moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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(and my Wish List)

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Testing times  
Big day yesterday. The night before I went to stay at some friends', who live only a 20 or 30-minute walk from the hospital, instead of an or or so by a couple of buses from where I'm staying now. So we talked & so forth in the evening to keep me from worrying too much, made sure I had a good dinner, then didn't eat after when I had to start my fast, and they made sure I woke up in time.

The first appointment was for 8:30 in the morning, with the last to start about 2:00 in the afternoon, and a series between back and forth in the medical centre for pathology and X-rays and nuclear scans, blah, blah, blah. As usual my veins were unco-operative and tricky to work with, so my hands and arms ended up patched all over with cotton wool and tape or bandaids. That's one of the most offputting and difficult things, just relaxing and holding still while someone is probing around inside you with a needle trying to thread it into a vessel, or even find one. But they weren't too bad at it, even around the site of the biopsy (he took four cores, I think) isn't much bruised.

The scans and X-rays are easier, and can be almost relaxing (except for mammograms, which are awkward and uncomfortable, but bearable). You are often laid down, they give you supports if you need to be on your side, and the machines move over you, or move the table you're on into or through the detectors. For some reason, the light levels are often fairly low too. It might be more difficult if you are feeling sick or in pain, but I'm not feeling too bad at the moment. I've been practicing some kinds of simple meditation and/or visualization for these situations. And I was better prepared for some of the possible effects of the chemicals, which caused a disaster on my way home a couple of years back from the last CT scan.

Might write a bit more about things later, but I'm still feeling a touch poorly.

Will not know much more until after the next consultation with the surgeon next week.

Something to chew on: The Median Isn't the Message, by Stephen Jay Gould
www.cancerguide.org/median_not_msg.html
[permalink] posted by Mez at 9:29 pm