I love presents.

Hello, hello! Just a quick post to say how much I love the Australian Cancer Council and how thankful I am [though it isn't thanksgiving here in Australia] to have their support and love as I make this journey. Every week I go to group therapy sessions which are basically a bunch of us getting together and sharing our experiences, bitching and having a laugh.. It's fantastic and honestly, it's one of the reasons I was able to make it through this whole thing [only 2 weeks of radiation to go!!].

Anyway, yesterday we were all given these huge gift bags for Christmas with candies, chocolate, cards, stickers, bon bons, a random Christmas CD, candy canes, a gift voucher for $150 for groceries.. It was honestly just SO thoughtful and made me so happy.

I'm not usually the kind of person who sends Christmas cards, and in particular this year I had thought I'd be a bit of a Grinch [I'm flat broke and away from my family].. but, inspired by a gorgeous friend of mine, I've decided to make use of the gifts I was so generously given, so I've decided to send Christmas cards this year! If you would like to be a recipient, please either email me [amyluvs AT gmail DOT com] or post a reply to this.. Comments are screened so nobody else will see it - don't worry!

Like I said, just a quick one. Give me your addresses so I can get started!!

xx. A.

Lazy Saturday.

I had a great day. I slept like 11 hours [which is more than I had collectively all week, I think] without waking myself up choking or coughing. It freaking ruled. I feel like I'm finally in the uphill stretch of this chest infection. Still no voice [infact it seems to be even more gone than it was? odd?] but I'm starting to feel a lot less foggy, which is nice.

The Internet went out [thanks iiNet for being so reliable!] about 40 minutes after I woke up, and even though I spend the majority of my time online these days [what else is there to do when you're housebound the way I am most of the time?] it really wasn't that big a deal. I played 11 hours of Pokemon [haha nerd!] and listened to 14 chapters of Harry Potter and I just had a really nice, laid back day.

On the subject of Harry Potter I am reaaaally looking forward to seeing Deathly Hallows. I've read the book about 6 times now and it was probably my second favorite in the series. I haven't always liked what they've done with the movies [leaving cruicial things out, adding things that don't make sense, etc] but I guess it's the same as any book > movie adaptation, changes will be made and nobody will ever be entirely happy about it. Not sure when I'm going to go see it, at this point, but I'm in no rush - I'm sure it'll be in cinemas atleast until the next one comes out. haha! 

I guess I don't really have a lot to say, I just wanted to check in and let you all know I'm starting to feel a little better. Thank you to everyone who keeps trying to call and give wellwishes, and sorry I keep letting it go to message bank but as I mentioned above, I have literally nothing of a voice left.

Anyway I'm off to bed.. probably to play Pokemon for another hour or so.. need to get my 4th badge!

xx. A.

A night of questions.

I'm finding that -- as my "I'm sick while I'm sick" days go on -- my sleeping schedule is getting even more messed up than it ever has been before. Sometimes I just wont sleep at all because I can't stop coughing, other times I'll sleep 16 hours straight [exhausted after all that coughing and not sleeping]. At any rate, tonight [last night] was looking to be another sleepless one and I found the most fantastic waste of time/way to pass the time.

It's a website called Formspring and basically it's just a platform to ask and answer questions. Some of them are pretty ridiculous but some actually inspired a bit of thought on my part and some careful answers.. I thought, seeing as I spent the night writing [when I intended to blog] I might crosspost a few of the questions that I thought were particularly interesting or thought provoking. Feel free to duck over there and ask anything, also! You can sign up or be completely anonymous, which appears to be something of great appeal to lots of people.

If you had a genie that could grant you three wishes, what would they be? (excludes wishing for more wishes)
This one is hard. I want to believe I'd be selfless and wish for things like world peace, ending world hunger, etc, but honestly with the way my life has gone the last year or so I feel like if I don't give myself the edge, nobody will. Life certainly isn't going to do me any favours.

1. I'd wish for good health for myself and my loved ones. Fantastic health even. I'd never want to experience even the common cold again.

