Friday, February 20, 2009

Progress on Dad

Turns out it's metastatic melanoma, and it's stage IV, which means that it's spread to places other than the skin cells where it started. The places I know of are his lymph nodes and liver. He's going to head over to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, since his oncologist advised him that there's a team that specializes in melanoma over there. Clinical trials are a possibility, but if there aren't any new treatments to be tried, then 'regular' chemotherapy will start in a bit less than three weeks.

I'm pretty bummed about it, but probably not as much as my dad is. My dad had called me to let me know what he knew as I was coming back from lunch with a vendor. Not really a pleasant way to end a conversation, but the guy I was with was very kind and understanding about it.

I've sort of been caught in between immersing myself in work as a means of denying it's going on and the fact that I'm having a bit of a hard time concentrating on work at all because it's going on.

Then throw the fact that it's 360s season at work, and I'm just about ready to implode under the weight of all this introspection.

At least they found the termite nest while doing the water damage/fungus repairs, but that's another story.

Friday, February 13, 2009

By the way, I feel a little better now.

The subject kind of says it all. Work's been a little stressful. Dad's in the process of being diagnosed with something that looks like lymphoma. At least Isaac seems to be sleeping through the night reliably.

Been reading a really good book. It's by this guy.

I'm going to finish it before recommending it to our Chief Talent Officer as something she should hand to everyone here the day they become a manager.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

The Danger of Attachments

I'm not talking about the email kind. The joys of having a relationship are overshadowed from the very beginning by the darkness of that relationship's end.

It may be a business relationship that runs aground upon the shoals of a changing economic climate. It may be a high school sweetheart from whom you grow apart. It may be a beloved spouse who is lured away by another person, or lost to some other obsession. Worst of all, it may be a child or parent who is lost to an untimely death. Every beautiful and tender thing in our lives can be ripped from us by random or premeditated events that are beyond our control.

Death can come slow or quick, through a freak accident with an umbilical cord, a suicide or the rise of a rebellious clump of cells against the greater good of the body that hosts them. It can be hard to see the simple joys of connecting with others through the haze of pain unleashed by ripping away relationships you already have.

Even though the joy of every new attachment contains within it the seeds of its own painful destruction, it's important to seize today's connections for the richness they bring, regardless of the eventual, inevitable costs. Otherwise, why are we here?