Genetic Counselling

Tomorrow I will visit the cancer centre to see one of the genetic counsellors there. After a 1.5hour meeting, she will decide whether or not I qualify to have my genetic testing covered by provincial health care, or whether I'll have to pay for it myself. I assume that we will go through my family's cancer history, something that I submitted to the genetic testing office a few months ago, and then decide if my cancer prior to the (magic) age of 50 makes it worth looking for anomalies in the BRCA1/2 genes or not. This will impact my sisters and my daughter and if it's a positive test, then it will impact me too, as I'll have to decide whether or not to have further surgery. Personally, I don't think that genetic testing is going to indicate too much but it will be interesting tomorrow, this meeting.

On the weekend I had a hankering for books, not that I don't already have a ton of books that need to be culled...but I went to the used bookstore downtown and after a 30 minute search of the shelves, came home with a vintage Douglas Coupland (Girlfriend in a Coma), Christopher Moore (Fluke) and Emma Richler (I can't remember what it's called but it's not Feed my Dear Dogs because I have that one). All comedy. I can't read anything serious right now, or sad or conflicting. It's like I need to be amused all the time, nothing weighty.

(continuing in the random slices of life...) I feel like I have lost the ability to empathize, and I'm noticing that things that would never really have bothered me before are really disturbing, or they make me unreasonably angry, or sometimes sad. It could be the hormone therapy, it could be more stuff that I'm dealing with that I don't know everything about. What I mean is that I overreact to things that are said to me, and they stick with me, and bother me, and I turn them over in my head and put a great deal of energy into them, when they really aren't worth all that time I spend. Losing empathy means that I am turning inward more and more, which I don't feel is positive. I'm not sure what to do about this, whether to visit the social worker at the cancer centre or just work through it myself. Certainly I know lots of writing exercises that could help out, and I know that actually doing some physical exercise will help. I just don't feel like doing either of those things. Slight depression looms, I know it's out there. Maybe the comedic reading will keep it at bay, who knows. Maybe I'll just work more, find some focus.