long time, no post

[dancingyel]

let's have another bad-good-random list, shall we? it's a good way to summarize my life.



the bad:
- grandma's health. she has a cancerous mass thing near her ovaries, and some spots on her lungs. she'll have surgery to remove the big mass, but since she doesn't want chemo or radiation (and i don't blame her), there's not much to be done about the spots on her lungs. so, surgery in a few weeks, and then...we sit around and let the rest of the cancer kill her? i don't know. this isn't gonna have a good ending. she's 85, this isn't surprising, but i've been lucky enough to have all 4 grandparents alive, and this whole process is traumatic.
- school continues to be overwhelming in parts. i feel like i'm not getting enough done, both for classes and my own research. i still don't have a master's proposal. i'm doing the readings for class, but only the minimum. i'm fairly behind in stats, which is ok (there's not firm deadlines) for now, but means that i'm gonna have to catch up. it's all doable, but overwhelming.
- random meltdowns continue. they've become a lot less severe and less frequent, but i'm still having too many! i'm not a fan of bursting into tears on a regular basis. i did this last year, and it sucked, and then i thought it was over. but no, apparently not. fall appears to be ungood.
- only mildly bad: racecar-building boy is moving to the east coast in a month! boo! this isn't really that bad, given that we've only hung out a few times, and it's not like i'm attached, but it's a little sad! he's a nice guy, there was some potential there. ah, well.
- the car is shaking again. blarg. taking it in tomorrow morning, i'm afraid this is going to be expensive.

the good:
- therapy is going well! tremor boy showed up again, and while i still don't know what to do with him, i'm glad he hasn't dropped out. skin picker is doing ok in terms of progress, and really well in terms of how he feels about therapy. i know that's not a good outcome measure, but at the same time, when he comes in feeling discouraged and leaves feeling hopeful, i'm pleased.
- despite the busyness, i see friends quite frequently, which is so great! weekly sushi outings, weekly dinners at koa_'s house, usually some sort of saturday thing...all those add up, in a good way. need4endorphins randomly ended up coming over for an hour last week, coolhandamanda and i even managed to talk on the phone. so that all makes me happy. it's good to know i have people to be with.
- despite how stressed i get sometimes about money, i'm not actually doing badly at this point. i just have to remind myself of this when i stress about things like the car.
- T, M, and i went on an adventure on sunday to look for hot springs! we found one eventually, after about 5 hours of driving and not finding several. driving for 5 hours for what was essentially a soak in the hot tub was a little odd, but we had a fun time. we even saw (and nearly ran over) a javelina!
- i'm visiting cin in san diego in 2 weeks! i think i've mentioned this before, but it continues to be exciting!
- i have a whole bunch of new books! so happy! i love having a to-read list!

the random:
- the cats continue to be neurotic, especially cactus. he has developed a habit of meowing outside my bedroom door while i'm in the living room, suddenly realizing i'm actually in the living room, running over to me, and then struggling to get away and purring at the same time when i grab him and pet him. i don't get it.
- i'm doing several sleep lab overnights in the coming weeks. this is good because of money, but bad because of sleep schedule shifts.
- i think i have a date this weekend, but i'm not totally sure. i'm not sure it's a date as such, and i'm not sure when it's happening, given schedules. heh.
- the foundation my fellowship is from is having a reception next week. this is odd, because it hasn't had any events at all last year, so i have no idea what to expect. still, free food sounds appealing.
- i'm going to the gym twice a week. i can't decide how i feel about this. on the one hand, i know it's a good thing for my health. on the other hand, it's so hard to keep motivating myself, especially since i don't seem to be losing any weight.
- i keep having strange, vivid dreams. they aren't bad dreams, and even the ones that are negative don't seem to come with much emotional content, so i don't wake up distressed. still, they've been highly odd and very, very vivid. this is especially weird for me -- i tend to dream in text rather than images, but these have all been visual.

ok, i think that's all for now. :)

Comments

[grimhild.livejournal.com]

Hey. I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother, with how sealed it seems to be and all. If she's refusing chemo or radiation, she must be at least empowered in terms of how her path goes. From your perspective, how does she seem to be taking it?

Silly racecar boy, zooming out of your life! Best of luck on the potential date this weekend, though.

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the grandma stuff is pretty gloomy. She's making her own treatment decisions, though, which is good. Like you said, she's pretty empowered with that. She's taking it...as well as can be expected. She's stopped threatening to kill herself, which is progress, and she sounds more like herself when I talk to her on the phone. I'm not sure how she is overall, but she's able to pull herself together to talk, which is more than she was able to do before. She's also looking for alternative treatments, which is making her feel better, though I personally am skeptical.

Silly racecar boy, yes! We'll see how this weekend goes, though. This guy is one of the nicest people I've ever met, which is a good start. :)

[linley.livejournal.com]

Z's cat also does the struggling while purring thing.

Are you still seeing a personal trainer? If so, could you ask him/her to up the intensity of your workouts? Your schedule sounds crazy, but if you could add another workout each week, it could be good in terms of both losing weight and helping you manage the stress. Could you read on a stationary bike?

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

I remember you told me about Z's cat doing that! Mine never did before, I don't know what's causing it now. It's very silly!

