opening old wounds.

My friend and classmate Carrie, and my mom both like the show Glee. And I've been watching it on my phone via my Netflix account. The premise of the show is a group of high school misfits in the glee club. Or, at least the members of the club are treated like outcasts. So far, I have watched every episode in the first season.

Its a funny show,(particularly the cheer leading coach) but it opened up some old wounds from when I was in Junior High and High school.

I was reminded again of how two boys pretended to want to go out with me, and when I told them to back off, that I knew were joking, they didn't. Color me pathetic, but that incident shaped me in negative ways. I found it hard to trust boys/men after that, even though I'm 44 now, and I was in eighth grade when this happened. I have often wondered why have not been able to forget about the high jinx of two stupid boys after all this time. If only my brain tumor would affect my long-term memory.

Getting back to the show Glee, one of the club members is openly gay. A female member develops a crush on him, and in doing so, inspires to come up. This scene reminded me of another embarrassing incident from my high school years. I had a friend off and on through high school who was cute, I thought. One day I approached him and he says:

"Eden, can I drop a bomb on you?"

"okay"

"I want you to think of me like you do your friend, Lori."

Oh, how humiliating, for both of us! Thinking of it now, it must have been difficult being gay in a small town (I grew up in Hillsboro, Oregon), but the straight guys weren't paying attention to me, so it was open season on our pride. I learned that you can't "convert" from gay to straight, and to his credit, he didn't try to hide it. I was just stupid, even before the tumor so I believed there was a thin chance that he wasn't.

Perspective

I get caught up in my brain cancer, and I allow myself that.

Not having a brain has proved to me how important that organ is, even to accomplishing simple daily tasks others take for granted. I have been saddened by the number of my classmates, who are also suffering from cancer or other serious illnesses that have made "living" harder. It makes me wonder if the water in my hometown of Hillsboro, Oregon was contaminated.

The latest case and point? My classmate Paula. I thought my cancer was bad, but she has cancer on her liver. That's a lot of pain, and a frighteningly long surgery (8hours). I've been struggling with how best to help her. What I do know is that you can live with cancer, and I have tried to assure her of this. I also know it's not pretty-- a lot of worry, fatigue, nausea and sometimes pain. And there's the commuting to, and waiting at doctor's offices, sometimes just for the privilege of getting no useful news, or bad news. A patient has to pull his or herself up from the bootstraps, and tell his or herself that that it's worth it.

Good news for people who like bad news

Let's start with the good news. I had part of my plantar wart of doom removed. The doctor thought it best to remove it in stages, as I am a cancer patient at an elevated risk of infection. I arrived at 1:30pm and left at 4:00. Although it was laser surgery, knives and needs were in the room. Knives were used to scrape and dig. Needles were used to administer local anesthesia that made me scream like a banshee. After the digging and painful needles, the laser machine cauterized the many craters. As soon as these cratere heal, it will be time to dig more craters.

Yes, that is the good news. The bad news is, after interviewing all day with a head cold, and driving a total of eight hours, Amazon.com told my husband he wasn't a good match. We'll see how far we can get with unemployment and Social Security.