My gift

Hello again, dear blog readers (if you are still there). I have been away from my blog but deeply wrapped up with life. Yes life! I am off the couch and experiencing the wonderful work-a-day issues of living, now with a different attitude.

So, I have had a few hits recently. Several weeks ago I woke up in the night with pain and numbness in my right arm and hand. The pain would just not go away. Because of my tiny laptop and cramped desk/chair set up, I figured my computer was the problem. I stayed away from my laptop for awhile, but the ache in my right hand and arm would just not go away. So, I decided to change my computer set up...new chair, new desk, new ergonomic keyboard, new keyboard tray, new monitor. The whole bit. It helped, but I was still suffering. I went to my doc. After poking around my arm and hands, he concluded "tennis elbow." I will be starting physical therapy next week. As I type this sentence, I still feel pain in my right arm.

Wait there's more....my hard drive crashed. This is the second crash in two years. After my last crash, I had a Mac Genius at the Genius Bar (which means the tech support guy at the mall Apple store) set up an elaborate two tier backup system--one backup to an external hard drive, the other to some mystical server in the Ethernet. Turns out that Mac Genius guy with the big holes in his ear lobes didn't set my backup software to copy my entire system. So, the important stuff was not saved. I did do an old fashioned backup on some thumb drives several months ago, so all is not lost. I am sending my hard drive to a data recovery service. They know me at the data recovery service. I attempted data recovery last time with no luck. I have very low expectations now.

I am amazingly upbeat. I could easily slip into a very familiar "poor me" attitude. I mean one day last week, I got the news that I had "tennis elbow" and that my hard drive crashed as I stood there with a wig on my head because I lost my hair to chemo. Instead, I am happy that I am so alive and active now that that I am getting hit with a healthy dose of life sh*t.

These past couple of weeks, I have been searching for how I have changed since my cancer diagnosis. Many people say they discover what is important in life. But I already knew what was important in life even before the diagnosis: my dear family and all of my wonderful friends (yes, all you guys out there.) In fact, the importance of family and friends was confirmed when I got sick. It was the love and attention that I got from everyone that helped me get through my recent ordeal.

So, I have been thinking how I have changed. Then I discovered it as I was walking into the mall to salvage my data..... Lost my data? Spent way too much money on a new computer set up? Hurting from tennis elbow? Gas prices now inching to $4 a gallon? Get over it!

For the rest of my life, nothing will ever be as bad as when I was diagnosed with cancer. Nothing. What a wonderful perspective. Cancer gives every survivor a gift. Cancer gave me the gift of perspective. I feel fairly invincible now.

In addition, I have returned to my professional life with renewed energy and creative vigor. While I have had to write for my work, it took this blog for me to discover joy in writing.

So, invincibility coupled with lots of creative juice...not bad.