The sun, the moon, and the cartel

Lots of excitement and no excitement all at once.  Our plans for our one day off have been disrupted by two things.  One: me.  The other: the cartel.  Duh, of course!  Ironically, the recommendation from both is to stay in.  The part of town that's making the news is far from us.  Respecting the request from the cartel and government (yes, the cartel is surprisingly polite) seems to be a prudent choice, though we do feel totally safe where we are.  Meanwhile, I should mostly stay inside (out of the sun, at least) because of the longer lasting photosensitzer that I had at the end of the week.  The new game is "what color will I pee next?" as the photosensitzers and occasional B vitamins create some curious options.  

Leannda and "La Machina"

I'm starting to miss home and I think a few more days at the clinic is perfect timing to call it good for this round.  I'm generally tired of getting poked.  The acupuncture/massage therapist came to the clinic on Friday, and I passed on a session as the thought of more needles made me cringe a little.  Physical activity hasn't been consistently available just because I'm either attached to an IV, sensitive to the sunlight, or asked to take it easy after being poked in the liver.  The best opportunity for a walk is in the morning before going to the clinic, which we've done most days.  At that time of day, the predominant smell is chocolate chip cookies emanating from, of all places, the gym.  

In a way, stall rest has been easier than I had thought just because my body has been VERY occupied with the different therapies.  I'm used to being very active and moving around all day, so it's definitely strange to sometimes crash pretty hard at the end of the day after doing "nothing."  The nothing is a very important something, even if it doesn't register to my athletic senses.  

We had a conversation with the doctors yesterday about medical costs.  Sometime in October, I'll need to do an MRI to check progress.  We were talking about this timing, as it can take awhile to get scheduled through Kaiser.  Not always--sometimes it's 3 days from now, sometimes it's a couple of months.  Anyway, this led to a can of worms about medical costs and insurance.  My responsibility for an MRI (if I haven't reached my max out of pocket) is between $1100-1200 through Kaiser.  In Mexico, at a top imaging center, it's $400.  We also learned about Prenovo in the US (soon to be in Seattle) and offers MRI and imaging.  Not inexpensive ($1000), but still more affordable than what I'd be paying with insurance.  It's a wild system, isn't it?  

I know there are better insurance plans out there, but as a self-employed person, I purchase insurance through the marketplace.  It doesn't entirely suck, but it could be so much better.  I was grateful to have it when I had surgery and about 8 scans in 2019, because that bill could've bought a couple of houses.  It doesn't serve as well in a "chronic illness" category, and I feel like that's the position that a lot of people can easily find themselves in.  Chronic is slow and lurky--it doesn't always look like anything in the way that a surgery or a broken bone does--and it's expensive in its own relentless way.  

I'm very lucky, in that I'm not having any symptoms from my cancer.  I could easily ignore it and pretend its not there, as I'm seemingly unaffected.  There's part of me that likes that story because then it can show that stage 4 cancer doesn't look like anything.  That you can live along with it, thrive with it, and it doesn't equal 50 shades of death spiral.   There's something heroic about the story told that way.  There's another part of me that's really starting to dislike that though.  It feels disrespectful to myself and dismissive as to why I have cancer.  I'll never have an answer to that "why," but that doesn't feel like the point.  The point is the exploration into myself, and life, and love, and respect, and purpose, and the dark and gnarly, that I never would have explored to the depth I have without having cancer provoke me.  It's just a messanger.

Ok, enough of that.  Here's a bowl of fruit to make everyone feel better, yum!: