From the top, about my bottom (see what I did there?)

Putting first things first, you should know that at the time of this writing (September 2011), it has been about 15 months since my treatment for colon cancer and right now all the signs point to me being cured. Yes, cancer can be cured.

So, why a blog then?

With any luck the worst part of my trip is over in terms of the physical part of the disease and treatment, but I've been finding it difficult to heal and recover mentally and emotionally. I'm out of sorts. I cry at Disney movies or listening to Pink Floyd. I vacillate between feeling sorry for myself and seriously getting on my own nerves about feeling sorry for myself. Some things that I used to enjoy have lost their appeal. And while I have every reason to be grateful and think of myself as one of the lucky ones, sometimes not so much. It's difficult to describe, but my soul hasn't settled and maybe it won't. I don't know what the new normal is just yet. This is a trip where I don't know the route or the destination, and maybe it's that feeling of lack of control that is at the root of my malaise.

On the positive side, and at least in my own mind, I am much more likely to roll with the punches of day to day life, and have become quite philosophical about many things in the larger sense. **cliche alert** I have a renewed joy for the simple pleasures of life. And in an interesting trick of the human mind, I spend a lot more time thinking and planning for the future, even though for a while it seemed like I might not have one.

It occurred to me that writing about it all might be cathartic. And what the hell, let's share it with the world, and maybe someone will commiserate, be informed, educated or even entertained. So if you're reading this and you're someone who may have asked me 'how are you feeling?' at some point in the past, well, here you're going to get the real answer. If you don't know me, maybe you're going through this yourself, or maybe you know someone else who is going through this, and I can help you understand how they are feeling. Let the wonderful doctors and nurses worry about the rest.

What I don't intend is for this blog to be any source of knowledge or expertise. It's just little old me and what I am going through.

And so well over a year later I'm going to regurgitate my whole experience mostly from memory and with the benefit of hindsight, which ought to result in a slightly less whiny and angry tone to the proceedings. But I guess we'll see about that. If I didn't have something to get off my chest I wouldn't be doing this in the first place.

A little housekeeping note - most blogs list the newest post first, but I want this to read more like chapters in a book and go oldest to newest. This requires fudging the post dates so just ignore them.

Happy reading.