Also the entire world is falling apart around us, but that's happening to everybody

Two significant changes took place in my life over the summer.

1. I got stage 4 cancer
2. I got a boyfriend

They happened almost simultaneously, and both situations progressed very, very quickly. It was an overwhelming summer.

The cancer is pretty bad, as cancers go. I'm in the middle (week 13 of 20) of a lot of chemotherapy, which will be followed by surgery, which will be followed by 10 weeks of daily radiation. The prognosis is not great! Luckily (?) I was already very good at being sick all the time and had already redesigned my life to accommodate that, so, while difficult, the cancer has been less disruptive than it would be for most people. I feel terrible all the time now, instead of just sometimes. I'm mentally/emotionally treading water until March, when my situation will be reassessed.

The boyfriend is pretty good, as boyfriends go. The parallel development of our burgeoning love and my cancer diagnosis made for a weird, intense start to the relationship. As far as I can tell, we are both handling things as well as can be expected. The interesting stumbling blocks so far have all been related to the deaf/hearing divide, rather than the cancer. He likes to talk a lot, and to talk about (and make) music, and I like people to use ASL instead of making me lipread, and most of my friends are deaf. It's been a pretty long time since I had to do an Introduction to Deaf People at anyone and my relevant skills & habits are all rusty. (Plus I have cancer; I'm very tired all the time). I'll probably just make a blog post about it and then send him the link; that's not avoidant or lazy at all, right?