…….. trying to balance … welll, just about everything.

Like balancing the awareness that cancer can recur, and that a certain amount of vigilance and “listening to your body” is called for, with trying not to think “so is this cancer or corona?” every time a physical ache or pain manifests itself. And to not be too impatient with the discomforts from the scars (but they ARE exhausting).

And the fear of the hormone blockers which the hospital recommends that I take with the realisation that not everybody gets those dreaded side effects. Something I will discuss with my gynecologist in the coming week.

And the need to get out and walk, visit cafés and meet friends for meals, but not overdo those so that I have to lie low for a couple of days in order to recover from the resulting fatigue (I was stupid enough to do that once in the first week back from hospital and once in the second week). Now that I am entering the third week back from hospital, I hope I have learned the lesson.

And with the rising awareness of the role that nutrition and exercise plays, educating myself (mostly on the nutrition side since I can’t do that much in the exercise department yet) and preparing healthy meals while allowing myself the occasional slip-up and not becoming a complete fanatic.

And taking care of the mental aches and pains with the help of guided meditations (I find myself using almost exclusively this channel) and about to learn more about qi gong (mostly this channel), instead of entering the spiral of negative thinking which I have always been prone to do.

And to not fly into a fit of rage just because to many people, THINKING has become so last millennium. Like the business with the ironing board. Until now, I have always put it away between uses, but it is quite heavy, so I should – OBVIOUSLY or so I thought – not really be lifting it, and given the fact that in summer I use it much more frequently, I left it out, FOR A REASON. So I came home the other day to find that my cleaning help had not only flattened it (??) but even moved it to another room (??). Let us just say that I am glad I followed my self-imposed rule to always sleep on it before sending a message written in anger. But seriously: WHAT. THE. F%§$!?.

No progress with the “Reha”. It is again a matter of two bureaucracies clashing. I have written twice to the clinic I am hoping to go to, Hamm Klinik Nordfriesland, asking them for a cost estimate for my sickness insurance, but they are not responding at all.

And finally, hoping to get back in photography mode.

After I sold my old and very heavy Canon gear and bought a much lighter Fujifilm camera and a couple of lenses, between diagnosis and surgery, as a distraction, I tried to watch some tutorials about the use of that camera (Fuji is a very different system), but was discouraged to find that my brainfog was such that I could not get my head around anything they were talking about. As in – even with camera in hand – NOTHING. This was scary, since this is not my first time around trying to juggle aperture, shutter speed, ISO …..

Since then, I have not had the courage to even look at the camera, and I guess the constant discomfort from the scars also distracted me, and I have been wondering whether I would ever get back in photography mode.

This worried me slightly since – what on earth would I do then – in the age of pandemics, avoiding crowds and rooms full of people, and without a dog? It is easy enough to enjoy the summer without having a hobby, but a long, dark winter is looming …..

So yesterday, I finally plucked up the courage to watch Michael the Maven’s excellent tutorial again, and again with camera in hand, and bingo – it all made sense, or at least as much sense as it could for a technical klutz such as myself. The rest is practise, practise, practise.