It's 232 pm and I've been asleep most of the day. My mother dropped by around lunch time and brought an apple cake from the CWA shop where she volunteers one day a week. It was nice to see her, but I'm still very tired, despite all the sleep.
I was on facebook for a little while after she left, but my phone battery went flat, and I can't access Facebook from this laptop because it seems I changed the password and I can't remember it.
However, I need to process something here, because I saw a picture of the Dalai Lama on Facebook which quoted him as saying that we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. This quotation made me cry immediately. I don't think I love myself, I doubt that I ever have loved myself very much at all, but I know that I love many other people, including family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and even people I had met briefly through daily activities and travel, or just sitting down with them to talk during travel or eating or dining. I've loved many things about my life, experience, and the other people I have met, and I feel devastated that the Dalai Lama's words suggest that I can't love others unless I love myself.
I remember that there was a strong prohibition against self-love during my childhood and adolescence in the 1970s and 1980s. Telling someone they loved themself was a massive insult, and to accuse someone of being conceited, or "up themselves" was also an insult. The Melbourne band Skyhooks wrote a hit song that went something like this: "Ego, is not a dirty word.... Don't you believe what you've seen or you've heard." I've just looked at the lyrics online and discovered that they recommend keeping one's ego in a healthy state, but that's not the message I learnt when I was growing up. Being conceited or egotistical was seen as socially abhorrent behaviour, as was putting one's own needs above those of others.
I don't know where to go with these feelings and insights into myself right now. I've had a good cry about the realisation that I don't love myself, and while I don't think I hate myself either, I don't feel particularly good about myself or my achievements, whatever they have been. I'm feeling like a bit of a failure at the moment; unable to achieve things that I'd like to get done because I'm so darned tired, and unable to pay the bills and sort all the paperwork on the dining room table because I'm too tired and it gives me a headache and makes me feel distracted to try to do it. Cancelling my credit card number a couple of weeks ago because of unauthorised in-app purchases by one of the children has led to a number of unpaid bills and direct debit arrangements, but I don't want to try to fix it now. I just want to sleep, take myself mentally to a beautiful tropical location, and wake up feeling refreshed and invigorated, and feeling like I'm capable of successfully completing the tasks that have I've been unable to do in the past two years due to fatigue and distractibility.
I still love my family and friends, but I feel like I'm letting them down by not being able to do things.
Sleep is the only viable option that I can imagine at the moment.
A blog started in 2013 to inform family and friends about my treatment and progress for early breast cancer. Then I went and got two brain tumours,,both GBMs, completely unrelated to the breast cancer, so the blog continues.
Background and overview
I learnt more about the health system from being an inpatient than I had in 20 years of working as a neuropsychologist. I was unexpectedly diagnosed with two brain tumours on 4/9/13. They turned out to be grade IV Gliomas (glioblastoma multiforme (GBM)). After removal of the right parietal and left occipital tumours, I received the standard treatment under the Stupp protocol (combined Temozolamide (TMZ) and conformal radiotherapy 5 days/week for 6 weeks), but the TMZ had to be ceased after 5 weeks because I had started to develop pancytopenia, where more than one of my blood counts had begun to drop. By Christmas 2013, I had become anaemic and needed a couple of blood transfusions. I ended up in hospital for 3 weeks of the 2014 new year after experiencing my first seizure (suggestive of a right temporal lobe focus) on 31/12/13). They were so worried about my bone marrow, they did a biopsy. Luckily, it was all clear of any nasty disorders. It had just been suppressed by the TMZ My blood counts slowly returned to normal with daily injections of GCSF, which stimulate bone marrow function, for several months. For 17 months I was doing better each day, without any physical impairments or major cognitive problems A third brain tumour was found in the right temporal lobe on 2/1/15, and removed 6/1/15, only to reappear on 17/2/15 after I started to feel vague symptoms at the end of 2014. I had my 4th round of brain surgery on 1/3/15, followed by stereotaxic radio surgery of a residual, inoperable, tumour, on 17/4/15. I've been feeling like my old self again since that highly precise form of radiotherapy, and it feels fabulous.
My way of coping.
I choose to live in hope that everything will work out for the best. I've learnt that even though things are sometimes unpleasant, life and love go on forever. I put my faith in the life force that created and unites us all in love, across all time, space, and dimensions. I refuse to succumb to fear, which is an invention of our imaginations. There are an infinite number of things to fear, both in this world an in our imaginations, and most of them never eventuate. I choose not to dwell on them, and to focus instead on counting my many blessings, current and past, and to have faith and hope that if I look after the present moment, the future will look after itself.
If you're reading, and haven't been in touch, please don't be shy, send me a brief private message using the contact form on the right. It's nice to know who's out there. Blogging can leave me feeling a little isolated at times (I used to have recurrent dreams of being out on a limb over a canyon, or of starting to strip off in a crowded waiting room). Your emails are appreciated, although I can't necessarily answer all of them.
