An acquaintance has cancer.

 

The following is from an acquaintance in our TG community that I only had the pleasure of meeting once....

Ok so I guess it’s finally time to tell the whole story.

 

Let’s get the big thing out of the way first: About two and a half weeks ago, I found out that I have stage 3 lung cancer. That means it’s treatable. Stage 4 means get your affairs in order and say your last goodbyes. I’m hoping I get through this but really who knows?

 

What it means in the immediate practical sense is that my new full-time job is seeing doctors, I mean like basically daily. It also means I have very little income. Not a great combo as you can imagine. To top that off, I managed to blow out my voice last week so talking on the phone isn’t easy, bordering on the near-impossible. It’s starting to come back but soooo slowly. 

 

I’m fortunate enough to qualify for some social programs but juggling all the appointments isn’t easy. On top of all that, I thought I’d lost my debit card so I ordered a new one, and am now waiting for a replacement. While I wait, I can only pay for things with PayPal. Also not easy.

 

In some ways, I’m lucky. I have good friends who check up on me to make sure their friend is not only still alive but not cracking under all the pressure, which I’ve come much too close to more times than I’d like recently. The people at the hospital and my regular doc and therapist have been wonderful and an incredible help in helping me learn what I need to know to deal with all this. 

 

It’s so hard, and thus far I’m not doing that great a job of it. Sometimes, it gets a bit overwhelming, and if you’ve been reading my recent posts, you’ve seen what I’m like when that happens. 

 

The truth is that I still don’t know how to deal with all this, though I am learning. Today was my first and I’m told the worst day of radiation treatment. Chemotherapy begins Wednesday. That’s gonna suck.

 

I’m not exactly living on Xanax but I am taking it more than I used to, to a point where I’m becoming a little concerned about becoming dependent. I know I won’t OD. I know this drug backward and forward. I do, however have an addictive personality and was a pill popper back in my punk days. I use Xanax when I need it. It just seems like I’m needing it a little too often right now.

 

It’s just not a good time for me right now. The treatment will be six weeks, five days a week. Like I said literally a full-time job. I can’t shake the feeling that things are going to get worse before they get better, and I’m not even sure they’re going to get better. To merely say it’s fucking scary would be putting it mildly.

 

Now that my closest friends and family know, I figured it was time to tell everyone else, you, my extended family. I have no idea how this is going to shake out, other than I’m going to do my best to try to keep my shit together and get through this somehow. 

 

I know what comes next and yet I don’t. This is hard.

 

This acquaintance showed me that if one has a will, she can find doctors who will perform her Gender Confirmation Surgeries at a low price. She suffered a lot of discrimination because she is transgender.  Her personal style may have isolated her from some of her family - our mutual connection mentioned that this acquaintance didn't keep up with her correspondences.  (This forum is not the place to discuss that issue.)  But I will say that our mutual connection seemed thankful that I forwarded this message on to her.

 

I would have liked to know this person better before she moved away from the NYC area.  Hopefully, she will recover, and be a stronger person on the other side of this adversity.  Until I know more, my thoughts and prayers are with her....

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

                   

It was nice to see a friend today.

 

Today, I met a friend for lunch.  Although we met via OK Cupid, we knew from the beginning that we'd be friends, and not much more.  And this is a good thing.  She would be a little bit out of my league if we had tried to start a relationship.  As friends, we can overlook things that we could not overlook in a romantic partner.

My friend and I have been trying to get together for a while.  Her health and her business has gotten in the way, and I hadn't had the opportunity to get together with her since the beginning of summer.  So we decided to meet somewhere in the middle (we live 90 minutes from each other), in Beacon.  

- - - - - -

No, we didn't go to the restaurant above  If we did, we probably would have gotten very sick. In fact, we may have needed the following maneuver performed on us if we choked on our food:

Instead, we went to a place called Meyer's Olde Dutch for an early lunch.  It WAS FILLING!  My friend, who barely weighs 100 lbs. soaking wet, was filled on her salad.  While I was filled on an oversized, overloaded bacon cheeseburger.  Yum!  I'd go back there again. Over lunch, we talked of many things, such as one Catskills area property not selling.  My friend had sold her place for just under $1 million, and within 18 months, it has recently been flipped for $1.700,000.  Right now, a place either has to have character, enough vacant land to build a place with character, or be cheap enough for someone to tear it down to build a place with character.  The unsold place fits neither of these conditions,  So it remains unsold - for now. For the most part, we talked about her business and her upcoming vacation with her boyfriend.

Next on our list of things to do was picking up some gluten free goodies for her boyfriend and his daughter.  For this, we made the mistake of walking a little over a mile to a store on the other side of Beacon.  And neither of us thought the heat would be getting to us.  To make things worse, I was wearing the wrong shoes for this walk, and my right foot loudly announced that this was a big mistake.  We sat down for a few minutes, then returned to our cars.  Hopefully, she will be able to make her overseas trip soon, as I just learned that her destination country has enacted new quarantine requirements for United States residents.

Once done with my friend, I drove to Poughkeepsie to pick up some stuff at Target.  I've been intrigued by the above dress for a while, and to drop $20 to see how it looks on me.  It looks comfortable, and it is something I can wear on hot summer days.  After I was done with Target, I stopped into Walmart to pick up some food on the way home.  It was strange to see an empty space where the in-store McDonald's used to be. But I guess Mickey D wasn't making enough money in their Walmart outlets, and prefers to make its money off of franchisees by renting out the land their franchised restaurants sit on.

Eventually, I made it home and decided to take a nap.  Even after 2 hours of rest, I didn't feel rested.  I could have easily gone back to sleep.  But I decided to stay awake and call up MWL to chat for a little while.  While on the call, one of my OK Cupid ladies decided to call me (very late), and I wasn't going to break off my call with MWL to speak with someone for the first time.  I was glad when MWL decided to end the call, as both of us were tired after our long days.  Hopefully, I'll have more energy for tomorrow's Brunch Meetup in Peekskill.