2. Financial security. Not Bill Gates security, but I'd want atleast enough that I could pay out all my and my loved ones debts, buy a house and stuff to fill it and invest the rest and live off the proceeds of that investment if I chose to.

3. Amazing luck. I want to be the kind of person who is always just in the right place at the right time. I want to win random movie tickets, cruises, meet up with friends I didn't know were in town! I'd just want to be a Lucky person -- I feel like that would translate to being a happy person. Also, nothing bad ever happens to lucky people so I feel like this wish is effectively protecting me from anything really terrible, for the rest of my life.

How would you describe your personality?
I have in the past been described as a personality chameleon. I find it very easy to read people and to adjust myself and my personality to reflect what I think they want.

I think a nicer way of putting this is that I'm quite charismatic.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and could only bring five things and five people (any era, living or dead), what/who would they be?
People:
- My dad [he's good at building stuff and someone would have to make a shelter]
- Gail [dad would be lonely without her]
- Karen [she's my twin and I'd be bored without her].
- McGuyver [I don't care if he's not real].
- Probably someone random based on what week it was and who I was chatting with a lot at the time.

Stuff:
- A boat.
or, if I wasn't going to be a smartass.
- Waterproof matches.
- Rope.
- A hugeass freaking packet of Nurofen.
- My iPod.
- One of those nifty sun-powered iPod chargers. ;)

What happens to the things you imagine once you forget them?
That's a fantastic question.

I like to think they swim around somewhere in the back of your mind, waiting for you to remember even glimpses of them.. but maybe they're just gone forever. That's a fantastic reason to write everything down, if nothing else.

What are two things standing in your way of writing a book? What are two things pushing you in the right direction of writing a book?
Two things to stop me writing:
- The fear of failure/not completing it/it being really terrible and nobody wanting to read it.. I guess, fear, in general.
- Time. Writing is a huge commitment. I feel like if I had a laptop I'd be more likely to write more often because I wouldn't have to sit down in my office and do nothing else - I could be inspired ANYWHERE. Maybe that's something to add to the wishlist..

Two things pushing me to write:
- My family and their lack-of-acceptance for excuses about why I'm NOT writing a book. <3
- The need to compete with 15-year-old me.

What does fifteen-year-old you have that you don't? What doesn't she have that you do have?
She is blind to the way the world sees her. She believes in her writing with a faith only someone who has never been told "no" can have.

She lacks the experience I have now. The strength of will and determination.

Do you believe in free will, or are we all just puppets of the laws of physics and chemistry etc?
I believe life is like a choose-your-own-adventure Goosebumps book. Everything is pre-written but the decisions you make along the way guide you to one of many pre-decided endings.

So I guess I believe in free-will to a degree. You can decide to go to the beach or not to go to the beach, but the outcome -- either way -- is predertermined and leads to yet another series of decisions that have already been written.


... anyway I thought some of it was interesting. I'm so addicted to this website now, you should go sign up and make an account! Not all the questions have to be deep and hard, it can be fun too, I just picked out the questions and answers that I thought were worth repeating.

xx. A.

3am and she calls me cause I'm still awake...

Last night was fun. I don't really wanna write a post about it but I feel like I've already had to explain it so many times it's just going to be easier to write it here rather than having to recount to everyone over and over.

So anyway last night I woke up at about 2:20am and I couldn't breathe. That's not unusual for me [I've been battling with a chest infection for about a week now] so I -- as calmly as I could -- rushed to the bathroom and ran a steaming hot shower and got under, just letting the water fall on my back. After a minute or two I felt like my airway had opened up a little and I tried to breathe deeper to encourage that.

Big. Mistake.

Almost immediately I started having these coughing spasms which resulted in me bringing up bloody, thick mucus. A heavy flow of it too, I felt like I was choking everytime I'd bring more up because I literally couldn't breathe for the amount of it that was coming up.

This obviously was a bit of a wake up for me and some bells rang in my head and I realised I needed to get my ass to hospital. I climbed out of the shower and got dressed, found some shoes [waking Steven in the process] and headed out.

