Positively Phoebe

My apologies to any reader who do not follow me on either Facebook or Instagram...  I didn't mean to leave you hangin'... I had my CAT Scan on Thursday afternoon.  My folks were already in the lobby of the Radiology offices at Fairview Hospital when Ryan and I nervously walked in around 1:30pm.  Sometime just shy of 4pm, I finally laid down inside the big "O"-shaped machine.  Well, if a 2.5 hour wait seemed like an eternity, imagine how we felt when we asked the tech how long for the results and she said that while they would have them on Friday, I would probably not hear from my doctor before my follow-up appointment on Tuesday - unless there was something bad on there!  Ugh... So, knowing that Dr. Kebria is not in the office on Fridays and not wanting to puke if the phone DID ring, I called awesome Nurse Erin around 9am and left a tearful message asking if she had any results - just so we could make it through the weekend without this dreadful uncertainty....

I haven't been posting much lately. Without getting into the details of why so much so that they would require their own entire post, I will just say that while Ryan was away on tour this summer, I was not ok. My stress level was through the roof. I wasn't ready, even more than a year after my illness, to be alone that much. I wasn't prepared to do all the things we normally do together all on my own. Especially with the added stress of the hours at my new job being so much longer than those at the job I had during most of his touring days. It was all just much harder and I felt like I was incapable of living up the the "Positively Phoebe" persona I had created while I was feeling so frazzled. So I just didn't blog. Even though the stress I was going through was a natural part of my cancer process, I didn't feel like I could talk about it. Maybe I will write more about that soon, but today's post is about something else... Last week, I was feeling like...

Stress. It used to be annoying.  Now?  It's fucking terrifying. In the past, when life was "normal," stress was just aggravating.  Annoying.  Stressful.  Now, in a world where fear of recurrence tortures my brain at least 100 times a day, stress is a goddamned nightmare. At the moment, I have stressors coming out my assssss:  Ryan being on tour is stressful for me.  And the stress and upset it causes him ALSO stresses me out further.  Dealing with three dogs on my own when I am gone 11+ hours a day is stressful.  Worrying about my father's ongoing health issues is stressful.  Figuring out budgets and how to survive financially is stressful.  Sorting out how to manage what little free time I have is stressful.  Only HAVING a little free time is stressful.  Certain aspects of my new job are extremely stressful (although, overall it is surprisingly less stressful than my old job).  Worrying about things my friends...

I’ve been meaning to update everything that was going on when I posted last week, and then I go this morning to look at what I’d written, and I see Ryan’s amazing “The Fear” post and now all the little nuggets that were bouncing around in my head feel like the incoherent grunts of Frankenstein’s monster in comparison. But I suppose I still feel inclined to give the more in-depth follow-up regardless, as I know people do want to know… So, yeah.  Let me start with my dad, because I know at least one person left a comment wondering if there was any update on his condition.  My last post was on Wednesday.  By Thursday, I couldn’t take it anymore.  I was nervous about talking to him, but I had to call.  I was surprised that the hospital managed to put me straight through to his room.   And when I heard him on the other end of the line, I was just devastated.  He sounded awful and even worse he said several times that he FELT awful.  Hear...

Just FYI for anyone following: the follow-up mammogram was all clear, she was told by the radiologist that older tattoo ink can sometimes show up as a spot in a lymph node, that is what they were seeing... No more specific news about Phoebe's dad, it is apparently a "wait and see" sort of situation... she has talked to him a couple times and he is improving, and is apparently ravenously hungry. These are very good things. ______________ Hunter S. Thompson often wrote about "the fear". Like "THE" fear. Some of it, in his case clearly, was drug-induced; but this is something we all have. Not a specific fear... like "oh man, am I afraid of skydiving and turtles and circus peanuts", but an overall fear. A non-specific panic over the state and pace of life itself. THE fear. The fear is personified in all sorts of evil characters, from children's stories to religious texts. Tolkien of course makes it into an object. A ring. THE ring.....

Is it me, or has this been one of those weeks, again, where everything seems to be going wrong for everyone I know?  Starting at home. A week ago, something really amazing that Ryan had been working really hard toward fell completely apart.  It was devastating and, honestly, is STILL devastating – it’s just that so much other CRAP has happened since then that I feel like it fell apart a year ago, not 6 days ago.  A few days after that, our house refinance ALSO fell through.  And then that same day, my aunt called from Florida to tell me that my father (Tattoo Dad) was back in the hospital.  For me, this has been the most difficult of the bad news.  The details all seem very hazy still.  The bits of the conversations I’ve had with my aunt that stick out in my head are “found in a ditch” “on his bike” “collapsed” “doesn’t remember anything” “brain bleed” “transferred to neuro hospital” “too out of it to give HIPPA release consent” “CICU”… ...

So, I'm feeling completely destroyed right now.  And it makes absolutely no sense at all.  And I am so mad at myself because of it. At lunch today, one of the shop guys says to me, right as I sit down, "So, when are you going to have some kids?" I was stunned, and just sort of curtly responded, "I can't."  He clearly felt terrible.  Apologized.  Mumbled something about adoption always being an option.  Then *I* felt bad for making him uncomfortable and explained that I never really wanted kids anyhow. But as ABSOLUTELY true as that statement was, is, and continues to be, it seems to somehow be completely separate from this pain in my gut that makes my eyes water and my heart catch in my throat. I fucking HATE that that decision was made for me.  Despite the fact that I never wanted kids.  Never.  Not once in my life do I ever remember feeling differently - not even for a moment.  I have zero interest, and moreso, I have zero res...