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Weekly Update - Thrown Off, Not Dead Yet

2 years ago1,098 words

Another excuse post! Ugh!

I wasn't sure whether to bother writing anything at all since I've not achieved anything again this week, but if you fall out of a habit, it can be very difficult to get back into it again, so I'm trying to at least write something!

Though I've not done anything hugely productive in, what, like three weeks? A month? Something like that?

Mostly it was because I had the brain stuff hanging over me. It used to be that I'd have the MRI scans, then I'd speak to the doctor like half an hour later, before leaving the hospital! It's been getting longer and longer, though, and this time I had to wait like three weeks.

This week was thankfully the last, but I got a call from the hospital on Monday telling me my appointment had been moved a day sooner (from Friday to Thursday). The higher-minded part of me understood it was probably just some admin thing, shuffling around appointments because the doctor was taking a day off or something like that, but the fear demon lurking beneath the surface (or whatever) used it as fuel to keep me anxious all week - "it must mean there's bad news and the doctor moved the appointment to the earliest slot available, and you're going to be told the cancer's back and can't be treated and you'll be dead before the year's end!" - to the point where I could barely concentrate on anything.

Especially since it manifested as the 'head pressure' sensation almost constantly which acted as 'proof!' for how the cancer really had returned and my death was iminent.

I try to do at least something productive every day, even if it's just on some personal project nobody else will ever see, for the sake of honing my skills; I rarely play games - despite making my own - because I'm too busy making things.

But for the last week or two I've spent most of my waking time just playing Horizon Zero Dawn. Which I find... enjoyable enough, I suppose; I like it probably about as much as depression will allow me to like anything these days. But it's also the sort of game I can spend all day playing but at the end of it I don't feel like I've really got anywhere or achieved very much.

I've had a lot of thoughts about it that I'd like to write out, but... eh, I wouldn't expect anyone to care, and I can't be bothered currently, so maybe some other time if I want to 'productively procrastinate' or something.

I don't think I've just sat around playing games like that in years. It's not something I want to get into as a regular habit, really.

I finally got a call from the doctor on Thursday (at like 4pm, after wainting in tense anticipation since waking up at 5am-ish). And shockingly, my scans were fine, and I'm not going to die after all. Just like every time I go through this whole process.

I haven't felt the head pressure since then, and most of the tension dissolved from my body, too. I decided to spend Friday just relaxing, and I actually did feel relaxed for the first time in weeks, because I could finally believe I was safe from a return of the cancer rather than just rationally thinking it. There's a huge difference between the two!

There was also a sense of embarrassment, though; that the anxiety got to me to the degree it did, that I was such a fool for even entertaining the thought that the brain cancer would be back again when it obviously wouldn't be.

But I suppose it's essentially PTSD, and much as a shell-shocked veteran would break down at the sound of fireworks, having to go and have another MRI - and then being left to wait in uncertainty for weeks afterwards - brought back all the feelings I had back when the cancer was fresher, when it was being actively treated, and the thoughts of either death or serious impairment were far more realistic possibilities. A relatively innocuous event reactivated a dormant but previously-all-encompassing schema. Something like that?

Anyway. The time to the next scan was extended again - compounding the relief - and my next one will be a year from now. Good.

With that out of the way, I decided to just spend the weekend relaxing in preparation for getting back to... whatever I even need or had decided to do on Monday, tomorrow (I'll need to look back over some notes to refresh my memory).

...Then on Saturday morning, some person I have strong anxiety feelings about showed up at this house to spend time with my parents. And stayed the night.

I hid from them, like the mentally ill embarrassment I'm well aware I am, but just their presence in the house put me in a new state of tension, and I couldn't relax until they left.

Which makes me wonder, would someone without my mental illness keep out of the way if someone like, say, an ex (with whom the bond was severed painfully and they visited together with their new partner), or an abuser, or a 'toxic' friend-of-a-friend or distant relative came over to see someone else who lived in their building but not them? Or would they just feel fine and go about their business with no impairment to their ability to focus? I know my own avoidance issues are (very obviously) bizarre and maladjusted, but I wonder whether even relatively 'normal' people have at least some sense of what this experience is like.

But I don't know. I suppose I'm just embarrassed about it. That person's gone now, anyway. Another relief. But so frustrating that I lost the whole weekend to it. I had a list of things I wanted to do.

Next week, among other things I need to do, I should really get around to contacting the counselling service. I'd love to start moving towards the point where I can finally move out.

(Though while thinking "I hate this and need to move out" yesterday, I googled stuff and came across ∞ this article ∞ which talks about how a whole bunch of people around my age are living at home either due to necessity due to housing costs, or due to personal choice because they feel more comfortable at home than in some grotty little flat surrounded by loud and potentially dangerous strangers. Hmm.)