Please do UP. If you feel guilty you are not occupied with anything productive, it is because you are in fragmentary perception, what you have been taught, what you have been infected with, molded into from a young age. Doing UP is actually nothing like being lazy. It is the most important, fundamental human activity. The universe wants you to be free, not in slavery.

Fragmentary perception is OK until it's OK. Until everything crumbles. It inevitably will. For example before physical pain happens.

A young girl writes about her cancer:

I don't know where exactly I got the idea that most cancer pain was manageable. Like so many other impressions I had about cancer until I was thrown into this life, I just recently realized that my impression, while not untrue, was a bit simplistic, or a bit black and white. My cancer pain can be managed, but not with a decent quality of life while I still feel like I can and should have a relatively normal lifestyle... going out for dinners, shopping for fun OR necessity (I wish I could go grocery shopping!) , having some drinky poos with friends. I feel mentally and physically ready for this, minus the pain.

Here's the stab at the heart: In order for my pain to be completely under control, I'd be a zombie!

I kept returning to the cancer centre saying, "This isn't working". So they'd up the doses as far as they could without nasty side effects occurring. It wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I go the nerve to ask what their goal was for me pain wise. In my head, I totally thought we were working to get me to the point I described above. But just in case, I didn't ask. Their answer broke my heart (how many times can a heart get broken?). They said they wanted to get me into a "comfortable resting state", which I took to mean comfy on the couch. And the truth was, I was pretty much comfortable on the couch in certain strategic positions. But I wasn't ready for that. That's not my life, not now. Beleive it or not, I still think of myself as a healthy person! Call me sick, and I think, "But I don't have a cold."

So, along came the CADD pump this week which is a rectangular box, about 9x2 inches and weighs like 2lbs. Part of the contraption holds my medication (Dilaudid) which flows through a tiny plastic tube, through a small needle, and into my subq tissue, luckily not a vein cuz that would hurt more since the needle and meds are replaced weekly. The initial dosing did nada but SHABAMMM! the second dose helps a lot!

I'm not nearly pain free, but I can handle it better and I'm grateful for the amount of "life" I've been given back. It's hard to explain but for 2 months everyday I wondered how many more days I could take. So, the day by day mentally is what got me by as well as trying to focus on what I did have and could do rather than what I didn't or couldn't. Must admit that it crossed my mind a few times how many bottles of different narcotics were sitting at my bedside. Had it been another person, a person without so much support, a person who knows not how and when to seek professional help, a person in a deep depression, those pills could easily have done a person in, not the cancer. I guess no one tracks this stuff? .....................................................