Saturday, April 02, 2005

How Are You?

When I see friends anymore, they ask me how I'm doing and then they laugh and say that, well, they feel as if they know how I'm doing because of my blog. I feel a little like a celebrity. (Oh, yeah, Jenn, I saw in the tabloids that you and Brad split. So sorry to hear that. But you looked great at the Oscars!)

The funny thing is how hard it is to be sick. To be tired or scared or want comfort. I tend, in my blog, to concentrate on interesting observations on life in the land of the sick, without dwelling too much on the rather quotidian stuff. It helps me to think about things like how my illness affects the landscape of my life--the way things felt so joyful this week, and what it means to be bald--rather than to talk about symptoms. It's much more fun to talk about how I have acquired the habit (which I see in guys who have shaved heads or who are bald) of rubbing the palm of my hand against my scalp. I do it sometimes when thinking.

But a lot of my every day life involves dealing with adverse affects. I am moving out of queasy week and into neuropathy week. I have hot flashes as much as a dozen times a day. The only way to stave off the hotflashes (which are much more annoying than just feeling really warm) is to stay constantly a little cold, so at night I have to sleep without quite enough cover if I plan on sleeping at all.

But the nice thing about the blog is that much of the time it makes me feel like a visitor here. I am Observing The Local Customs and Reporting Back. I'm a little homesick, guys--don't know what I've have done the last few months without your emails and phonecalls. It's been interesting but I've been here long enough that it's getting a bit familiar. Can't wait to be back this summer.

4 Comments:

Blogger Madeleine Robins said...

Maureen, do the hot flashes yield to any sort of treatment? For a few years soy supplements of various sorts were very helpful to me--especially during that period where it felt like the hot flashes (like contractions toward the tail end of labor) were taking up more time than non-flashes. I am now at the tail end of the estrogen cha-cha, and weathering the occasional hot flash without treatment, but for a while there I felt like my own damned sub-climate.

Keep the postcards coming. Glad you're not taking up residence in Sickland.

April 02, 2005 10:41 PM  
Blogger Christopher Barzak said...

Can't wait to have you back either! Although sadly I won't be back from Japan yet, so perhaps next Spring...in any case, it'll be good to know *you've* come back from sickland.

April 03, 2005 3:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I am Observing The Local Customs and Reporting Back..." And we've all been heartened and encouraged, saddened and amused by those reports, but we'll be happiest when you're finally Back Home. :-)

April 03, 2005 10:24 AM  
Blogger Maureen McHugh said...

Madeleine, soy supplements haven't seemed to do anything for me--probably because this whole process is so driven by chemo. But I'm hoping that I'll do most of the many year process in a few months?

Chris, I think of you often, and how hard it is to be in a foreign country. We have some surprising things in common right now.

Steve! Are you graduated?

April 03, 2005 11:50 AM  

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