The last two days have just been full of dull administrative work. I have to submit applications for short term leave pay, critical illness pay, and approval for work leave. All three have slightly minor requirements and need tons of documentation to make sure I’m not committing fraud. It’s super time consuming and boring work that has to get done, not really blog worthy. My dad did bring Speedy over to hang out with me while I did paperwork and scheduled appointments. Any semblance of “normal” is comforting right now. Although it’s apparent how much fatter this piggie got while at my parent’s for the last 2 weeks. You can’t even see his collar or neck.
My work invited me to join a World Cup bracket, but I was unfortunately too late to create one before the online site closed the registration window. I had to rush to get my bracket done before the Russia-Saudia Arabia game, hopefully I did it right on paper. Sorry Panama
The last few days I’ve been thinking about the stuff that people usually don’t think about or are uncomfortable talking about: death. I don’t believe or hope that I’m going to die because of this illness but I feel like the thought of death is a bit more front and center for me than it ever was before.
I think my travel blog is my testament of a life well lived. I’ve traveled to far off places, met a ton of people, and crossed off some of the tougher goals I set for myself like getting my masters degree. Whileeeee I still don’t have a Tesla, I was thinking about the outpouring of love and care that I’ve gotten from close friends and acquaintances over the last week. Money didn’t buy any of that. I didn’t go out of my way to help someone because I expected to get a favor later on. It just really gives me confidence that I will have left this Earth better than I found it.
One of the things that really drives me and gives me energy is mentorship. I was able to make time yesterday afternoon to meet with one of my mentees, Cyndi, who I got connected with through the Carlson Alumni Mentor program earlier this year. She’s going to be a senior at the U and is in her 2nd week of an internship at Target corporate. She has tons of potential and I’m really looking forward to seeing all the stuff she’s going to learn in the next 9 weeks of her internship.
During our conversation, she expressed disappointment that she couldn’t help me more. I told her that the way she can help me is by allowing me to help her. If she needed help with her intern project, intern presentation, or had questions navigating the Target corporate culture, absolutely do not hesitate to ask. Being able to help her get that job offer from Target in the next 9 weeks will be something that I want to help her achieve as it would give me purpose to get better quickly so I could not only help her this summer but get connected with another student this fall to mentor as well.
I’ve had 3 past mentees reach out to me this week reminding me of the ways that I had an impact on their lives. It really makes me feel good that my efforts made a positive difference for them.
Right now I’m kind of worried that because I’m going to be wasting away indoors while everyone else gets to enjoy their summers, I’ll end up like Bart Simpson in the epsiode where he breaks his leg and goes slightly insane. My friend Bob can supply the telescope.
Lately, I’ve been visualizing walking up to the entrance of a very long dark tunnel and I have a very short period of time to prepare myself before I enter and can’t turn back. One of the things I’ve been somewhat concerned about is the losing hair part of chemo treatment as I highly value my luscious locks. Exhibit A from 11 years ago:
The oncology nurse told me that my treatment is going to be at very high doses, therefore I have a large chance of losing my hair or it thinning a lot. I felt like because I’m slowly losing my independence and freedom of choice, I may as well do something drastic and crazy since I won’t have any other time in my life to do so and have people pretend to like it. I just didn’t want to stand in the shower in a few weeks and see my hair come out in clumps. I think I’d get really upset or freak out when it happens.
I’m planning on shaving my head a few weeks into therapy. With that plan in mind, I went to the salon today and had my hair dyed platinum silver because I’ve always wondered what it would look like if I joined a Korean pop group or pretended to be Asian Cooper Anderson. Also, I stopped shaving my face like 2 weeks ago just to see what would happen. I don’t like the way my puberty beard looks so I’m going to get rid of it.
You can’t see it in pictures but if you look at my hair in person at different angles the silver color is iridescent and kind of shimmers with the bleach blonde underneath. The haircut, bleach, and coloring took 2 hours and $60. Since I’m getting rid of it all soon anyway, it was totally worth it.
I’ll probably be starting chemo in the next week or two so I have to get my game face on. This is my and Speedy’s best game face.
Bring it on
Today was a good day 🙂
*Edit: Phil pointed out to me that I said Cooper Anderson instead of Anderson Cooper. You all knew who I meant, there is only one silver fox. I stand by my typo.
