Wednesday, August 20, 2008

my little d has the big C

aaaaaaaaaand now my dog has a malignant mast cell tumor. Awesome. It's kind of on his back left side above his leg towards his butt. Sunday, I thought it was a cut. Then he wouldn't leave it alone, so I stuck the collar thing on him. It scabbed up but it still looked weird, so I brought him to the vet. And it's cancer. Awesome. Probably low-grade and as not-a-big-deal as possible when it comes to a cancerous tumor, but no one wants cancer, even the least bad form of cancer, and I love my dog very very very very very much and it's clearly bugging him and I just want to hold him and snuggle him all the time (since I found out like 5 hours ago).

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

More Migraine Life Philosophy Crap

Originally written as a response to another person's blog post about dealing with chronic sinus issues:

For as far as we've come in medicine, there's still SO MUCH we don't know. There's this expectation that we can somehow find the "answer" and fix whatever is wrong. And sometimes we can. And maybe that "cure" is out there and if we make the right choices, we'll feel better. And maybe it's not. And even if it is, there's no way to know if we've made the "right" choices or if we ever can. And that's frustrating as hell, especially when you feel like crap for the whateverith day in a row and it's hard enough to function with the constant distraction of pain and ickyness but now you have this extra job of figuring out how to make yourself NOT feel like crap. OR do you just learn to live and love and accept your pain? Know that it is part of you and that you may never find that golden panacea and instead spend that last little burst of energy on coping methods and enjoying the good functional pieces of your life?

There are no answers. I have to decide for myself every day what's most important and what's doable. Some days the decision is very conscious and struggly. Some days I don't even think about it, but I'm still making these choices. It's a strange, strange little world of serious chronic pain that creeps in and becomes a part of your life.

 

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