I'm fairly familiar with my hospital by this point but the emergency ward [and I'm lead to believe, the entire general admissions area] are completely seperate from the radiation unit that I frequent. The nurse couldn't even find me on the computer until she came and got my medicare card and swiped it through her machine. I thought I'd feel a lot more familiar with the whole process than I actually did, so it was nice to know there was someone familiar in the waiting room for me.

The first thing the triage nurse realised and freaked out about [then tried to hide her freaking out'ness -- great poker face there lady] was that my oxygen [de?]saturation levels were waaaay too low, so I spent the first hour or so on a ventilator with pure oxygen trying to fix that.

After that she ran some tests, stuck some sticky things to me [and even now after having a shower I still cant get the sticky residue stuff off my skin], had me blow into like 5 different machines, did a chest xray, sat me on another ventilator with some actually medicated stuff this time which made me jittery as all hell.. until the doctor eventually came back and looked at all my results and basically said, "Yeah your chest infection is reaaaaaaaaaaaal infected, you can go home now".

... AWESOME.  So after lazy doctor lady went away the nurse showed me the xrays and explained that basically my entire left lung was struggling with the infection and that's why I'd been coughing up the bloody mucus and struggling with my breathing and such. She gave me some steroids, some antibiotics and an inhaler [I'm a real geek now!!] and sent me home -- just in time to hit peak hour traffic with everyone going to work, yay! So yeah.. that's my story!

Now I'm just sitting at my computer surrounded by tissues and various medications, sipping at some water and wishing to GOD I could eat some double chocolate ice cream right now.

xx. A.

Sleep.

I've written about it before but at this point I really don't care if I'm repeating myself. Sleep sucks.

I feel like it's this cruel cycle -- I'm getting sicker because I'm not sleeping, but I can't sleep because I'm sick.

I can't lay down flat or my lungs fill up [with gunk, not air, which is what you'd want them to fill up with] and I can't breathe, on top of which they make these terrible noises you can hear from the next room so I have to all but sit up [which is fun, by the way, with only 1 pillow - I've been using my dressing gown as an additional prop]. IF -- and that's a huuuuuuge if, by the way -- I manage to get in a position where my body can even comprehend sleep I end up coughing myself awake before I even pass the 'dozing' stage. I'm constantly running these insane temperatures so I'll just break into a flopsweat from time to time which is fantastic when I literally only own one set of sheets.

It's funny because I've spent so much time in bed the last four or five days, but if I added it up I'd guess I've slept maybe 6 hours? Don't get me wrong, I was there with the intention of sleep and my eyes have been closed [for the most part], it's just.. not happening.

I feel almost delerious at this point, to be honest. I'm at the point where I've had just bits and pieces of sleep -- almost, like glimpses of sleep through a mirror -- and my body is already so exhausted and working so hard trying to handle the radiation and breaking down the cancer and then my chest infection on top of that, that a lack of sleep is just sending me into a tailspin.

The worst part of all this is I've lost my voice - it's literally gone. All I have is a squeak at the end of some words. I'd never really and truly lost my voice before so it was really funny for me the first day or two but now it's just frustrating.

Anyway, I'm handling it. I always handle it. I just thought I'd duck my head in here and let you all know I'm still alive. I was planning on waiting until I got better to start writing again because my head is so mushy and I didn't want to be subjecting the internet to my current state, but I think at this point it's clear I'm not going to get better anytime soon so I'm back for better or for worse, and I apologize in advance for rambling or terrible posts that come as a result of that.

xx. A.

Not really an update.

Hi, my chest infection is getting worse so I probably won't be updating much this week [despite my promise to update more this week than I did last week]. =[ I've been sleeping an average of 15 hours a day at the moment which isn't bad since I'm out of the house around 10 hours of the day.

I'll be back when I'm better.

xx. A.

Whining and whinging.

This post is pretty much just going to be me whinging about stuff that sucks so if you don't care, go ahead and stop reading right now cause I'm too upset and sick to give a damn enough to filter myself at the moment. I was going to post this as private but I decided I don't care -- I'm not going to be Miss Positive Patty all the freaking time and it isn't fair to expect it from me.

