the purefinder - archives - Sun, 2004-08-15
« putting it on your plate | Main | I smelled it »August 15, 2004
the hormonal storm and its eddies and squalls
It would be efficient for me to direct you to this post and ask you to imagine that I had just written it again.
When you are concerned with altering the probabilites of living and dying, it is perhaps understandable, and proper, that the side-effects of treatments are de-emphasised and introduced and considered fairly casually. This is as it should be, but every now and again I do wish that perhaps a deft nurse had slipped into my pocket a letter entitled 'The Secret Of The Things That Are Going To Be Really Shitty'.
I'd expect there to be a paragraph, or two, on chemotherapy induced menopause and, what I choose to call, The Hormonal Storm.
Tangentially.
Yesterday I was at a wedding of two very treasured friends. Many of the people, who are not my family, who I care most about were there and I had a splendid day. mrs padraig had asked me to try and tell people that she wasn't wearing a hat because she was weird, but that she had *a legitimate excuse*.
I'm close enough to most of the people I spoke to there, to have been able to actually tell them what the last few months have been like - when they asked, as they did. I did say that it hadn't been a lot of fun, but I didn't hear myself say 'like a living fucking hell'. Not once.
It wasn't because I was trying to keep the conversation within polite and inconsequential boundaries - it was because I was doing the de-emphasising thing. And for the same reason that the doctors do it too.
I'm not sure if that is too oblique.
I didn't want to plant seeds of terror that might cause people not to proceed with treatment(s), should they ever be unlucky enough to need them. I've become aware that it is all about altering probabilities and the bigger picture.
Obliquely and bleakly.
padraig
Posted by padraig at August 15, 2004 10:31 PM