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  1. #1
    No One of Consequence wilomn's Avatar
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    3-14-14 Still in Remission but Sort of With a Mission

    Had my latest PET Scan last Tues. I am still in remission and look better now, internally anyway, than I did six months ago.

    It's been a long time since I wrote anything here. There are a few reasons for that. The business I started with Raul from Westcoast Jungle is closing its retail presence. It was taking a LOT of time and the return simply wasn't great enough to keep it going. But it took a LOT of my time.

    With the closing of the shop, I'll still be breeding and selling rodents and a few snakes- just not with a retail outlet, and so time is once more going to be available for other things than scooping poop and filling buckets with water.

    The main reason though, for this long stay from writing, is knowing what to write and what to keep to myself. I'm really not all huggy/sharey as a rule, but I think, and am I just letting hubris run away with me or am I really on to something here is a constant question, that what I say is understandable, that what I try to convey is something people can ... more easily relate to than other perhaps more mainstream accounts of this journey that so many take and leave family and friends wondering what the afflicted think and feel. I don't know how many others who have or had cancer reacted to treatment as well as I did, if they kept the necessary hard line optimism that I think is essential to any victory of any length, I don't know a lot. In part that is intentional. I don't go out of my way to research any aspect of this disease. I just live as best I can knowing that every day may be the last one I have that's cancer free while at the same time giving that knowledge so little acknowledgment that it become irrelevant in my daily life and maybe, just maybe, that is something important; being able to know and go on, in spite of that knowledge, as if it didn't exist. I can do this.

    I've spent the last three months wondering if my cancer was back, but at the same time I put in a lot of 60 and 70 hour weeks trying to make my business live. I got a cough before Xmas that was good and deep and reminded me of what it was like just before I started chemo. I also kept putting off getting the scan I got this week and going in to see the Doctor. I tell myself, and so it must be true neh, that whatever the results had been I was good with it, that I didn't, and still don't, need to be tested every few months. Life needs to be lived with more than apprehension of an arbitrary day ninety or a hundred and twenty days down the road when you get your, my, next scan to see what's growing inside you/me.

    I wonder if I should go and ask others what they think of this, what they thought of their fights, what they do to live a life worth living. I don't because I'm not sure it matters. I go on as I do, generally bulling my way through whatever obstacles are before me, taking my hits and leveling my foes as I can, cancerous and otherwise. I've noticed that not everyone uses this approach. I can't say another way is better or worse, I haven't used them, but I can say that this one has seen me through the deepest :cens0r::cens0r::cens0r::cens0r: I've ever been mired in and I've been in pretty deep in the not too distant past. I suppose I'm looking for validation, for someone else who's had cancer to say that yes, I have it right and that's what it's like and thank you for telling my story because I couldn't explain it like that.

    Once the smoke clears I once again realize that it is a pipe dream in reality as well. Not only is that extremely unlikely to happen, but of what real importance would it be to me? I doubt it would change anything, not that which I wrote of nor the manner in which it was written. It would be great if they agreed with me, but what if disagreement was the consensus?

    I get to this point often enough that it's become familiar. It usually leads to my conclusion that I'm going to do what I think I should, be it writing or not writing and it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks because deep down, as much as I hope this does help others, I write for me. I learn about myself and in so doing, I learn about others, gain insights and understandings that I would not have did I not write. And I hope too, never in less than a small way and often in a fairly large one, that those who read really get something from it. Help, a chuckle, an insight, a point of view previously unseen but, now that found, appreciated both for the knowledge in it as well as an understanding that eases hardship, heartache, and fear.

    Now that I know I've got a bit more time and I'm making more time available by closing the shop, I will have more time to write, to think, to create, to try to, inane as it sounds, by being me, make the world a little bit better.

    Oy, my head feels so BIG right now.

    Didn't realize it until I titled this thread just now, but for the first time in my memory, I have a mission. Anyone got the number for Mission Control? I seem to have misplaced it.
    I may not be very smart, but what if I am?
    Stinky says, "Women should be obscene but not heard." Stinky is one smart man.
    www.humanewatch.org

  2. #2
    BPnet Senior Member Slim's Avatar
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    With the exception of the closing of your retail shop, this is great news all the way around! Can't wait to see you chiming in more often around here.
    Thomas "Slim" Whitman
    Never Met A Ball Python I Didn't Like

  3. #3
    BPnet Lifer Mike41793's Avatar
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    Re: 3-14-14 Still in Remission but Sort of With a Mission

    Don't be sad about the shop closing, think of it as a positive. All that extra stress isn't good for hair growth.

    Sent from my SCH-I435 using Tapatalk
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    mad roaches yo

  4. #4
    No One of Consequence wilomn's Avatar
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    I can't find the thanks button, but thanks guys.

    I'm not really sad about the shop. It would have been nice if it had worked, but it didn't. Some stuff works, some doesn't.

    That in a nutshell, is it. Besides, with the way commerce is growing on the internet, online may be a better venue in the long run.
    I may not be very smart, but what if I am?
    Stinky says, "Women should be obscene but not heard." Stinky is one smart man.
    www.humanewatch.org

  5. #5
    BPnet Lifer Mike41793's Avatar
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    Re: 3-14-14 Still in Remission but Sort of With a Mission

    Quote Originally Posted by wilomn View Post
    Some stuff works, some doesn't.
    Exactly. We're I to have to choose between chemo or the shop, I'd rather have the chemo work out for you.

    Sent from my SCH-I435 using Tapatalk
    1.0 normal bp
    mad roaches yo

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