Bloodwork
This morning, I actually made it to Sloan Kettering and had my blood test. It was great! No pain. The lady slipped the needle into my arm and the blood started flowing. When done, she said, “When you can say you’ve been stuck at Sloan Kettering, you can say you’ve been stuck good.” But before that, she said something even more important. “Not everyone’s the same. You have to give someone a chance.” It would be an understatement to say that her words echoed within me. I knew that they applied to more than just giving her a chance. And then she slid the needle in so easily; my skin didn’t pucker or resist, it just gave, and the blood flowed … and it flowed generously. I couldn’t believe it. The tube filled and she removed the needle, also smoothly, painlessly, and said, “Welcome to Memorial Sloan Kettering.”
I felt as though a great weight had lifted from my shoulder. I. Am. So. Happy.
For those of you who are wondering, I wasn’t taking the blood test because I was sick. I was simply taking it to qualify as a volunteer at Memorial Sloane Kettering. A while back, fellow mystery writer Judith Kelman put out a call for volunteers to participate in MSK’s new writer mentoring program. It involves working with cancer patients who want to write, and it can involve a whole range of writing, fiction/non-fiction, stories, poems, novels, memoirs, etc. I’d been wanting to volunteer and this seemed the perfect fit. I loved everything about the program when Judith told me about it. The only aspect I didn’t love was the blood test I was required to take.
In case you didn’t know it, I’m terrified of needles. I’ve gone through the pain of childbirth without anesthesia, breast cancer surgery and chemotherapy — and none of it bothered me (that much), but the notion of having a needle stuck into my arm for bloodletting … that just about undid me — mainly because it usually turns into a torture session. However, as you see, this morning’s experience turned out quite well.
Now all I have to do is get back to work.
Later today, I spoke to Kim Foote, a really talented writer, who I’m trying to convince to work with me at Capucine Books, and we were discussing loss of text through a computer failure. Actually, I was discussing it. After month’s of writer’s block, I finally began writing again and really got into rewriting a manuscript I’ve schlepped around with me for at least four years. Suddenly problems that had seemed intractable were clear. Dialog was cleaned up. The whole nine yards. And then, last week, my computer failed. And it failed badly, taking all the rewrites with it. Not just the recent work, but rewrites going back over the past year. When I checked my backup drive, I was horrified to find that I hadn’t re-backed up my manuscript folder since November 2007. Everything I’d written since then was pretty much a loss. Not that I’d written all that much — which was the point. The few words I had written were oh, so precious because they were so few and far in between.
And then it turned out that my computer couldn’t be saved. Correction: The hard drive couldn’t be saved. When the Apple Store returned my laptop to me, it had had a total brain transplant. Everything was gone.
Naturally, Kim had a similar story. What writer doesn’t? (Well, some don’t. That’s true. They’re conscientious about backing up or just plain lucky.) So Kim tells me also that she had a significant loss, not of her manuscripts though, but of other important material. Like me, she was really upset. (Since then I’ve barely been able to look at the manuscript I’d done so much work on. Every time I see it, it hurts. And I do mean hurts, as in physically.) Kim says that she told herself that the loss of her materials was just a way of the universe asking, “How much does this mean to you? How committed are you? How much of a commitment are you willing to make to get this done?” She saw it as a test and with that view, she found the energy to forge ahead.
Her answer reminded me of “The Last Lecture” guy, who said something similar in his talk. Obstacles should not be seen as signs that you were meant to fail or that your dreams are foolish. They should be seen as tests of your commitment, as ways even for you to become aware of your level of commitment. When I see it that way, then I too feel a burst of energy, a determination to take on the challenge of rewriting the material I lost.
Oh, boy!
I felt as though a great weight had lifted from my shoulder. I. Am. So. Happy.
For those of you who are wondering, I wasn’t taking the blood test because I was sick. I was simply taking it to qualify as a volunteer at Memorial Sloane Kettering. A while back, fellow mystery writer Judith Kelman put out a call for volunteers to participate in MSK’s new writer mentoring program. It involves working with cancer patients who want to write, and it can involve a whole range of writing, fiction/non-fiction, stories, poems, novels, memoirs, etc. I’d been wanting to volunteer and this seemed the perfect fit. I loved everything about the program when Judith told me about it. The only aspect I didn’t love was the blood test I was required to take.
In case you didn’t know it, I’m terrified of needles. I’ve gone through the pain of childbirth without anesthesia, breast cancer surgery and chemotherapy — and none of it bothered me (that much), but the notion of having a needle stuck into my arm for bloodletting … that just about undid me — mainly because it usually turns into a torture session. However, as you see, this morning’s experience turned out quite well.
Now all I have to do is get back to work.
Later today, I spoke to Kim Foote, a really talented writer, who I’m trying to convince to work with me at Capucine Books, and we were discussing loss of text through a computer failure. Actually, I was discussing it. After month’s of writer’s block, I finally began writing again and really got into rewriting a manuscript I’ve schlepped around with me for at least four years. Suddenly problems that had seemed intractable were clear. Dialog was cleaned up. The whole nine yards. And then, last week, my computer failed. And it failed badly, taking all the rewrites with it. Not just the recent work, but rewrites going back over the past year. When I checked my backup drive, I was horrified to find that I hadn’t re-backed up my manuscript folder since November 2007. Everything I’d written since then was pretty much a loss. Not that I’d written all that much — which was the point. The few words I had written were oh, so precious because they were so few and far in between.
And then it turned out that my computer couldn’t be saved. Correction: The hard drive couldn’t be saved. When the Apple Store returned my laptop to me, it had had a total brain transplant. Everything was gone.
Naturally, Kim had a similar story. What writer doesn’t? (Well, some don’t. That’s true. They’re conscientious about backing up or just plain lucky.) So Kim tells me also that she had a significant loss, not of her manuscripts though, but of other important material. Like me, she was really upset. (Since then I’ve barely been able to look at the manuscript I’d done so much work on. Every time I see it, it hurts. And I do mean hurts, as in physically.) Kim says that she told herself that the loss of her materials was just a way of the universe asking, “How much does this mean to you? How committed are you? How much of a commitment are you willing to make to get this done?” She saw it as a test and with that view, she found the energy to forge ahead.
Her answer reminded me of “The Last Lecture” guy, who said something similar in his talk. Obstacles should not be seen as signs that you were meant to fail or that your dreams are foolish. They should be seen as tests of your commitment, as ways even for you to become aware of your level of commitment. When I see it that way, then I too feel a burst of energy, a determination to take on the challenge of rewriting the material I lost.
Oh, boy!
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