a one-man shift in the weather

Last week I went to the doctor. As we discussed -- okay, wait.

I have this thing where I just jump straight in to what I'm talking about. Is that a big problem for you, dear reader? I'm working on not doing it in emails, since that's pretty rude, but I only just noticed the problem in my blog posts. I could start in after a nice little salutation paragraph or something. Let me know if you really care.

Okay. Last week I went to the doctor. As we discussed how I'm doing, and feeling, I noticed kind of a trend. Let me show you a couple examples.

"How are your teeth? Chemo can impact your enamel," the doctor said.**

"Yep, I have cavities," I replied. "But ... I've always had cavities!" Pretty much since my first visit to the dentist.

"How about your eyesight?"

"Fine. Well, I have, whatsit, pathological myopia, so . . . I'm as fine as that goes."

"Okay. You should know that you're more at risk for retinal detachment due to your treatment."

"Yeah, the eye doctor already told me no contact sports." I shrugged. Clearly the loss of rugby stardom has really got me down.

And so on. It almost seems to me that this whole thing has just accentuated aspects of myself. It makes my eyesight worse? Been there, done that. Cavities? Par for the course! No contact sports? I've been scared of the ball my whole life.

So here's where we get a little existential. Metaphysical? I don't know; I'm one of those people that just throws out cool-sounding words without bothering to make sure I'm using them right. But philosophically, you guys, what if it's accentuating everything about me?? What if I was already lazy and the treatment just made me more so? (Actually, that's not so much a what if.) What if I always had weird brown spots on my skin and the treatment just made them more visible? What if I was always cynical about friendship? What if I was always secretly a big smiler?

Pretty weird, huh?

"Hope on Fire"


**On a totally random side note, I've been writing a Doctor Who fanfiction for the past couple months. It's second nature now for me to write "the Doctor said" instead of not capitalizing it. But I changed it because, cool as that would be, David Tennant is not my chemo doctor.