Feeling Emotional

I took this picture back in August.  I call
it "Nerd Girl."  I thought it was kind of
a fun one to create.  I re-discovered it
today as I was going through images.

There were several from the "me" prior
to my treatment.  As much "fun" as the
wigs can be, they are not my hair.  I
don't even know what my hair is now.

When I came up with a name for this
blog I chose "a new me" because I knew
that I would in no way be the same person

- and no longer was the same person - as I was prior to my diagnosis.
In all practicality, I am never the same person from moment to moment.
But it is not something that I usually pay attention to.  Besides which,
there seemed to be some continuity to who I was in the images that I
saw.

As I think about my treatment process, it seems to be very much a
thing that I do.  I go, I talk to people, I get assessed, and I get treated.
It is in some ways no different than getting any other service.  But
at the same time, there is a difference.  When I go home, I am at the
effect of the service.  I feel things.  I notice things.  I process things.

The service may be left behind, but the effects are not.  Not only that,
but there is an emotional toll that is paid.  Most things in life are "just"
things.  We do them, and they're done, unless we choose to revisit
them in our memories and conversations.  I suppose the same COULD
be said of my treatments, but somehow it feels more like steps in a
transition than a piece of history.

I feel like this time, this year, is changing me and affecting me more
than anything else in my life ever has, and there have been some really
tough times that I have had.  And it is leaving its mark on me physically
in a way that other things never touched, at least not in as obvious of
a way.

Being a visual person, it is harder to miss something that is unseen.
I can't miss what is going on with me now.  The changes face me in
the mirror every day.  Although I have to say, I think I am looking in
the mirror less than I did before.

I am not sure what that means.

It could mean I am finding things within.  It could mean I am avoiding
things without.  I really don't know.  Maybe it is both.  Maybe it means
nothing.  Maybe it is just something I noticed.

When I was getting acupuncture the other day I mentioned to the
acupuncturist that I have discovered how difficult it is to do things
that are left brained, and how easy it seems to be to do things that are
right brained.  I also mentioned how difficult that was in a world that
mostly functions in the left brain.

He told me that he noticed that many people who are going through
chemotherapy seem to function and deal with their experience mainly
from their right brain.  He thought it was interesting how I was able
to discern that.  I wasn't too surprised that it would seem to go that
way, as the chemo doesn't leave too much room for thinking and the
world of the left brain.

Someone wrote me recently and said they were amazed by how I
was able to write the things that I do here, given how the chemo does
affect the thinking process.  Well the secret to what is written is that
I do NOT think.  I just type, and whatever comes out, comes out.

The times that I actually try to think, or try to formulate things in
some coherent, logical way I get challenged.  Those times I either
have said my head hurts and you have seen my attempts, or you
never see what I started to write because I just couldn't seem to get
it out in a way that I felt was coherent.

It just so happens that most of who I have been in life is someone
who is more right brained than left.  So in some ways this situation
does suit me.  At the same time, I find myself troubled by the fact
that sooner or later I am going to have to go back and function in
the world that prefers the left.

And that is just not right. :P