Yesterday I defied doctor’s orders, rose up from my couch, and went out into the world! I attended the Mental Health Symposium, which was a one-day conference held at the Coliseum Cinemas. It was co-sponsored by the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the University of Ottawa Department of Psychiatry, and the University of Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research.
I’m going to blog about the conference later on, but for now I just want to touch on a couple of peripheral matters.
When I got home from the conference, I checked for mail and found a package of four boxes of Smarties tucked between my front doors! I don’t know who left them, but the note said “From friends who are concerned that a lack of Smarties may lengthen your recovery time. xo.” Hmm. A tasty mystery! (Thank you, mysterious and anonymous friends with the pretty but unfamiliar handwriting…)
I immediately devoured a box of Smarties and curled up on the couch, under the Zoom blanket, with Duncan, and fell into a deep sleep for hours. I was exhausted from all that listening and sitting and concentrating at the conference. I had taken 29 pages of notes, mostly in darkened movie theatres, and maybe that’s what did me in. Or maybe it was because this was the first day in months that I’d spent away from home.
I’m feeling pretty well rested this morning, and I’m just about ready to head off to the Civic Hospital for my very first radiation treatment. I woke up around four o’clock in the morning and started wondering about radiation. How does something that can potentially cause cancer, prevent cancer? (You can only have one course of radiation in your lifetime because too much radiation can cause cancer.)
This is something I probably should have worried about before four o’clock on the morning of my first radiation treatment, but alas, I never got around to it. At any rate, since there wasn’t much I could do about it in the middle of the night, I woke GC up to talk about our novels.
GC has joined me in signing up for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo). Neither one of us know anything about the novels we’ll be writing next month. We haven’t chosen our genres, thought up any plots, developed any characters or decided between first and third person. We are clueless. My first sentence is “Once upon a time there was a dark and stormy knight.” Or maybe not.
Can I persuade any of you to do Nanowrimo with us this year? You just have to crank out the first draft of a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. If you do sign up, I’m registered under the name of zoom – search me out and we can be Writing Buddies.
I might join you in this insane novel endevour. It will depend on what happens at work in the next week or two, but it sounds like fun. Also, you are a bad, bad girl for defying the doctor’s orders. Don’t come crying to us when your spine snaps in half from sitting on it too much!!!
I am signing up to do the NANOWRIMO. I am excited. I have doen no prep work either but at least it will be a challenge. I tried last year and then work got crazy. I am amlahe616 over there.
I’ve been doing NaNo since 2001, so I’m in. I’m “Dances-with-Dustbunnies” over there (I ‘buddied’ you, so I’m who that stranger is.)
Glad to hear you survived the day.
I look forward to seeing your impressions of the workshops.
Hope all goes well with radiation.
Perhaps you and GC could do novels from Duncan’s and Logan’s perspectives on relationship building.
I think I might try this too … hope the radiation session went well.
I am have been sorely tempted to do nano for a few years no…but writing everyday for a living kinda sucks the desire to do it at home right out of you… but maybe this year….
I’m thinking about NaNoWriMo too. It’d get me off my ass. Or facebook. Close enough.
I’ve been wondering lately why people with cancer have to fight it, and talk about being survivors, as if they’ve won – when so often they’ve only gained remission, and life expectancy is still rather short.
Oh my! Zoom! I love your blog and I might even love you if I knew you in person! I don’t mean to get at your predicament in the comments of your blog. But there are all the cancer walks, and the ribbons, and the publicity that the disease gets, that so many other diseases don’t. I’ve been wondering about it lately.
And then I decided, that the treatment is so remarkable, with the chemotherapy and/or radiation. They practically kill you, trying to save your life. And that’s when I decided that fighting the treatment in order to survive it is a pretty good trick, after all.
So good luck with the radiation, and please fight it, so you can survive. Yes.
ALright.. I caved… I joined.. and added you as a buddy.. I’m Oonaberu
I’m so happy that so many of us are doing Nanowrimo this year! Is there anything I can do to persuade the Undecided among you to go for it?
Pamela, thanks for visiting and for commenting. Shortly after I got diagnosed I decided the language of battle was not for me. I wrote a post about it called Warts, War, and the Language of Cancer. My focus is on getting healthy, not on winning a war. Please read it, and let me know what you think!
I think I’m going to give this a shot. I’m a terrible writer, but think that something like this might do be some good.
Count me in too.
Yes, Zoom, I like your thinking much better. It’s a subtle difference, but focusing on health is better than fighting against something you don’t actually have a lot of control over.
Male-oriented words dominate so much of life, as do men, for that matter. Can’t really fight against that, either. Or if you do you just get grumpy. Grin. I’d rather try to enjoy what I have.
[…] for the tip zoom! Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)National Semiconductor to post a profit for […]