When I learned that my cancer needed chemotherapy, I came to it with very strong ideas about how things were going to be: I will continue to work. I will not allow this to dominate conversation. I will not feel sorry for myself. I will not complain. I will make sure my son and daughter are solid in their assurance that I'm fine and that I will be better than ever afterwards. And all that is well and good, except it didn't leave any wiggle room, it was too rigid. I realize now that I need more of a sliding scale, if for no other reason than to mitigate the guilt I feel when I'm not functioning at 100% and it affects others. But I guess the biggest reason is that I need to acknowledge that this is a very unpredictable animal and I need to be prepared for that. Because it doesn't matter how much research I do, or talking to others who've been through it, or having lived through it when it was my Dad - nothing could adequately prepare me to be in the center of this e...