Not Feeling Like Myself Lately

When I announced last month that I had cancer, I said that I'd do my best not to turn TSSBP into a cancer blog. I'm still committed to that, but I'm finding that my treatment is causing me to make some changes in how I interact with others online. Since my last update on how my treatment's been going (at the bottom of my Thanksgiving post), I ended up having a bad day after Thanksgiving until I got rid of some bad humours. (It was pretty impressive.) Feeling about 100x better, I celebrated by running around the blogosphere spreading my own particular brand of truth and light. Reading over those posts later on, I realized that they ended up being much nastier and condescending than I intended them to be. Not to make any excuses, but my thought processes seemed somehow "strange" and frenetic to me.

In a moment of clarity, I realized that as my body fights to repair the damage being caused by the radiation treatments I'm getting each weekday morning (just finished #8 of 25 planned today), it's gotta be wreaking havoc on my normal processes. I've gotten over 1,600 rads of x-rays to my stomach/esophagus over the last 12 days; I could see my body concentrating more on cell repair rather than brain chemical regulation. (Plus, I'm sure the chemo chemicals didn't help that much.)

Bottom line: Until I'm sure that it's the real "me" that's posting, I'm going to do my best to avoid any emotional topics online. I expect this will be a few months; who knows what the painkillers might do to my cognitive functions once I start taking those. I'll still post here, and maybe leave innocuous "good post" or "happy blogiversary" and especially "your prayers/good thoughts are appreciated" comments elsewhere, but I'm going to do my best to avoid going beyond that. (Can't promise anything, of course; some especially ridiculous comment by the Kooky Local Simpleton might set me off, or Lt. Raymond Perry USN (Ret.) might post another article about submarines, and no one can truly predict the future.)

And to all those I offended over the weekend, please accept my heartfelt apology.

Update 1415 05 Dec: I decided to modify my "policy" on non-substantive comments to include allowing myself to correct obvious factual errors in a non-emotional manner. I was on the verge of tearing out my armpit hair trying to keep myself from commenting otherwise.