In extreme contrast to my previous post, my cold has developed into a chest infection. I went from starting to feel better to having a constant tightness of my lungs that means if I accidentally breathe in too hard or fast at some point [basically anything beyond shallow-enough-to-be-dead] I get thrown into this wicked coughing fit. And my coughing has scratched my throat up so bad that it's raw and occassionally I'll cough red up so it's obviously bleeding [don't worry I saw the doctor today - he came to that conclusion, I don't have aids or something terrible that is shown by bloody coughs].

I'm running a fever so high that I am constantly sweating. If you put a towel against my face for a minute or two you can pull it away and the towel will be warm. I feel like my eyes are boiling.  I've been taking panadol to try and lower it and I take cold showers like 3 times a day and nothing works. I drink a billion litres of water a day -- no change. I feel like I'm on fire.

 In addition to that, I have a freaking monster of a headache that just will not go away and every time I cough my head throbs like my brain is trying to explode out of my skull and it makes me dizzy. I went to the optometrist because my doctor couldn't find anything wrong [other than the chest infection] and said that eyesight issues can often lead to ongoing headaches and she confirmed that not only do I need new glasses but my NEW prescription is 3.5 times the strength of my current one. Basically I've been walking around with useless pieces of glass on my face cause they weren't doing anything but making the situation worse -- the chick told me that I am literally only TWO steps from being classified as legally blind without glasses. AWESOME.

So I explained I'm strapped for cash at the moment [barely making rent and living on the barest of minimums] and asked if I could just replace the lenses and keep my current frames -- I figured frames were the expensive part, right? Wrong. Apparently when you have a prescription as strong as mine the lenses are just as expensive and I'm looking at $350. $350 which I don't have. $350 which unless I spend, will be the reason I have a splitting headache for the rest of this treatment. Seriously, I want to stab a puppy. Or step on it. Ok, maybe just glare at it a bit.

On top of everything I'm just feeling so angry and sad and let down and emotional today. I'm trying to be very calm and I not only went to my individual councelling session today but I went to the group one as well and I'm probably not going to murder anyone anymore but I'm still SO FREAKING EMOTIONAL and I want to cry but when I do that my tears are so hot because of aforementioned rage and fever that it feels like my eyes might fall out and so I'm just sitting here biting my fucking lip and hoping to step out infront of a bus tomorrow.

I obviously wouldn't do that but I'm just feeling so sick and so helpless and all I want to do is eat a huge bowl of ice cream and feel better, but to make things even AWESOMER my lactose intollerance got really bad when I started radiation and it has slowly gotten to the point where I literally cannot eat anything with dairy products in it or I'll start spewing and have mad stomach aches to the point where I'm doubled over in pain and cant move for hours.

 I'm sick of everything today and I hate everyone.

 It's funfunfun here in Amyland.

Fuck everything.
A.

Inspiration from odd places.

I've been sick for about a week now [on top of being sick, that is]. It's just a cold -- I'm not going to die from it or anything -- but it definitely feels like it. My immune system is so fried from my treatment that adding anything on top just.. isn't fair. I'm exhausted - even more tired than I ever thought possible, my nose runs like a kitchen faucet, my eyes and head hurt all the time and it feels as though my brain is too big for my skull [which we KNOW isn't true. haha], I ache everywhere just in general.. and yeah.. =]! Fun times! In good news I'm starting to feel a bit better so hopefully next week won't suck quite so bad.

Given my sickness, I've been spending a lot of time in bed catching up on TV shows [I have a habit of going weeks without watching and then having like 5 episodes of 6 different shows to watch], watching movies I got months ago and never quite got around to viewing, and playing my fair share of video games. I've also finished my second audiobook and I'm onto The Return of the King! Tolkien is a god.

My god I can get distracted -- ANYWAY -- I was watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother in which one of the characters has had a messy break up and the rest of the gang are trying to get her to delete the Ex's number from her phone. During this conversation/arguement they're all faced with numbers/peoples/memories they've kept in their phones for long past their due date and all, eventually, more or less move past it.

