and that it's "by no means a death sentence."

Cats

Starting maybe two months ago, my gregarious and affectionate black cat, M. Gastón, began spending more and more time away from the house. I would let him out, and he wouldn't come back until the next day. Then he'd stay gone for two days, then three. Sometimes I would see him sleeping on a neighbor's porch, or wandering through a front yard across the street. He's been gone four or five days this time.

In the meantime, my grumpy old ex-cat, Rollo, has come back home (with some encouragement from me), and is sleeping on the bed with me this evening. He's been living with neighbors for more than a year, and I think he left because he didn't like Gastón. He's OK with being here as long as he's the only cat.

I wonder if this has anything to do with one or both cats sensing my illness. Probably just coincidence.