09-12-08 12:56: Ardith Hinton to James Bradley "Insights...  1."

 AH> Hi, James!  A few months ago you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:
 >                     ~~~~~~~~~~

Ah!!! Rubbing it in? 



 AH>           Understood.  You seemed to be thinking of what may or may not
 AH> happen in future, however, while you have more than enough
 AH> to deal with right now.  I agree that what I said is often
 AH> more easily said than done... [wry grin].

Gold star to Ardith! 

I can't live with only 'what might be', I have to prepare myself that it's
likely to only get worse while I hobble together small victories. (For those
new here, my surgeries left me with the diagnosis "iatrogenic fibroid
neuroma".
In English, that's the long form of, "They nicked a nerve."
Walking, sitting,
and a host of other "daily activities" cause a host of tertiary
complications.
The latest is, I am bulging disks in my lower back, and aggravating bone spurs
on my vertebrae.) I imagine, contrary to an average "cancer-free survivor",
surviving cancer was the easy part for me.


 AH>           I can't fix it, but I can relate.  I struggled with this
 AH> reply for a while because something kept eluding me... until Allen &
 AH> Bob took me on a trip down Memory Lane to our own days (and
 AH> nights!) as Oncology Parents.  From that vantage point "the
 AH> past year and a half" is quite significant.  You said you'd
 AH> been taking care of your father during the last year(s) of
 AH> his life, IIRC, and then I guess you had to do most of the

In my way, I was doing what I could to facilitate his sobriety, but my physical
assistance to him was limited to sharing meal chores, and administering
medication to his (at that time ;-) cat. Once I heard the beer open while he
was taking his turn cooking one day, I had already noticed his behavior revert
weeks earlier, so I cut and ran a long time before his death.


 AH> work involved in winding up his affairs because his other
 AH> next of kin live further away.  In the meantime you
 AH> probably had to set your own feelings on the back burner,
 AH> just as the parent of a child with leukemia tends to do.  I
 AH> had what others might regard as a midlife crisis (although
 AH> to me it seemed much more like post-traumatic stress) about
 AH> eighteen months after Nora's diagnosis... and another woman
 AH> I know who had a child with leukemia experienced the same
 AH> thing on much the same timetable.  Once our kids were no
 AH> longer in immediate danger the mental/emotional work we'd
 AH> been putting off demanded attention.  IMHO this is nature's
 AH> way of restoring equilibrium... so while it may be a pretty
 AH> rough ride, it's a healthy & normal reaction.  The issue is
 AH> complicated in your case by chronic pain which makes it
 AH> impossible to work on a regular schedule.  In that sense,
 AH> your reaction may be more like the classic midlife crisis.
 AH> But either way I think the mechanism is similar.  :-)

Maybe, a mid-life with sleepless nights, interspersed with 1/2 to 3/4 day long
"sleeps", and enough cash for a three-cylinder little red hatch-back sports
car.  I guess I've been a little shocked at the past couple of years. Still
some behaviors continue to astound, but I'm more in a position to deal with
them in a timely fashion. I would doubt either were sole participants, however
the car was bought before my surgery. 


 AH>           It's okay to be human in this echo.  If you feel
 AH> like crying I won't hold that against you.  I respect you
 AH> for being able to admit to such feelings
 AH> ... and I understand our bodies eliminate various toxins by way of
 AH> tears.  ;-)

Oh hell... I'm in tears five times a week from physical pain. It's only natural
for me to allow the emotions a turn now and again. B-)


... James
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