Becoming borg

So I'm getting the port this Wednesday. Francine, the nurse at Hopkins, showed me what it looks like (it's purple, what are they trying to do, bejewel me?) and how it works. Then later one of the patients volunteered to let me see hers - actually you don't see it at all, it's just a bump under the skin not plastic sticking out of you.

Unfortunately the only time available was 2 on Thursday which means I can't eat all day (ummm hello people I'm trying to GAIN weight)

Ya know, dodgeball isn't the most important thing in life but it's fun and darn it, I'm going to be missing the first game to become borg (ok so now that I'm not going to be borg, it's just fun to say)

Today in Buddhism class we went over the 12 dependent related links. I loved that section in Joyful Path. As always happens with dharma, when you study it again you learn something new. Today Varahi asked us to focus on Contact/Feeling and Craving/Grasping. Basically Contact is your discriminating mind - it tells you A is going to be pleasant or B is going to be neutral or C is going to be unpleasant, etc. This is what you do before you actually feel it, you decide how you're going to feel. Sometimes you can tell this is happening but sometimes the time it takes for you to decide and feel are like THAT! so you don't realize. Our homework is to work on our contact this week.

So I have a lot of time before I feel the experience of my second round of chemo so I'm going to say it is going to be pleasant. So I'm not saying that I won't have side effects that's silly, that part I can't control. No, I'm going to think fatigue is pleasant - I get to stay in bed all day watching tv or reading a book - some people think that's a great thing anyway! So I'm going to think it's a pleasant break from work. Not wanting to eat is pleasant - hell some people don't want to eat SOO bad so that they can lose weight. So no appetite is pleasant, and I don't have to worry about losing weight because I gain it all back a week later. Anyway it's not just my chemo treatment, everything CAN be pleasant so that's what I'm going to work on.

Another thing my teacher talked about was grasping at the time of death. I think my grasping is for not having pain, not being incapacitated so that's my weakness and is what I need to work on. I don't know what else I may grasp when I have to think back to my first 2 weeks when I was terrified and thinking death was imminent I just thought about being sick, be ridden, unable to do the things I love... maybe I would grasp biking and hiking and dodgeball and capture the flag and all those fun experiences... I don't know.