This is tough post to write. And I'll keep it short.

I dropped my blog for a couple of days for exactly the reasons stated on Monday, but also a bigger one. I was having a massive, slow-motion meltdown. This is post-chemo stuff, my inner self catching up with months of unavoidable neglect of personal and relationship issues, the sort that calendula_witch and I are normally very diligent about managing proactively, or at least more-or-less in realtime.

The details don't matter except to the principals, but in the course of my meltdown I managed to be quite vile to both calendula_witch and our dear, dear friend markferrari. Both of them love me enough to weather it, and calendula_witch managed to call me back to Earth. Still, I have offered them my unreserved and unconditional apologies, and do so again here.

It's not my normal habit to discuss the nuts and bolts of my relationships here on the blog, but I found it important to reveal this bit of business as part of my ongoing discussion about the issues and pressures of cancer. Note that after eleven months of one form of medical hell after another, and still in the warm aura of the recent reprieve from a second round of chemotherapy, is when the ugliest emotional moments have happened.

I've said before cancer is a social disease. It took so much from me. As markferrari said to me last night on the telephone, the most important thing cancer took from me was myself. The process of reinhabiting my life has proven far more painful and destructive than I could have imagined. I am blessed that the people around me care about me enough to weather that with me.

The greatest blessing (says this staunch atheist) of all of this messy business is that I do have a chance to put it all back together. With luck, better than it was before.

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