Greetings, beloved comrades. It’s been a minute, I know.

Cancer sucks. SO HARD. I’m no longer fighting for my life, but I am still fighting for a decent quality of life. Progress on that front has been slow, with many setbacks, though I have made gains and I remain undeterred.

At times on this journey, I have needed to step away from news feeds and social media for my health, both mental and physical. I may need to do so again, depending on what the future brings. If I cannot keep abreast of what’s going on in the world, I can hardly be expected to write about anything relevant, much less deliver the superb quality work and penetrating insight Death to Squirrels™ readers have come to expect – nay, demand. (LOL. I crack myself up.)

Another barrier to writing? Chemo brain. Seriously, it’s A Thing. I lost my “inner thesaurus,” such that words no longer flow easily from my head to my screen, and now take time and work (as well as an actual thesaurus). FWIW, post-chemo my average time for solving the same web Sudoku game at the same difficulty level increased by almost two minutes. That’s a pretty objective indicator that I’ve lost something more than just a segment of my fucking colon.

Then there’s my vision. It turns out the treatment for chronic and severe radiation damage is dozens of “deep dives” in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Neat! And it gave me back full function of my bladder, thank fuck. It also exploded my retinal capillaries, causing hemorrhages in both eyes. I’ve had surgeries and continue to receive treatments for this, but damn. Sometimes it’s just really fuckin’ hard to, you know, see.

As I told PZ, I am not the same writer I was, and I’m not even sure I’m the same person I was. But I feel an urge to do some screaming into the void, and I would prefer to do so in the excellent company that is the FtB community.

But enough whining about ME! Tell me what’s been going on with YOU in comments! Oh! And do let me know if anything culturally or politically significant has transpired in the last couple years. Did I miss anything? Anything at all?

Hahaha

It feels good to be back. ❤️