I felt an odd connection to this episode and I watched it twice [which anyone who knows me will tell you is strange, I very rarely watch even a movie more than once, much less TV shows] to try figure out why. At the end of the episode - reluctantly - I opened my phone contacts list and just.. started deleting. I went from a phone book of 74 contacts to just over 20 [and this includes a large quantity of doctors, different areas of the hospital, etc so I don't have to be constantly transferred around]. It shocked me once I was done and I was very careful not to stop and count how many were left until I got to the Z's incase I chickened out and had a half-clean half-terrible phonebook.

It's funny, but there were people in there I literally haven't spoken to in years - for so long that they've moved house/state/COUNTRY EVEN and I don't even know if that number is still their number - and yet I kept it 'just in case'. I'm talking ex boyfriends, old real estate agencies, taxi numbers for 2 different states and 4 different towns [lol!], 'friends' who I'd rather die than speak to again.. the list goes on and on. There were even a few in there listed as "Firstname, PubIMetThemAt". I've never, ever called these people or spoken to them again after the night I met them but some of those numbers have been in my contact list for long enough that they transferred phones when I got my current phone TWO YEARS AGO.

I feel so liberated! It's so fantastic to open my phone book to call someone and only have to scroll to the letter their name is listed under, not then have to search through a myriad of people I can barely remember to find the person I actually want to speak to. I highly recommend it! I'm sure I've deleted numbers I'll use again but I figure that's what google or yellowpages is for and the only other problem I can foresee is that now the people whose numbers I kept specifically to avoid the calls of [cringe!!] are free to harrass me once more.. I figure that's easily solved by letting private numbers or numbers I don't have listed go to voicemail, though.

In summary, I felt very inspired and even though I feel like warmed up poop I still feel inspired. =] I can't wait to feel better so my brain can be less mushy and I can get back on track with Project: Writers [Un]Block and my various other blog projects. On a side note - please don't get offended if your calls go to voice mail - mass deletion will always have one or two numbers go by accident and it's easy enough to fix. <3 <3

xx. A.

Blast from the past!

So I was up late last night [surprise surprise] chatting with a friend to pass the time and we got onto the subject of my writing. I was telling him how everyone keeps encouraging me to write but it's so hard because I am just so critical of myself. 16 year old me was an amazing person - if I do say so myself - she had imagination and the guts to explore it and she wasn't scared to push aside the 'real world' to do that.

I feel as though I am competing with this girl and when I write now I find myself backspacing more than I type. It sounds extreme but I've had to resort to promising myself I wont backspace at all, belting out an entire post/story/whatever and then allowing myself 10 minutes for editing at the end. No more. If I was allowed to run free with my editing I'd never get a post up because there's always something that could be worded better, always something I could research and sound more plausible.

Anyway I've decided I'm going to share a few 'oldies' from around 2000 -- I was FOURTEEN [well.. fifteen later in the year but that's beside the point] then. I've decided teenage me was awesome but adult me has billions of years experience on her and is going to [once she has had a chance to get back on the horse again] knock teenage me's writing out of the park.

This was a poem I wrote for year 10 English. These days I would never have dreamed of attempting poetry, much less something this long, so I think I'm going to do one of the Poetry challenges for Project: Writers [Un]Block in the near future.. face that fear head on, you know?! Anyway, on with it.

Someday

He rode upon  the sky
And the dark plane he was in
Cast an earthly shadow
A shadow small and thin
But everyday he'd whisper
Undaunted by defeat;
"This is my quest -- I'll do my best
Someday my goals I'll meet"

He launched the tiny Cesna
Into the grave of blue
And when the wind and clouds caved in
He promised to stay true

The little Cesna, Shirley
Was brave and strong and good --
When Shirley couldn't make it
Her humble master could
In unity they suffered
And conquered every foe
And flew from mornings blinding light
to midnights ebon glow
And everyday he'd whisper
Undaunted by defeat;
"This is my quest -- I'll do my best
Someday my goals I'll meet"

When skies were dark and baleful
He kept his goals in sight
He yearned for fame -- to see his name
In marquee's of gold light
He whispered to young Shirley
"You're with me til' the end"
And Shirley promised to be strong
And save her lifelong friend
And everyday he'd whisper
Undaunted by defeat;
"This is my quest -- I'll do my best
Someday my goals I'll meet"

