kvetching up

Entry 1 " He's making a list, he's checking it twice, he's gonna find out whose naughty or nice. "  A month after you are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, you go on a backpacking trip with your husband, your sisters, and their spouses.Your husband notices some weird shit has been happening around the home, like your decision to let someone else cut your hair, despite his pathetic pleading to you to let him do it. He is suspicious, not for the first time since you have been Lake Quinalt, 2013. together. Each time in the past, when he confronted you, you eventually copped to the affair, like you did with Tom. There were other times he suspected, but didn't confront you. There was never  a time he was aware of, when you thought you'd been caught before he talked to you about it. You have been cheating on your spouse for several years with el pinche. The evidence your spouse found of the affair is legion, found on your phone while laying in the tent that nigh...

Entry 1 6:00 a.m. Crash cart at my gym My knee recovered by yesterday afternoon . Go figure. After two rounds of ibuprofen in the morning, I laid off. By mid-afternoon I had full range of motion, albeit with still some swelling and discomfort, but the pain is gone, and the remaining swelling is what I normally have with this knee. The only thing that I can think is that my knee, as I have experienced in the past, was impacted by the change in barometric pressure. No matter. I skipped exercise yesterday, and will determine which machine I will get on today, as I move through the hours. I met with the dietician on Monday. She was 12--okay, maybe 15. Her instructions were not what I was expecting from my interactions with Heidi the nurse. I was under the belief that she would recommend either a vegan or vegetarian diet. Neither was true. She told me to stay away from Atkins and Paleo, as research has shown it consistently leads to early death for people with Type II diabetes. I get it. In...

Entry 1 In 2015, when Leiney first showed signs of depression, our world was rocked. The suffering she was going through was painful to watch and experience. I was just about that age when I went through my first bout of clinical depression, so I could feel her pain. At the time our kid fell ill, I was struck by how many tools Jenny had in her toolbox to help Leiney. She knew who to call to do intervention. We pulled together as a team to help Leiney, but Jenny, because of her profession and job, knew what to do, and who to call and got Leiney the professional services she needed. I remember spending days with Leiney, taking time off work and caring for her, snuggling with her on the couch, and watching television. We watched Deadpool on our big leather couch together--her first R-rated movie.  What strikes me about these memories is how hard Jenny and I worked as a team. I always was the one who stayed home with Leiney those many days she was too sick to go to school. There was a ...

 Entry 1    3:48 a.m. Why am I awake?

 Entry 1     10:18 a.m. Inter A week from the MRI, and my knees aren't quite so bad. Albeit, my walk remains more Charlie Chaplin than Long John Silver like.  Still, I can move a bit better, but pay for it with aching knees.  It could be worse. I could have terminal cancer. I installed a motion sensor, a glass break detector a camera with alarm and motion sensors, and a motion sensor light around the outside of the downstairs yesterday. I also affixed stickers to the windows. I have two more lights and one more camera to install.  The camera and light I installed during the deluge; a real old-fashioned PNW experience.  I slept in my bed last night for the first time in two weeks.  I woke repeatedly. I don' think I will be able to do that peacefully until I have the downstairs sliding glass door replaced with security doors and bars placed on the 2 huge windows. My love hate relationship with Seattle does have a lot to do with the years...

Entry 1     11:55 p.m.    Couples therapy was fun.  One would never have imagined that Jenny finds me a problem.  She said she is convinced that without me she wouldn't be alive.  She prattled on and on about how much she has learned and changed in the last year.  I argued that this wasn't a growth opportunity for me, and that while I have adjusted my expectations given her illness. The affair and her abject refusal to stop it, I certainly don't feel I've grown. That may largely be a true description of how I feel, but I was really speaking to how little she has changed, and debunking the idea that a terminal illness helps you see more clearly. Instead, from my perspective, it can also magnify your faults, and make them more pervasive, more likely to show up.

If someone stepping on your throat apologizes for doing so, it doesn't mean a lot if she doesn't lift her foot and let you breathe. Last night's tandem therapy session (hard to call  therapy with Shayla, marriage therapy, when the goal isn't to recouple)  was Jenny talking for 45 minutes, and me listening, largely in silence.  Jenny is in excellent spirits because she is feeling much better than she has since chemotherapy began.  Also, I don't discuss Eric  the pinché motherfucker. She mentioned last night a couple of things worth noting.  One is, she is ever so grateful how I am caring for her.  But, she just can't let go of   Eric  the pinché motherfucker.  Two, she is upset I am talking to people about the affair--and that apparently I didn't tell Kelly (which one?) that I had an affair 10 years ago (when we were separated as a result of an affair she had). With regard to the former, I told her the story of falling in love w...

  How Long Has This Been Going On?   Jenny and I have been in therapy for several months.  Ostensibly, we are working to learn how to live together when she loves someone else, but needs a caretaker as she is sick and probably dying.  She has fed me a lot of horseshit.  A lot.  She hid the affair and lied to me about trips and nights out. When caught, she lied repeatedly about the length of the affair, first admitting to only a few months, then a year, then July 2018. She lied about why she wanted  Eric  the pinché motherfucker to shave her head. She has become an inveterate liar.  She lies to her friends now about our relationship, she makes me an ogre.  Throughout the lying, since caught, and probably before, she justifies her bad behavior by lying about me in dozens of ways.  She does everything, I do nothing.  I am the fault of the dead relationship. Because I didn't respond to lengthy texts, its my fault she is having...

Same As It Ever Was. Entry 1 Jenny has just returned from the chiropractor.  She came in, acting clearly and looking guilty.  She has with Eric   the pinché motherfucker .  I have to let it go. She thinks I'm stupid, she must, or simply doesn't give a fuck or both.  It's tiring, and I just don't understand.  I just don't.  She really doesn't give a fuck about me. I spend my days caring for her when she is debilitated, I have come back home to keep her from killing herself because she has been suicidal. And. It. Just. Doesn't. Stop. To be clear, I am not pleased that she is seeing him, but that is not what is upsetting. She gave me her word she would tell me when she was seeing him, and has never kept that promise. Jenny is feeling remarkably better.  I must note that she hasn't brought up Eric   the pinché motherfucker , except to suggest he come move the desk and the couch on Saturday, if I am not interested in doing it.  Which, tells m...

Jenny has cancer.  Terminal cancer.  We learned that in late July. Jenny had  dropped 25 lbs. in the spring without trying.  She had been having vague stomach complaints since October.  As a balm for her concerns, her doctor agreed to do a CT scan for her, but told her they would find nothing.  Jenny wanted to rule out pancreatic cancer, which had recently killed her dad-in the spring of 2019.  Her mother had been sick with lymphoma since February 2020.  The day of the scan, the doctor told Jenny they would get results back in a few days. When Jenny's phone rang that same afternoon, I was in the living room with Abby, where I was torturing her by playing the Rapping Duke on Youtube. Jenny shouted from the room, "Geoff, get in here, the doctor's on the phone." "You have a four cm. mass on your pancreas,"  he said. Jenny made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach.  "There is a spot on your liver. You have a necrotic lymph nod...