Here in the Glistening Green

The rain has come. The picture above is not recent, but it does give a sense of the greenness of the world and the way the leaves in the orchard glisten. The current reality, however, is wetter, drippier, and not so bright. The sky has silvery tones at times but mostly it's just flat and gray. It's been raining steadily, sometimes straight down, but sometimes sideways when the wind picks up. I'm feeling lethargic today, but I suppose if one is going to spend a day in bed, this is a good kind of day for it.

Rather than blogging regularly, I've been sending out email updates to friends, but a lot has happened since my previous post, and it seems like a good idea to check in. Maybe when I feel more ambitious I'll turn the updates into a post, but for now I'm just sort of saying hello. Yesterday marked three weeks since the surgery.

There are good stretches and difficult ones. My life is about management of discomfort, and pacing myself. I'm trying not to lose perspective. Monte tells me that I am much stronger than I was, and yesterday I walked up the canyon all the way to a neighbor's house and back. My biggest problem has come out of left field...or rather left eye...the eye is not properly blinking or creating tears, and by the end of the day, it becomes terribly dry and irritated.  I have eye drops, which don't really provide more than a momentary balm, and friends have suggested patches and other remedies, but I'm still trying to figure it out. I ordered a moisture patch thing from Amazon...who knows when that will arrive? And I have an appointment with an ophthalmologist on Friday if we can get to Santa Barbara. In the meantime, I dread the evening hours when this thing starts to act up.

And yet...I need to remember that my tumor is unequivocally gone, and although I wish the healing would happen faster, there is every reason to believe that eventually I will be back to normal. I realize that there are people who go through far worse than this, battling cancer, for example, and despite all the suffering, they do not get better. I will get better.

It's just a little harder than I expected.