I Hate It When I'm Stupid

I'm having a hard time with the fact that at least one of my tumors has gotten bigger. I have to say, despite what my PA said, it's pretty hard not to worry about such a thing. I can talk a good game about acceptance and all that, but when a flare like "growing tumor" goes up it's hard not to panic -- at least a little bit.

That said, I think my bigger frustration is that I succumbed to one of my biggest pet peeves: people who believe that the way things are is the way they will always be. Granted, the ability to look at the world and decide, for better or worse, that things will never change seems a basic human skill, You don't have to look too hard to find examples of people who were either a) operating from the belief that things would never change, or b) incredibly short-sighted.* But by the same token, there are so many such stories you would think people would figure out that change is inevitable and the likelihood that they will be an exception to that rule is pretty much nonexistent.

And yet here I am. I'd gotten used to the fact that I had cancer, and that the condition meant annoyances like neuropathy and fatigue and taking handfuls of pills each day, and truthfully, I assumed that that condition would hold for the foreseeable future. 

In short, I believed that they way things are is they way they would always be. 

Oops. 

But I guess in some ways that's a good thing. I still don't know what the current size of my tumor means -- I get scanned on September 14 and see my oncologist the day after, so I shouldn't have too long to wait for some answers -- but it was useful to be reminded that things will inevitably change, probably sooner than I'd prefer. This suggested that I need to be shifting toward some shorter term planning. It's all well and good to make long term plans, but at some point I'm not going to have much of a long term. 

Thus, if there's something that I need or want to get done, now's the time to do it.

So, naturally, after two years of mostly ignoring it, I spent this weekend moving my bathtub around so I could paint behind it and make it drain properly. (For the record, Sib2 helped.) I will be very unhappy if I become housebound in a condominium plagued with half-completed projects. 

It's a genetic thing. All of the sibs have stories of spending time in their last hours with Mum straightening pictures and adjusting her nick-nacks so that everything was just the way she wanted it. I don't mind crooked pictures (much), but I'd hate to depart the world from a half-painted room. 

* Need help getting started? Try Googling "professional athlete bankruptcy"...