This morning while I was making coffee I realized where my anxiety and fear from last night came from. Last night my viewpoint on this was much different than the way I should be looking at this. I have always known that all of the literature and studies have shown that when cases like mine come up that it is often seen as a death knell as it is commonly seen as a sign of spread. It is also why the doctors are so hesitant to try and treat it because it is seen as futile. What I realized this morning was, so what? If it is systemic and it has actually spread, why take the viewpoint of what people say. Why be trapped with that mindset that things are finite. I can accept that it is systemic, what I do not need to accept is that it will result in imminent death. We may know that it is systemic. Fine. That may be a fact. We also know that it is very difficult to treat when that happens and you then transition to palliative to control it. There are numerous stories of people cheating death when it come to cancer and beating the odds. I understand the attitude of those people and the mindset that they had. When you hear some of the news of stage 4 and widespread it can be devastating. I may have cells free floating, but in 4 years they have not grown and spread. This was a fear that they had initially and we do not know what triggered the current case, but does it matter. The location right now is superficial and does not seem to be impacting anything major. I will focus on what we know now and not let worries of tomorrow impact things now. We will treat what is known and manage the unknown as best as we can. Every day is a miracle and I will just focus on positive things and cherish every moment without worrying about what ifs. If it is systemic then I will want to beat the odds because I was told that I had a finite time to live. I have never abided by the rules so why start now.
When Mel and I were chatting after the call with the doctor Mel had asked me if I wanted to chat about anything. I replied no, and she said that she often spoke out loud about this while she was driving or in the shower, that it helped her deal with things as she said the words out verbally. I replied that it was why I wrote. It helped me organize my thoughts and gave me a release to deal with things. I know that I am hesitant to speak of some of the things with Mel because I am worried about how she will take things if she perceives that I am not doing well. If I show strength, she will be ok, when I struggle she worries.
Now that I have expressed my dreary thoughts I want to discuss gratitude. I am grateful for all of the people that care to reach out. I know that people are worried about bugging me and that people frequently ask me how I am. If you ask me that question and you are my friend you should be aware that I will most likely give you a glib response. If you are not sure what the word glib is, think of when I give you an off the cuff smart ass answer. I do not think that I would ever sincerely and honestly tell someone that I am struggling or not something negative. In those instances I would probably not want people to worry and avoid responding completely. Now I do not want people to think that when I do not respond that is the reason. There are instances when I get bombarded with texts and I am busy with something. I then forget to reply as the message gets buried. I answer the ones that are immediate. Primacy recency effect. I am testing out that theory and validating that it is true. So do not take it to heart. Just keep on bombarding me hoping that you will be the last one. Some people may know how to make scripts to send me messages on a set schedule, but that will be considered cheating and I will ignore you. While working at HSN I had a couple of friends whom I had automated responses sent to them. I wrote a script on my phone that would randomly send a text from a curated list every hour on their birthday. I totally forgot about it and it happened and my colleague at the time asked me to shut that off as it was disrupting her work day. I welcome all interactions from my friends, but know that if you ask me how are you doing I am going to give you a generic answer. Why not ask something much deeper, such as how is the weather? I will most likely tell you that I am cold or I have not been outside. The more I think of it, I think I may just hand off conversational texts to an AI to respond for me. I think that I will give it a test. Not everyone will get it as I need a control, but it will be a random sample. All of this rambling to say, do not feel that you are burden to reach out and text me. I will always respond to everyone the best I can. Just remember that I have studied memory so I will often need to test my own. If you get no response I am going to blame it on the primacy/recency effect. Do not take it personal like Mel does. Thanks for reading. Please like and subscribe.
Quoc Hao
P.S. – there is no way to subscribe as I did not setup an RSS feed to tell people when there is a new post. I want people to come on their own volition to help me drive ads on my site. It helps pay for Xavier’s hockey.