My last scheduled infusion is in a few hours. It is after midnight and I am awake again. I don't know if it is the chemo or my state of mind that keeps me on this odd cycle of sleeping and waking. I know that the cumulative effect of the chemicals used in the chemotherapy can have some strange effects on the body and mind. But then so can a brush with death. I am awake and nervously anticipating the last session with my oncologist before the CT scan. That scan can literally change my life. I am hoping for a reduced size of the mass that haunts my every waking moment. The ultimate good news is that it is gone and they can't find it, no forwarding address, stuff like that. Reality will be less dramatic though I am sure.

I also find that I am constantly melancholy. That too may be a result of 'chemo brain' as we call it. Chemo brain is a condition of slightly off focus and forgetful, distracted and just ever so slightly detached from the world. I have gone into full scale withdrawal from the world outside my door with it or because of chemo brain. My friends don't call for fear of waking me or disturbing me. They have gone on with their lives for these last several months while I recovered. My experience has been for the most part solitary and shared only through this blog. I have introverted for so long that it feels like I have lived my whole life like this. Indeed, for the extent of this new lease on life I truly have lived that whole life as a solitary man, growing distant from everyone including the Nutri-Nazi. I try to talk to her but I have trouble expressing myself in full conversation.

Part of the problem is that I don't really know what I think anymore. Today was a good example. I have been struggling to get a website going and to build a simple CNC milling machine. I was set to go to a hardware store and get some components for the construction of the basic machine. I got so distracted just thinking about what to do that I ended up just spinning out mentally and getting nothing done. I actually got completely overwhelmed by a simple task like that. And the same with the website construction. I know how to do it all, the art, the colors, the layout, all easy enough. I just can't do it. Simple things overwhelm me, concentration eludes me. Inspiration comes only when I try to describe the mess my head is in with words in this blog.

Is my situation the result of the chemicals or have I simply lost the ability to carry on with life? I seriously think this is the culmination of all the things that have happened to me over the last several years, including the cancer. I have been meandering through life for some time now, the cancer is just the latest challenge to come along. I am seeing that I can overcome crisis and challenges but I cannot carry on with life on a day to day basis. Learning how to overcome that problem will be far more challenging than dealing with cancer. I have been left with no method of dealing with most of life and I have to, with no tools readily available, go about reconstructing that life in a new direction and with a new purpose. I don't have much of a history of doing so previously either, my life up to now has been spent reacting to and with the challenges of day to day life of work or running my business or my relationship with Nutri-Nazi, and under the storm clouds of cancer even those situations have dissipated. I have had no challenges in my daily life except to live through cancer, a fairly passive endeavor at best. It certainly was not anything intellectual. Pretty much a dead stop starting point for the rest of my life.

It is not like I am unhappy, more likely this is the point where in a movie the credits would roll and some cool sound track would take over. The audience walks out of the theater never considering that the rush of the crisis is over and the characters have to pick up with their lives and regain some normalcy amidst the scene of recent chaos, without the rush or focus of events to drive them forward. Yeah, real life comes crashing down and the mundane settles in. What the hell do I do now? That is the question. I am a cancer survivor, the drama is over, I have to pick up a life punctuated with a near fatal crisis and that life will never be the same. I can't just go to Barnes and Noble and pick up a book on how to carry on from here. Nope, this is going to be all ad hoc, made up on the fly, and with fewer constraints than when I was a kid. At least back then I had hormones to lead me seriously astray and into one mess after another. These days I have no such evil influence. More is the pity too. I could use some serious insanity right about now.