July 27, 2002

I have a thing about pens. I am still faintly grieving for my pen that the clerk at Office Depot gave me when I told him what a wonderful pen it was. I kept it for nearly 2 months before it got walked away with or left somewhere, but damn I liked that pen! I've been looking for a replacement since the beginning of May. I tried a Pentel, went back to the American Airlines ballpoint that I got at the last WWTS bash. I have a pen that S gave me when she left WWTS, it's made out of stone. At home it seems worst. Every time I pick up a pen to write something down, I get scratchy empty spots that mock me with their lack of ink. It doesn't matter which pen it is, the paper refuses to be marked. Note pads, notebooks, and reams of typing paper—it's all blowing me metaphorical raspberries.

But. I got a new pen at the store today. Silver and black with a fat barrel and promises of smooth flowing ink that’s acid free (don't ask me, I don't know why); the Next Generation of gel ink. It's the little things that you have to look forward to.

Boy Unit is in a state of Flux. One day he is moving here. The next he has a job. The next the water pipes break in the house, then four days later, and he's back to moving to AR again. I am in a quandary about this. I need to go to Texas and take care of things, sell the house, have a garage/moving sale, pack up the little that is left and get him up here with me.

And I shouldn't. He needs advice on how to accomplish some of this on his own, and I am stuck in a purgatory of uncertain schedules regarding my treatments. I can't pick up anything more than 20lbs, and the best I can do is to direct things. Maybe I can direct things from here. I don't know. It's just breaking my heart.

So, again the white blood count dropped in a week to point too low to do chemo (2.77). Last week it was fine and this week mysteriously it plummeted to 'no-go'. The insurance company also decided that they weren't going to pay for the Neupegen and Neulasta any longer, so I REALLY have to just wait until the little guys start growing on their own again. The oncologist thinks this will be okay, as the CA125 after surgery had dropped to 33 (nearly cancer free), and I've had 2 chemos since. These last 2 are on the terms my body is setting. I also think I have been given a reprieve—I may not have to have any radiation at all. I was so NOT looking forward to that.

The last 20 days has been very difficult. I have been horribly depressed, to the point where I left the house to go to work, and that was it. Then I get mad at myself, because if I look at the big picture, I have absolutely no reason to be depressed. I took the tact that maybe this was midlife crises, and then the really awful realization that this might be an end of life crisis! Because really. It looks great now, but I have every day and every week to get through the 5 year benchmark, then 10—I'll *never* be free of this cloud hanging over my head. I was driving home from the store today and I had another little epiphany. This is the downhill coast. It's never going to go uphill again, no matter what.

The depression is making it difficult in other areas. Or maybe those other areas are making it difficult to write. I dunno, but I returned the research material to the library a week early and put all the notes in a drawer. It's just not going to happen. I'm in too much of a vacuum, isolated. I had been learning a new computer program, and in the middle of trying to make some thing of it, I suddenly realized that I simply had no talent for it at all. Sheesh. It's just difficult to get enthusiastic over much of anything.