pen to paper

For a good part of the 10 hours I spent at the hospital today, I was waiting. Waiting for test results to come in, waiting for the doctors to consult, waiting for my dose to be prepared.

I was ready today, though. I brought my notebook. It has all sorts of stuff in it: recipes copied out of magazines, the first draft of my thryoid cancer book, to-do lists, web site redesign plans -- and today, pages and pages of journaling.

At one point I was detailing the play-by-play as the receptionist in the NucMed department tried to track down my endocrinologist. She (the receptionist) rocks. My endo, not so much, today.

At first I was only jotting down notes for topics to be blogged later, like details I didn't want to forget about what it felt like and what I thought during my excruciatingly long scans. But then I just started writing... and writing... and writing...

Now I've got plenty of work to do during my 3 days in isolation. I've got a good half-dozen pages of ink-on-paper to move into this "new medium," somehow or other.

Drafting by hand makes my hand ache, and my handwriting quickly approaches illegibility. The one advantage it offers is spontaneous doodling, but I think I can forego that to avoid writer's cramp. My typing pretty much keeps pace with my thinking -- my writing gets left in the dust. Keyboards rule.