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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Tuesday (but really Wednesday) Report [Feb 9, 2022]

Quick Personal Update/Cancer Update-

I had a pretty big mental health setback this week. I'm doing poorly and having a deeply hard time doing anything useful. I've been on the edge of my seat since surgery about the possibility of needing chemotherapy, and the stage pathology found the cancer in meant that it came down to whether or not I have something called Lynch syndrome (a genetic condition that predisposes someone to certain types of cancers). Today I got the results of the genetic testing. 

I  do have it. 

Which means in the short term, I am spared chemotherapy, but in the long term, I have a lifetime of care and screenings to watch out for the other cancers this thing can raise my chances of having.  I got the news this morning, and I thought a Lynch diagnosis would be nothing but a relief (it means no chemo). And I was relieved in some ways, but it suddenly dropped all this unprocessed "waiting to exhale" into my mental inbox, and I ended up just feeling worse. Plus the 48 hours or so before I found out the results were just a special kind of hell. I spent most of today after the phone call on the edge of bursting into tears, and finally just fell asleep for like three hours. I'm hurting for support mechanisms because of Covid and some personal stuff, so I've just kind of been trying to process it down, but it feels a lot like after the surgery when I could only BEGIN to process some of the trauma.


Weekly Schedule Adjustments-

I'm still off the regular schedule. I will update the F.A.Q. and a couple of the other business posts updated for 2022. It's kind of good that I need to do them because that kind of revision is about what I can handle right now. Writing articles from scratch (really writing anything but journal splats and stream of consciousness) is turning out to be really hard with the stress levels where they are.


Novel Progress-

I felt like I was getting pretty close to being able to fold in some novel writing, but my setback…well, it set me back. I don't know exactly how long I'm going to be thousand-yard staring my computer every time I open the word document, but clearly I am not where I want to be right now. 


Behind the Scenes-

I'll be focusing on Patrons first since they keep the bills paid. If I have any spark that goes beyond kind of revising and updating my business info for 2022, it's going to go towards the Newsletter and some of the reward tiers.

3 comments:

  1. oh damn. That's a situation in which there are no good answers. I'm so sorry. All the hugs! Thinking about you, and very very glad you're hanging on.

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  2. Having been through both chemotherapy and the whole 'I have a dodgy gene' thing, I really feel for you. Please believe me, you are blessed to not be doing chemo because it produces a mental fog that makes everything harder for a writer! But yeah, the whole 'watch and wait' thing sucks big time. I have the BRCA2 gene for reproductive cancers and have had *nearly* everything removed that could become cancerous, but some things you can't remove and that's ... well, it produces anxiety, right?

    Go well, Chris.

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  3. When I found out I was diabetic, not only having to check my blood sugar almost daily but having to go for blood tests every 3 months and checking my cholesterol and other things, I broke down crying. It was miserable for me. But at some point you say, eff it. If I die, I die. Right now I have to keep living. So I pray for death and do everything I can to keep living.

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