Cumulative

Every day I hear or read something quoted in the news that I can't believe I'm hearing in the 21st century. Nothing takes your mind off cancer like Rick Santorum, or Words with Friends and thank goodness, Jon Stewart, I don't have to waste energy being outraged and appalled, I can let Stewart do it for me, and funnier.

What's almost as annoying as Santorum is falling out eyebrows, because do you know where eyebrows go when they fall out? Right smack into your eye.

I've done a complete turn around, however, on the bald thing. If girl baldness was in vogue {because I'm so stylish and yes, you can laugh here}, I'd stay bald, I think I look better, it's comfortable and low maintenance. Drafty, yeah, that's the big drawback, but if you wear a hoodie, and leave hats all over the house, you're all set.

All the doctors and nurses kept telling me that the effects of chemo were cumulative and I realize now that I didn't understand what that meant. I thought that being on an every three week cycle meant that when I went for a new infusion, the old stuff was out of me, but I think what they meant by cumulative {and I don't know why I'm only figuring this out now} meant that there were still drugs doing their thing and now we were adding new ones on top of old ones and with each subsequent chemo, there'd be more drugs in my system and hence a longer recovery time so that's why the symptoms last longer, the dry yucky mouth, aversion to food, queasiness, fatigue, all that fun stuff. I've been a little slow on the uptake here which isn't like me.

Cowboy Junkies

I love the Cowboy Junkies, I’ve never seen them live but I had tix to go see them last night at a swanky new, small venue nightclub. I don’t go to see live music often, there’s rarely someone I want to see, some place I want to go, but I really wanted to go to this. Go out, change of scenery, close my eyes and listen to some good music. A friend bought us tickets for my 48th birthday which came and went quickly back in November mid-diagnoses. We took a leap of faith that I’d be able to go.

I psyched myself up for days, but when it came down to it, I’d had a day full of dizzy spells, nausea, sniffling and coughing and I know my white blood counts are at their lowest point in the cycle and ultimately, I’d be just stupid to go. Wasn’t even sure I could walk from car to door. So I called my friend and her husband got to go instead. Luckily, I like him a ton, so I’m glad he got to go.

And then I just put my head on the kitchen table and sobbed. I’m getting teary just thinking about it. I think my weeps come with the dip in white cells, but I don’t know. I just felt so, so sad, sad, sad. I feel like I’ve lost my life in such a short time. I rarely leave the house and I’m getting sick of this house and everything in it. The house I fought so hard to get in the divorce that never happened, so still actually isn’t mine even though I’m bearning all the mortgage and maintenance costs and responsibilities.

I am disconnected from friends, from school, from the real live moving world out there, from my business and increasingly from myself. I don’t laugh. When I hear people laughing I’m amazed at the freedom of it. How unclenched you need to be to laugh easily and truly. I can’t remember laughting and now I’m wondering if I’m someone who never lets go and laughs.

I have tickets to see David Sedaris in April, so I guess I'll shoot for that, and if anyone can make me laugh it would be him.

To The Grave

People shouldn’t flick their tongues, you know, in that pseudo-sexual way, it’s nasty. They especially shouldn’t do it on TV, you guessed it, I watched the season premiere of Kloe and Lamar... you know, Kardashian.

If one of the Kardashians was having chemo, they’d have 15 people there, coiffed to death to bear witness {and they’d bring wine to drink, maybe a catered lunch and fire-breathing acrobats for entertainment} and the one with cancer wouldn’t notice all the ones there or the canapes, they’d notice the single person absent and then there’d be drama, lots of whining and complaining and hurt feelings about why so and so didn’t show up. Eventually, there’d be a mediated reconciliation, but man, these folks are drama queens and I’m including the Kardashian men in that, big time.

So yeah, I’ve gotta quit, this is a bad habit, is there a patch for the Kardashians? I’m going to stick with only the shows I watch with G, the mom/boy bonding shows which currently are 30 Rock, The Firm and get this, The Voice. Boy turned me on to The Voice, and I love it, I was hooked immediately, those giant chairs of power with the button of approval that makes the great sound, zoinggggg. I don’t know how the rest of the show works, but the Blind Auditions are brilliant. Really, it’s a great concept, there are some great singers and there’s none of the mean, let’s make fun of you snarkiness of Idol which I banned him from years ago for getting too heavily invested and because I hated it.

