The perspective that time gives.....

  I'm a little late on my latest entry, I had a goal to do at least one a month over the summer, but as you can see, I didn't make it. I did have some time to reflect though.  I asked myself a question. I asked myself if I could see a difference over the last five years in my life. What was expected? What was unexpected? Have the last five years had any influence to shape me into the person I am now? Five years may seem like a short window, and in a lot of ways, it is. We tend to get comfortable in our routines. So much so, that we get a little upset if we get interrupted sometimes, don't we?  I think it's understandable, after all, we are creatures of habit.

  But I think that five years is a long enough period of time to look back, and get a perspective of what direction you've been headed, and where you are going. You can observe yourself from just about any criteria you may want to examine yourself from. That's the variable. The time period is variable too. It doesn't matter if it's five years, ten, it can be anything you need it to be. The constant here is your direction. And it requires honesty with yourself. That can be a tough one, not a lot of wiggle room. There is a popular idea making the rounds in some circles these days, that perception is reality. In other words, if a person sees something, witnesses an event, then that eyewitness account is equal to reality. In some cases that might be true, but not in every case. Sometimes reality is reality. We have to be smart enough to use insight and judgment, objectivity and distance from emotion, to just look at the facts, and see where they lead us. The reality of a situation might be 180 out from our perception of it, we have to be willing to let the truth say what it has to say.

  Five years ago, I was in a totally different place in my battle with cancer than I am today. My home situation was different. I still had a son at home, (miss those kids), I was still working full time, now I'm retired, and I was fighting cancer by trying to manage it's growth with pills. Now I'm on chemotherapy. I've been battling this disease for ten years, actually almost twelve. I was diagnosed in 04. I've jumped through a lot of hoops, my wife with me. Not a lot of women would have stuck this thing out the way she has. Chemo is a lot different than pill therapy. It messes with your mind and your body, in terms of side effects. I got started on it because I was on a strong pill regimen called xtandi. My body couldn't tolerate it. They tried cutting the dose down, but I just couldn't take it. It made me so sick, I thought I was going to die. So they told me my only other choice was to go on chemo, which is my last resort as far as treatments go. That's a pretty scary proposition when you hear that. And I have to be on it for the rest of my life, unless something else comes along.

  Let me see if I can come up with an analogy that might work to describe this to you, I don't know, I'll try. You know the old saw about the t.v. commercial showing a frying pan with eggs in it, and the voice-over says this is your brain , then they scramble them and say this is your brain on drugs?It's kind of like that. A better one might be to compare it to algebra. You know the basic idea behind algebra isn't math. It's to teach you to think in a logical, systematic order, to think in a reasoned way using an order of operations that make sense. Let's call this normal brain function.Some people are able to think on a higher level, let's compare that to Pythagorean theorem. If I can just put this in a nutshell, it's using algebra to solve trigonometry problems. You have a formula for solving for sine. cosine and tangent. Some people are that smart. I've seen them. They're very smug, haha. I said that to say that on chemo, your brain goes down from that, to trying to make change for a dollar. That's probably the hardest thing I've had to adapt to in the last five years.

  But before I could even start on that, I got admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. Turns out it was COPD, which is now a huge problem for me too. I got admitted three times for that, and the doctor told me she was surprised I came out alive, but I did, and I had to build my strength back up before I could begin the chemo. I also found out I had congestive heart failure. So over the last five years, there have been some major changes in my body, and my lifestyle. It's fair to say that my life is completely different now than it was five years ago. As I've gone along, I've adapted, or tried to anyway, to changing needs and new challenges. One biggie is finding a way to exercise my brain. I've learned that you can't just sit around and do nothing. That's just waiting to die, and I'm not doing that. So one of the biggest passions in my life has always been music. Ever since I was a young kid, I've needed it in my life like I need air to breathe. I listen to everything, whether I like it or not, sometimes just to identify what's going on, structurally in the song, just to stay sharp (no pun). But I play mainly guitar, acoustic and bass. I may put up a video sometime, I don't know. But playing every day I can really helps my hand/eye coordination, as well as working my mind and trying to keep that strong. I'ts also fun, and that's important too. I'm trying to be happy, even though I'm sick. Being happy releases good chemicals in your system, which works to help healing in your body. It's good for you. So there's always a silver lining somewhere. And this is just some of the perspective that time gives. :D