Verge

I think maybe sleep is begetting sleep at this point and maybe I need to get up. I’m feeling demoralized for the first time. Not big picture wise... I’m going to get through this, I’m going to get better, but demoralized about what that entails.

I feel so genuinly lousy and not like myself and it’s because of chemo... because I have cancer... too surreal. I’m a dental hygiene freak, decades long daily flosser and now suddenly I have puffy, bleeding gums... who’s mouth is this? I have a foreign object lodged in my chest so I can’t sleep on my left side like I prefer. And we’ve already acknowledged brain death.

I think part of the reason I told everyone {within hearing distance} about my diagnosis was to make it real, so that I could handle it... come to terms with it, before treatment, so I’d be ready... and they’d be ready, but that maybe, hasn’t worked. Everything seems scary unreal and when I think I have to keep doing this every 3 weeks for six months, that seems like an unfathomably long time. And while it’s bleeding gums today, what will be tomorrow?

I think I also told everyone because I was afraid of having to tell them when I feel like this, because right now, I can’t say anything without bursting into tears... I think it’s all the drugs, I’m not usually on the verge of tears all day. I’m also afraid of people’s horrified response... so I told people I had cancer, before I looked like I had cancer, so as to make it easier, for everyone, myself included.

But now I’m afraid of how scary and horrifying this will be for people who care about me and strangers, anyone. Let alone looking in the mirror myself, or my babies seeing me like this.

I was thinking the other night that while there can be an unequitable distribution of unfortunate events that land on some {me}, there's a flip side of that. Some people don’t know anyone with cancer or to whom something dreadful has happened, but some people know too many. I’m thinking of friends T&D, one of whom is my official litter box marshall for the duration of this charming escapade. T&D who have lost so many friends and family to cancer over the last absurdly short amount of time. How cosmically unfair to them to have yet another friend going through this. And what strength for them to show up and be present. Just saying. It would be nice to see a tad more karmic equity out there on both ends.

And you know... this is poorly written... I've lost my flow... brain impotence... where's the meds for that?