Tears dry on their own

I haven't really cried since they told me I had cancer; I've gotten a little leaky in the eyes but no real crying. Apparently all it takes to open the floodgates is to work really hard on a fic-podfic collaboration, even when I was trying to process the news and my original teammate went AWOL, and post it and get absolutely zero comments. Amazing. Just…nothing. I finally gave up checking email and went to bed when sineala was kind enough to leave one for it. It's a new record low, and apparently that was the stimulus it required to cry.

Just reminded me more than ever that I'm going through this alone. I appreciate the comments from my other post, I do, but the thing is, what I'm talking about is being alone in real space. Sitting at a computer typing into the void or texting or whatever are physically painful acts for me, so all the listening in the world doesn't change the fact that I don't have anyone here for me and I'm disinclined toward more physical pain just to whine on the aether. People lead busy lives, it's the end of summer when everyone has plans--and my plans just happen to revolve around something really unfortunate that has inconvenient timing. Almost everyone I know who's had cancer got through it with the help of a partner or family member.

In other news, the "advanced recovery" nutrition drinks are really as awful as everyone says; they're so grossly sweet on top of this weird musky-metallic taste, ugh. I have to drink three of them a day, and bring the log sheet with me to surgery, like a test. I bought the apple juice I'm supposed to drink day of surgery but apparently no one sells apple juice in less than enormous bottles, and picked up the antibiotics and laxative drink. I was so hoping it might be a different laxative drink than the one I had before, which made me vomitous, but it's the same thing. Someone told me you could put it in tequila mixer to make it more palatable, but it's not so much the taste the bothers me (it just tastes like bad gatorade) but the consistency. For the surgery they apparently want you to concentrate the drinking of it over two limited time frames, which makes it worse; it took me hours to get through it last time because I kept getting the heaves.

All this while I'm supposed to be laundering everything I own that will touch me after the special shower-soap showers. I'm not sure if it'd be better to just have the hospital hose you down in a Silkwood shower when you check in--for the gallbladder surgery, I'd spent six hours vomiting before going to the ER, where I had to wait in the lobby for over an hour lying on the floor because it was the only way I wasn't in searing pain. I figure that's about as unsanitary as it gets, and I seemed to be fine. I understand why they do this--my mom's death was probably caused by an infection, sepsis of some kind that she'd picked up in the hospital in chemo--but man does it feel like overkill.

I'm going to try to post the next chapter of the Hollywood Steve WIP tomorrow, but I've written down where I was hoping to take it, and the three followup stories I wanted to write, and sending to minim calibre in case something happens to me. I hate the thought of that not getting finished, and so hopefully either she can, or she can find someone else to, write the rest of it. If only I could find someone to finish the Buffy WIP I abandoned years ago after sis_r died. I figure things are in good hands with min, though. God knows she's listened to me blather about this, and helped me with it so much in beta.