Thursday, March 12, 2009

Not Just a River in Egypt (Thursday's Morning's Post, Delayed)

Since I haven’t had an MRI recently, common sense should have made clear that the neurosurgeon couldn’t possibly have answers for my two pressing questions yesterday. That didn’t keep me from hoping for them. Instead, he felt my head and did the quick neuro assessment (follow the finger, reflexes, etc.) and pronounced it all good. To detect signs of the all-too-likely recurrence and the progress of my brain in refilling the tumor void takes another scan. That’s scheduled, so for now we just wait some more. Throughout this experience, I’ve been repeatedly surprised by my capacity for denial, as more characteristically, I’m the face-reality person. Live and learn. It’s undoubtedly self-protective in some way, but running into it repeatedly is tedious.

Keeping perspective is a struggle today: objectively, lots of good stuff is happening and steady progress towards big goals is evident. It’s not very good yet, but another chapter of my book is taking shape, the syllabus for the eight-week MBA course I teach is posted, today is the first day of the medical resident communication training, and the other major consulting project is coming along nicely, though with predictable bumps in the road. Still, the morass of self-recriminations is hard to overcome for the omissions and mistakes I made in the memorial invitation mailings and other similar lapses. That’s fed by feeling under the weather again—and Michael’s cough still hasn’t gone away.

There’s so much good to focus on, that’s my goal for the morning. After that, back on the horse right away.

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