With wings of silver eagles
And little fuel to spare
He soared upon the open skies
In hopes of getting there
But hurricane winds trembled
And a storm was soon full blown --
He clenched his fists and firmly vowed
To do it on his own

But the hurricane was ghastly
And it tore the battered sky
Like a cheetah lashing with razor teeth
Or a vulture on the fly
The rain and wind were wedded
And the marriage finallly steered
Shirley toward exactly what
Her master always feared

The hurricane had driven
The plane down through the atmosphere
Until its pilot realised
The bitter end was near
Still everynight he'd whisper
Undaunted by defeat;
"This is my quest -- I'll do my best
Someday my goals I'll meet"

But as he whispered steadfast
He felt an inward ruth
That everynight, his words had grown
Father from the truth

And then that night, small Shirley
Felt her vigor disappear
And then she told her master
That he couldn't cry a tear --
For they would die together,
And never have to part
The Cesna felt her soul entwined
With her dear masters heart
And one last time he'd whisper
Undaunted by defeat;
"This is my quest -- I'll do my best
Someday my goals I'll meet"

Shirley sailed downward
And plunged into the sea
But still her silent Cesna heart
Was whole, and close to he
Her master sank down with her
His lonely head above
The heart of her, his only plane
And too -- his only love

He still lies there this minute
Now petrified as stone
With no marquees, no lights of gold --
He was a man unknown
No nomument was built for him
No poems to laud his name
And no one ponders over his
Eternal, ceaseless game
But maybe a young child whispers
Every morning, somewhere near
Something strong and simple,
that she hopes someone will hear:
"Lord, let me remain until my death,
Undaunted by defeat.
This, my quest -- I'll do my best
Someday my goals I'll meet".

xx. A.

Oh and I did it!

I totally cut my hairs too!

What do we think?! Fringe is a go or no? I'm loving it, personally!

xx. A.

Just an update.

I have a bunch of little bits and pieces to write about today so don't expect anything fantastic or structured or anything more than just a regular blog. I was going to do a Really Freaking Awesome Stuff™ post yesterday but I only have 3 things in it so far so I'm keeping it in my drafts until I find a few more things I think rule.

Most importantly I guess, I'm doing really well the last week or so. I've been more energetic than I have been the entire one and a half months. I feel more sick (headaches, living in the bathroom etc) but I feel like I've got more of a handle on it than I ever have before. So, that's awesome!

I've started being a little more active, visiting with friends and going into the city when I don't feel like death. People keep saying that I'm pushing it but I think I need to do it or I just might go crazy. Honestly even if it's just for a few hours, having a shower and doing my hair and putting on makeup like a normal person makes me feel a million times better. Fun, incredibly gross fact: when you know people don't expect you to be well presented and wont care if you've washed your hair in a week, you just.. stop doing it. Particularly if you're already feeling depressed. Anyway. That stuff aside!

Ultimately, I made the decision not to do NaNoWriMo. My reasons were many but what it came down to was I've only just started to enjoy writing again -- I didn't want to push myself to need to write 1666 words a day and halfway through the month just give up and never write again. I feel pretty bad cause I encouraged a few people to do NaNoWriMo and now they're going to be doing it by themselves, but I figure I write here fairly often and they can still talk to me with plot-holes or frustrations or anything like that, so it's not really THAT bad.

I've made tentative plans to visit home once my treatment finishes - at the moment it's looking like it'll be from the 17th until the 21st of December but is completely subject for change until the tickets have been purhcased so don't quote me on that or make any plans that can't be altered!

In not-really-important-news or not-news-at-all news, a friend got me Civilization 5 as a get well present and I am so addicted. It's like combining my 3 favorite games -- the Sims, turned based roleplay and WoW -- to become this incredible addictive black hole where I never want to log off and realise it's 4am and I've been playing all night only because the sun has just come up.

I guess that's it for the night, I'll have another Project: Writers [Un]Block up sometime this week, I'm really enjoying reading the things some of you have come up with on your blogs or sent to me through email so definitely keep it up!

xx. A