You want to know how to alienate your teenaged grandson? You come over for a few days and monopolize the TV 24/7 at blaring decibels. Then, when he invites you to watch 30 Rock because it’s “the best, funniest, most hilarious, clever show” in his words, you sit there and say things like “this is funny?... how is this supposed to be funny?... oh this is so stupid, what is wrong with these people?...how could anyone find this funny?”

G said to me when we went up to bed “mom, I feel your pain, that was the worst half an hour of my life.” And it probably was, that boy has a charmed life.

So while I’m being bossy, let me tell you what not to say to someone with cancer. Don’t ask them why or how they got it. And if you have a theory, don’t share it. Unless they’ve been toasting marshmallows by the ambient heat emanating from their neighborhood nuclear power plant, take it to the grave.

Tina Fey

I love you Liz Lemon, that's all.

Blissful Bathroom Floor

I had such extreme dizzyness, heat flashes, room spinning today, I had to just drop to the floor. Face down on my kitchen and bathroom floors are not places you'd ordinarily want to be, but it was nirvana. Cool floor against my face dousing heat waves as the room slowly, methodically, stopped spinning. Extreme enough to send me to the hospital to get rehydrated and checked out. Grateful to neighbors where J can hang out at a moments notice and also proximity of hospital for rides. Even better when neighbor has puppy.

Nurse Eileen is my favorite, she says it like it is. She said "hey, you just had your last Adriamycin and the effects are cumulative and the last one kicks your ass, you're normal." Music to my ears "you're normal" how often do I get to hear that?

Home now, feeling a little better, but not tons and still have the jitters, so I'm googling. Turns out that the anti-nausea med that warns of sleepiness on the bottle, the one on which I should not operate heavy machinery is also known for giving the jitters, crud. Bad call, I'm going back to the one that gives me headaches.

I realized today that I'm the only one in the chemo ward that comes alone. I prefer it that way, but I wonder if due to experience I've become too lone-wolfish. I'm used to doing things alone, it's normal for me. I wonder if having someone in my life for so long who did not wish to be included and did not want to include me has made me this way and is it a bad thing? Is it something I should work on? But as for chemo, I just get comfy in the chair and close my eyes and chill or read or catch up on my Words with Friends turns which are many {and I must stop mistakenly calling Friends with Benefits}, I truly don't need someone there staring at me for hours on end. Very appreciative of the rides home and end of chemo visits by my driver du jour, but that's really all I need. It bothers me that my doctor and nurses all feel sorry for me, I don't see myself as pathetic at all, but apparently, going to chemo alone makes you the object of sympathy, which I think is unfair.

A beautiful friend came over yesterday to give me a pep talk and showed me her mastectomy. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought, it wasn't bad looking at all except for the horrible chafing from radiation which will go away. I'd seen a picture once on-line, I suppose, where the mastectomy looked all disfigured like a bad burn, so I feel better about this avenue of consideration. Maybe my boobs have played their part and they can leave in peace, we'll see. My hypothetical, future, on-line dating profile is pretty much shot by now anyway.

Long Distance Runner

I wish I was a runner, a marathon runner. Someone who knows how to separate body and mind, to keep running through pain. One of those runners who still goes out for their morning jog when they have a bad cold or their period or just don't feel like it, who doesn't obsess over ever little twinge, every racing heart.

I feel like an epic cave-in. Three short months from invincible, how-bad-can-it-be, warrior goddess to twitchy pile of soggy socks. I'm shocked and appalled by how fast I lost my resolve, my fight, my audacity.

I wish I was a runner and knew how to run through this. I wish I could go to the audacity store and buy some more, Audacious 'R' Us. I wish I could go to rehab and purge every last chemical, get fit, eat green and go to yoga every morning and get my strength back. And this should be somewhere warm, very warm, with a pool and shady trees.

Limit

Can’t sleep, can’t be awake. In the throes of the ittery, jittery, nanomites crawling up and down the inside of me. Tight heart beating fast, hard to catch a breathe. Hate this feeling, hate it, hate it. Keep telling myelf it will pass, it did last time, but when? A day, or two or three? Too long, too long. And all for the absence of a smashing success of a result, so what’s next? what gruesome regimen? What surgery, or surgeries, more than I’d bargained for, prepared for.

Hot, cold, hat on, hat off, heat on, heat off, zip up, zip down, night sweats and stomach cramps. Haven’t seen my kids since Thursday, longest time ever. We all have our limits and this is mine, but what do we do when we meet our limit? What do we do?