make a good transition into the next stage of my life

According to this quiz, I am

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I’m aSelf-Knowing Spiritual Builder

I guess that’s good for making a transtion to the cancer-free, rest of my life. I’m making some changes (I hope) beyond just having to grow my damned hair back. More about this later :)

I’m terrified of the pheonomenon known as “chemo brain”
The loss of short term (and in some cases, longer term) memory

I can’t go to grad school if I can’t hold things in my brain, if I can’t memorize drugs, actions, classifications, reactions, indications, contraindications.

I’m not even sure I’ll be able to do the job I currently have, because I already have to do this as an ICU nurse, let alone learning NEW drugs for anesthesia.

So, I’ve started to try to help my stupid brain.
When I was 16, I read Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 and in three or four reads, memorized the whole thing. I still remember 90% of it to this day.

But now I’m trying to work on remembering another one, to go over it and over it until it’s in my brain (Sonnet 122)

I’ve been stuck on the first three lines for about a week.

Thy gift, thy tables are within my brain
full charactered, with lasting memory
and shall above that idle rank remain

and I just noticed I screwed up “which” with “and” but it’s been a week and it’s tough.

My husband is dusting off the chess board, too. In 20 years, I’ve beat him only once (the bastard.)

This is all in hopes of trying to keep my brain from being “lost.”

As a nurse, and as someone who has suffered PTSD, I think it’s possible that a lot of the memory loss reported by chemo patients could be trauma…the walking around the house, thinking about “things” that are going on, and listening to the internal voices that are scared and worried, that distract from what you are actually doing. Like…where the hell did I put my keys? That’s a short term memory deficit right there. So we’ll see what happens. I’ll report back and tell you how “together” my brain is.

would have been the first day of school.
I have waited a long, miserable year for it.

Instead, I have to stay here and fight cancer.
This sucks.

I wish the sucking were due to being overworked and stressed about school.

I’d like to have some portraits made.
I’ve looked at a couple of local boudoir photographers, and also would like to have some portraits taken with my hubby—our 20 year anniversary is coming up (08/08/08) and I’d like to have some happy moments documented.

I originally thought I’d like to have some boudoir photos, before I have any surgery, lose weight, lose hair, or have mastectomies.

It’s unfair that I’m in the best physical shape of my life now, I lost all the doughy blah that I had accumulated in New York eating crap all year long, and now this.

Maybe some professional photographs will at least remind me that once I was in good shape, and had hair.

I can’t believe this.
The university hospital that was recruiting me, interviewed me, followed up with me and asked for my employer’s contact number for references, has grown irritated at my reluctance to put them in contact with my boss!

They sent me a brush-off (sort of) email, basically ending the negotiations (good luck in your nursing career) and I’m standing here with my mouth agape that they don’t understand that they’d be poking around at my work, making my life worse than it already is, and they’ve not even extended me an offer yet!

I’m ready to jump off a cliff right about now.
No job to go to.
No school to go back to.
nothing but this miserable place I’m at now, for the rest of eternity, with no way to escape.

on the one hand, I am giving up anesthesia,
but on the other…I get to stay home.

I’ll be here for the last few years of my senior dog’s life.

I’ve got my hubby here for support live and in person, not via speakerphone during difficult times.

saving on Ivy League tution loans.

NOT going to New York.

Those are the positives I can see for now.
I’m trying to stay positive.

I’ll try to be brief, because this all started on a very bad night, with much mayhem at work.

long story short: I’m so mad at Columbia U right now that I’m ready to just throw in the towel and say a few words to them, the first being “go,” the second starting with an F, and the second word being “yourselves!”

I’m so sick of receiving half information, chasing down information, getting six different stories from six different people about what’s required of me, etc, that I finally hit a low point yesterday (coming home from a very very bad night at work…good lord, how I’m so ready to quit that job) and receiving an email that said we’d be getting information “after orientation”

That’s it.
No dates, no times, or meeting places.

I emailed back “dates would be helpful” and went on to say that I was in San Francisco, and would not be returning until fall, etc. would it be possible to have whatever information they were going to disperse at this orientation (that they were telling us we’d get in order to be able to register for classes) sent to us (me and the other gal, who’s in San Diego) or set aside for us?

I went to sleep and when I woke up there was an angry email from the director of my program, basically slapping me for “taking a tone” and “sarcasm” inferred by “everyone who read” my email, and to watch my tone because this person is an integral part of their program.

Evidently, Little Miss sensitive got miffed at my “dates would be helpful” and forwarded my email to all of humanity.

I’m so sick of their bullshit.

FIRST: if you get your SHIT together, and email me complete info, so that I WOULDN”T HAVE to to track it down like this…as well as you seem to know how to forward my email, then shit would be really great.

I’m going to stop there.
This is pissing me off just writing it.

I was so angry, I was up ALL DAY, and didn’t go back to sleep yesterday, so I was rendered exhausted by evening. I went to bed at night, WITH my hubby and dog, per normal people times…and woke up feeling like a human being again.

I’m going thru the scenario of “what now…what else…what if…” a million different ways, and I have a mother of a headache.

I was given a choice between two apartments in NYC on the medical campus. One of them was in the dodgy old Georgian Building, near the building where our classes are held (like a 1 minute walk) or a newer (1970s) constructed high rise about 10 blocks away.

They each had their pros and cons.
Georgian was close, but old, and they may renovate and I might have to move out for a time while they do repairs if they get money, and an architect to draw up plans (I know this to be a lengthy process and not very likely in the next 24 months)

The Newer building while father away was about 50 years more modern, with central air, but it’s a pig in a poke—I’ve never seen it, and the unit was described as one big room, kitchen exposed to the rest of the living space.

I took the Georgian, since the kitchen was a separated space, and therefore, I know will have more counter space, and cabinets for storing things. There’s an AC in the unit that was abandoned by the previous student/tenant, so it won’t be all that bad, and I can get another one for the bedroom if need be and pay them to install it ($25 plus the cost of a 5000 btu AC unit)

In all, I opted for the place that’s closer so that I wouldn’t have the long hard slog in the snow and worse, the HEAT and HUMIDITY of New York, carrying books, and so forth.

I’m happy with the decision. I only got to decide because the disabled student’s union is helping me out because of my MS. At least this time around, I’ll have a kitchen.

No more rice-cooker balanced on the bathroom sink, or a stack of books on my desk!!!

I hope she doesn’t mind.
I am definitely needing to concentrate on this and tonight my goal was to make a list of all the things I need to do in order to at least, minimally, transition to the next part of my life.

Even the list writing is daunting :(