I'm still seeing the trainer, yes. I'm not sure I'd be motivated enough to go if I wasn't seeing her. I can't afford to see her more than twice a week, though, but you're right, adding another workout on my own might be helpful. I hate stationary bikes, but I can probably read on an eliptical. The other issue is that I've been more asthmatic than normal in the past few weeks, so upping the intensity of the current workouts isn't a good option. I'm already using my albuterol several times a week. I should force myself to work out more often, even if it's lower intensity, but the motivation just isn't there. Somehow, all the therapy techniques I use on others work less well on myself. :)

[linley.livejournal.com]

Do any of your friends go to the gym, or would they be interested in starting? I am more likely to show up for yoga if I know that stellae is planning to be there, even though we don't talk to each other during class or anything.

I've read on an elliptical before. It's doable, but annoys me after a while.

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, that's a thought. None of my friends go to the gym, but several have expressed vague interest. Maybe I can poke them and make them go!

[coolhandamanda.livejournal.com]

I would consider going to the gym, since my knees + laziness are making running not really happen for me lately. I don't really love working out indoors, but if I had a buddy that would probably make me do it!

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

Ooh, we should plan to do that sometime! I think this week is probably not good, given your defense and such, but maybe next week?

[coolhandamanda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, totally! You go to the UA rec center, right?

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

yep, it's a little crowded during the week, but it's free!

[owens888.livejournal.com]

From what I've read, exercise doesn't help with weight loss unless you're also eating less. I mean, a few extra bites of food here and there will easy negate the effects of a workout. It's good to exercise just to be more fit, but that's a different goal.

[linley.livejournal.com]

Of course weight loss depends on consuming fewer calories than you use. That's part of the motivation to exercise--to increase the number of calories you use. If exercise makes you hungrier and you eat more to compensate, then no, you're not going to lose any weight.

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

Random: there's actually some research that shows that exercise might speed up your metabolism, so it may be helpful in weight loss even if you do eat more, as long as it's not too much more. I don't know how supported this is, just something I read.

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

That's true, but it's equally true that eating less generally doesn't help very much on its own. The combination of the two things (more activity, less calories) is what does it. So yeah, the overall goal is to be more fit, but exercise has to be part of any weight loss strategy, generally.

[owens888.livejournal.com]

I've had great success with just eating less. Although, that is generally much less.

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

That makes sense in terms of the overall calorie difference between consuming and using, yeah. I'm pretty sure I'd be fairly unhappy if I had to eat enough less, though, to lose weight without exercise.

[willworker.livejournal.com]

"we sit around and let the rest of the cancer kill her?"

Hell no-- you have fun and enjoy the rest of the time she's got. The whole point of not doing chemo/rad is to be as happy and feeling-well as you possibly can be for as long as you can.

Steve

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

This is much easier to say than to do, especially given that I'm here, in Tucson, and she's not.

The whole point of not doing chemo/rad is to be as happy and feeling-well as you possibly can be for as long as you can.

Um. Not exactly. The whole point of not doing chemo or radiation is to be less miserable and un-tortured. I'm not sure either happy or feeling-well are actual options here, especially feeling-well. It's a nice optimistic view, but not reality.

[willworker.livejournal.com]

I would argue that "Happy and feeling-well" vs. "miserable un-tortured" are just the optimist and pessimist viewpoints of the same thing. I have seen people go on to hospice care and be quite content and enjoy the time they have left (until generally the very end, month or so, where happiness becomes ample access to morphine), although I've also seen people going on hospice be miserable for the rest of their life. I find that those outcomes are strongly tied to perspective going in-- if you look at hospice as trying to maximize the quality of the time you have, you're generally happier than if you look at it as a consolation for giving up.

Steve

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree, since I'm not really up for arguing about this at the moment.

[owens888.livejournal.com]

It sounds like her grandmother's options here are, "Die sooner" and "Die later and be really miserable in the meantime, and also run the risk that the intervention is going to kill or not be effective." (The "not be effective" point seems to me to be important here- my understanding of ovarian cancer is that the prognosis is generally poor, even with optimal treatment, and this sounds like advanced disease.) Neither option is great, and there's no point in expecting or insisting that someone take the news well.

[willworker.livejournal.com]

I do not insist anyone take it well; I merely want to point out that attitude counts, and where possible, a positive attitude beats a negative attitude.

Steve

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

"Hell no-- you have fun and enjoy the rest of the time she's got."

Maybe this isn't how you meant to come across, but this very much sounds like insisting to me. I'm a therapist, I know all the stuff about attitude. It doesn't help much to tell me how to feel, though.

(edited to insert a missing "a" because it was bugging me)

[owens888.livejournal.com]

So, from my limited knowledge of her family, it doesn't sound like her grandmother has ever been a generally up-beat, perennially-positive-attitude type person. If her grandmother did react that way, the sudden personality change would itself be quite worrying.

Also, pointing out that someone's attitude is negative rarely improves it.

[dancingyel.livejournal.com]

Right, exactly. It's not actually ovarian cancer, it's a metastases of the colon cancer she had last year, but that's almost as bad -- since it's stage IV, and a recurrence, the prognosis is not good. Grandma's actually doing reasonably well, all things considered, but there just isn't much room for optimism.