Partly Cloudy!

How can you tell if things are looking up if you're not supposed to be looking?  I think that's a paradox, or a dilemma, or something like that.  Having been given (and taken) the great advice that not paying too much attention to the depression is the first step towards it not ruling my life, how do I know when it's lifting?  Is it "getting better" on its own?  Or is it the very small (but nightly) dose of an anti-depressant medication?  Is it my one (not miraculous but hopeful) visit to the woman who I think will be my therapist for a while?  I don't know and don't care.  But I do know that I'm hungry and eating.  And I'm laughing at bad summer sitcoms.  And I'm having real sessions of industriousness. And the last time I cried was..................

on Thursday night around 7:30 when my oncologist Dr. Ligresti called me to say that I will not need chemotherapy.  So I think they were tears of happiness and/or relief, but whatever;  it was emotion, and I really hadn't felt anything in a while.  She told me to come in to see her in 2 - 3 weeks to get going with the Tamoxifen because one of the side effects is (yep), depression, and she doesn't want me to start until I feel better.

I really did think I had myself geared up to do whatever treatment she felt necessary and I would be okay with it, but I guess my reaction told me otherwise. 

Even before she called, though, I was getting ready to move up my next appointment with Dr. D'Amico to earlier than the end of the month. I feel like I've got to get going with the de-construction and subsequent reconstruction of Louie.  He's a pain in my side, almost literally.  The more he sits there, like a rock sitting on (sometimes digging into) my ribs, the more constantly I'm reminded that I've got equipment not installed in the factory, so to speak.  Ralph I occasionally forget about, and to have times when I don't think about either of them would be the best mental health boost of all.

In the meantime, I've also been trying to figure out why I have resisted visits from so many of you - the wonderful, the amazing, the cheering section extraordinaire.  It's not that I didn't think you could "cheer me up" and it's not that I'm afraid to have people see me.  And it's certainly not that I don't want you to notice that the house is messy.  After all, if you were a friend before all this, you probably already knew about (and in many cases have personally witnessed) my lack of housekeeping skills.  Whether it's a watered-down inheritance of my mother's insistence on privacy (which is really ironic considering the blog) or whether it's my own personal grasp at control in a situation where I have none,  or whether it's something else entirely, I have no idea.

It may be this way until after my final surgery, or it may be less of an issue once Ari gets back into the swing of high school unscathed, Alex, ditto with college, and religious school  (and the whole synagogue season) gets into its regular rhythm.  There's always some level of anxiety and apprehension about that stuff at the end of the summer.

Whatever it is, I'm (paradoxically) working my way out of my little fog by not working too hard at it.  But, in the same way you never really trust the weatherman (or even weather.com) until you see for yourself what it's like outside I need to just "do" and see what happens.  Meanwhile, my partly cloudy is quite an improvement over the leaden skies of less than a month ago.

(Today's weather here in northern NJ was stunning, wasn't it?)