A big hello to all the kind folks who have read and commented on my blog over this summer from HELL. I have been very reluctant to write anything in this space for the past week or so because I am basically very depressed, tired and frustrated with the multiple chronic health problems scenario — layered on top of cancer — that now defines the grain of my everyday life. There is, also, a very common period of intense depression, anxiety and mourning that follows closely on the heels of aggressive treatment — like, oh, maybe, two surgeries in a period of 5 weeks. The pyscho-babble folks call it, Post Treatment Blues. Basically, your soul catches up with the realities that have befallen your body that the very intensely helpful trick of DENIAL has been pushing off to the side so that you could actually withstand treatment. Then you crash. And there is nothing interesting or sexy about this struggle. It’s just brutal.

My gastrointestinal system has been decimated with pills and drugs over the past two months, including about three weeks all together of opiates, eleven days of intravenous antibiotics and countless other shit. Acid billows up into the back of my throat constantly, making me cough and go hoarse and nothing I do stems the flow. Then there’s the diverticular disease they found when I went into the hospital a couple of weeks ago. There is almost nothing left that is safe for me to eat between diverticulitis and GERD (reflux). And if I don’t keep the diverticulitis under control, the only option will be a very nasty and risky bowel resection surgery. I don’t actually even know how to think my way through ever going on vacation again under these circumstances, or even how to get on a plane and go to a conference. Then there’s the breast seroma from the mastectomy that has not resolved. I could go on… See what I mean. There’s nothing interesting about this at all and I can’t figure out how to write about anything else because dealing with all of this is the sum total of my daily life.

Blogs are odd public spaces. Maybe I am from the wrong generation to feel entirely comfortable to put the minute details of my struggle out into the airwaves. Or maybe I am just worried that it could seem like a passive aggressive call for help, or for encouragement.

I need, if only, to figure out what the hell I am living for other than to cope with personal health catastrophic failure.