Keep sending those negative thoughts

My life is an open blog. Sort of. Anyone who knows me well can tell you the image I project in this space is gilded. Mostly unwittingly, I cast myself in a certain light, wanting to be thought well of. Or just thought of, period. No surprise there; it’s what most of us do every minute of every day. We disguise or overlook our shortcomings and play up our strengths. We fear that if people knew the real us, they’d run the other way—or click to another blog.

I’ve noticed a difference between what I’ve written on The Ogler and what appears in my personal journal. The fact that my journal doesn’t have a clever name says something in itself. It has an appreciative audience of one, so doesn’t need any marketing help. Be glad you don’t have access to my innermost thoughts. They are not self-edited. What you get here is public writing—mostly information and opinion, but less of me than you might imagine. On the upside, you don’t have to suffer the grammatical and spelling errors my random notes contain. And I promise not to post any revealing photos of myself.

Health update: It’s now been 18 days since my last shot, and the effects of the interferon have mostly worn off. I feel great—no fatigue and I’m back to thinking (mostly) clearly. It’s almost too sudden of a transition in that I want to make up for lost time and do too much. Wine tastes way too good. For eight months I was recovering from surgery, receiving radiation and/or taking interferon. That was my life. Now it’s not. So how do I live the rest of my life? I’ll let you know when I figure that out.

I have an appointment with my radiation oncologist in a couple of weeks to see if anything can be done about my “thunder thigh.” It’s a couple of inches in circumference bigger than the right thigh. I have radiation fibrosis and lymphedema to thank for this. I’m not quite dragging the leg around behind me, but it is awkward and weak. I continue to run, which may help to keep the swelling down. Or perhaps it makes it worse. Who knows? Any lymphedema experts out there?

My next CT scan will be in about five weeks. Negative is positive when it comes to diagnostic tests like this. So keep sending me those negative thoughts.