cancer – day 500
I am completely wiped out. I couldn’t even stay for all of the Champions competition tonight, and even though I’d promised lots of people I would be at the dancing tonight, I left at 10:30PM and am about to go to bed. Tomorrow I have the drive home, then laundry and fish-tank cleaning and so on. Quite a holiday I have planned!
The first night of the swing event (Friday) was the best for me. Now that I think about it, that is very likely because I was in the least pain then. I probably danced about 10 songs over the course of the three or so hours I was there. But that’s the most I’ve danced in one night in well over a year, since the neuropathy started, and I had fun hanging out with Angeline and her boyfriend (soon-to-be fiancé, we all agree).
Saturday I went to part of a workshop Robert Royston did on tango in swing. What a character. I couldn’t be on my feet the whole time, but I thoroughly enjoyed Royston and his teaching style. It’s funny, he always looks at me like he remembers me from the movie filming, but he’s confused by the short dark hair. Back when I still had my blonde pony tail and stripes, he could pick me out of any crowd to say hi and see how I was doing. Lots of my old swing friends are like that now, thrown for a loop by the short dark hair, especially since most of them haven’t seen me in over a year, either.
Saturday night I only danced six or seven times. Some good partners, some not so good, but my feet were well beyond my pain threshold before midnight and I left early again. The highlight of Saturday night wasn’t my dancing or even the pro show, but rather the fun people I met at the dinner. We got the last table, because we were the people who didn’t buy show passes until the event. It was a fun random conglomeration of people though, and I’m sure I’ll remember and hang out with those folks again at future swing events. So that made Saturday fun and worth going to, even though I could barely be on my feet to dance.
Today was the most disappointing in terms of neuropathy. I had two good dances, three bad ones, and that’s it, over the course of maybe four hours. My feet are convincing me that I am not meant to be a dancer any more. It’s just so unbelievably painful, I can’t even describe it. I told my parents that I’m going to keep trying through Jay’s New Year’s convention in Palm Springs. After that, well, maybe I’ll stop wasting money on dance weekends and find some hobby that doesn’t use my burning hands and feet. What the heck can a person do without using their hands or feet?