CHEMO...WHATEVAH!

"During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been.  It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out.  You don't know how you'll answer the door when your groceries are delivered.  But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been.  You're clear.  Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception.  Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience.  Now it's instantaneous. "

I have to remind myself numerous times a day that, "chemo" is a word, not a paragraph.  Many days, as the well known quote says, it at least feels like a sentence.  Luckily, I have a very easy sense of humor.  That doesn't always help, but some days it does.  I'm reading a great book about a woman that went through chemo and decided to write about all her funny experiences.  She also talks about how chemo can get her out of almost anything.  I wish I could say that I use chemo as an excuse from time to time, but I haven't found a time that I wasn't telling the truth.  Chemo is kicking my butt.  Plain and simple.  I don't know a better way to put it.  I'm still pondering the idea of how they put poison into your body to kill something that is killing you.  Someone, please make me understand that?!  Is there a doctor out there?  I could really use a 10-4!

I have jokingly, but not so jokingly, been telling people how I have mastered the art of starring at ceilings.  It has become my past time on the bad days.  For anyone that has gone through any type of chemo, I know you will appreciate my details of this one day that I'm about to describe.

I don't spend a whole lot of time alone.  Let's just face it, that isn't safe.  However, one day this week I did.   I thought I would be brave and get in the bath about 10:30 that morning.  The bath sounded great, but I was nuts for even thinking I could do it alone!  I haven't taken a bath alone in 8 weeks.  It is amazing how little energy I have and how much just getting undressed and into the bath tub takes.  I should add, baths just don't seem right these days either.  I have a tube sticking out of my back that can not get wet, so I can't lay down and the water can only go so high.  I can't lay sideways because my port is on my chest and can't get that wet.  I have no hair, so there is nothing to shampoo, condition or shave.  I don't think I realized how therapeutic washing my hair was until I didn't have any to wash.  It is basically some soap and my spongy thing.  Yep, chemo brain can't remember what you call it.  Anyhow, once I was in the bath, I didn't have the energy to get out and I proceeded to sit there for 45 minutes because I couldn't do it.  Once I was able to get out, I could only get over to the bed and lay there.  Then, I spent over an hour trying to get enough motivation and strength to go back into the bathroom and put my clothes on.  I spent that time starring at the bedroom ceiling.  I'm sure I could tell you every curve, corner and crack.  FINALLY, I get my clothes on and manage to walk back into the living room and plop on the couch.  That is where I spent hours starring at the living room ceiling because I didn't have the energy or desire to reach for the remote about 2 feet away.  By the time I stopped starring at the ceiling, it was after 2:00.  I had just spent an entire day trying to bathe and dress, without knowing that the time had passed like that.  People, that is just scary!

They told me I could have nausea, "chemo runs", as I call them, sores in my mouth and G.I. tract, horribly dry skin, fatigue, bleeding at any nook and cranny...and worse.  On most days, I have at least three of those issues at a time. 

The point to this post, you ask?  They told me when I started chemo that I would only have time to be a chemo patient right now.  They were right, it has consumed my life.  However, I REFUSE to let it win.  You may make me bald as an eagle, puke uncontrollably, not be able to stand even a drink in my mouth...but you can not have my heart and my mind.  Those belong to me.