The Selfishness of Sickness

Culturally, we have this thing about people who are sick, victimized, marginalized, or damaged. It puts them outside of the flow of every day life and makes them wise. Noble. I'm prey to it, I've been writing books about outsiders my whole career. Being an outsider can mean being able to see others.

What is most annoying about this whole Hodgkins thing is that it is doing the exact opposite to me. It's making me self-absorbed. The sick spend a lot of time self-monitoring and even someone like me, who has had relatively few bad affects from all this, notes every ache, every twinge. My world has shrunk. I am the topic of my every conversation, the object of my own fascination, and while this has pretty much always been true, having no hair means other people ask me about myself and my health. And when I tell them, they tell me how great my attitude is. Before, like most reasonably socialized people, I had the good grace to be an adult and hide some of my self-interest. Now, I expect to be the center of attention.

When I started this blog, at least I had some interesting things to relate--about Hodgkins and about what it is like to get a CT Scan and a PET Scan. But like many illnesses, mine is mostly undramatic. (And may it stay that way. Drama is a bad thing in illness and airplane flights.)

There are a number of different styles of blog and journal on the web. Some of them seek to provide information on a topic. There are a couple of good ones on lymphoma where people try to provide up to date information on treatment and research. There are a ton of blogs where people function as editors--they search the firehose of the web and post good stuff. An interesting phenomena. And in retrospect, an obvious one. If the internet is a place where everyone can read slush, the internet is also a place where everyone can be an editor. (Except being an editor takes an element of self-discipline that posting slush may not.)

There are blogs like mine, which are about someone's personal experience of a certain topic. Spelunking, maybe. And there are blogs about being someone which are interesting if that person creates a persona on-line worth reading. (And boring if the person doesn't--but those pretty soon don't get read.) My preference in blogs is towards the personal experience ones, either organized around a topic or organized around someone's personality.

I am aware that there is more to this blog than me just nattering on about my aches and pains. It does provide a couple of things--for my friends, it's a place to check. Yep, she posted today. Even if you don't do more than skim it, it's a way to see that basically things are okay. And it's an astonishment to me that people want to check. (Okay, part of me is convinced that everyone wants to know everything I do, but I'm also pretty convinced that I'm a boring person and a lot of the time people are just being polite. If nothing else, having Hogkins has made me feel more cared for than I can possibly explain.)

And this journal is also a place for Sarah and Heather, who like me, are having this little adventure. So we can say, 'Yeah, I felt like that,' or, 'No, thank God I didn't ever think that.' I don't think this blog is a complete exercise in narcissism.

But I would just like to state for the record, that I am having one of those days where I am more than a little tired of myself being sick.

And now, I think I'll go have a little nap with the miniature dachshund. She, at least, is glad I am sick because it leads to naps. And given that this morning is was nine degrees, the more opportunities she has to cuddle up with someone, happier she is.