The deathly hallow's eve

This is a neural cell dendrite from the brain of a mouse. This is how we think. A little chemical droplet comes out or oozes out of an opening and chemically electrically crosses a gap - a synapse, and that turns on the other side of the gap and the electricity shoots down it like a wire. To the next gap. And so on and so on endlessly and at the speed of light, seamlessly, so you don't even know it. All over your body. All over all over. And inside your brain and my brain. Drugs and drinks and juices flood these places and fuck it all up and now my nerves are in revolt. They are all very very unhappy with me right now and in fact one of them screamed at me and I screamed back. On I35, while wobbling almost out of a lane. I auditioned for a scene in movie, yelling and then yelling more to see if it would help. Apparently this drug called Neulasta that sets up shop in your spongy marrow and cranks up a factory to offset the offset of your immune system (translate - help you not croak during nadir) has a hurty component and that literally KICKED in today.

 

Still waiting on a moment of Zen. Doctor says hmmm...must be sensitive and maybe I should drop one of the drugs - may be too much. Will try a new anti nausea thing next cycle (if I am not off a cliff by then) called the sancouso patch. Sancuso maybe. San means without and couso seems like a side dish of little round things that was in style in the 90s. Remember the whole Nile brand parmeson couscous revolution. Oh my it's so beyond rice! We all pretended to like it because we thought it was more sophisticated but secretly we knew it was bland and wormy. My dad moved on to orzo and we had so many discussions of whether or not it was or was not actually rice or pasta or was rice pasta actually? In this way in these revolving conversations about bland oval ellipsoidal objects we actually conducted the nature of our love toward each other.

But I have hopes for my without couscous. My patch of zen.

 

The most wise person of all in my advisors, Alex, gave me a picture of a tiny deer in a class photo. This was perfection in its perfect inane Dadaistic tininess. Things are very tiny right now.

Ziggy played guitar

Like a leper Messiah
Turn and face the changes. I am trying Mr. Bowie. I hear you. I know that these children that you spit on are quite aware. I am too. This has been entirely too hard for me and I worry if I am up to the task. Actually I lie - I don't even think about that, I am not even there yet. Only to get to the next hour right now. I am so acutely aware of how six ounces of red poison will ruinate an entire galaxy of a human - her comets are flaring out, her sun is retracting and the core is starting to compact and implode and the gravity is uneven and the Doppler effect is going the wrong way as the redshift turns orange.

Like a boss. Someone said I was like a BOSS today and that made my day. A student. Contrary to popular idea or the idea of popular ideas, young people are not all or maybe not any -just selfish machines. Every semester that I teach learn - I find little treasures among the forests of younger humans and I know that things will be ok later in this country of old men. Cynthia and Stephanie are glinting.

One of my bookclubs (I am in 237 of them, mostly in my head, but two actuals) texted a photo that said they missed me. Oh how I missed them that night. I will stuff my face with your cheese and crackers next time I see you I promise, I shall steal them right out of your fancy ringed hands and laugh at you when you bite the air. I will be hungry.

 

System

I know I'm dehydrated. So I have a system. Every five minutes or so I take five sips. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. In this way perhaps I can finish 16 ounces of lemonade.

Happiness in a bottle.

Ten sips. 

I joined a breast cancer support group for six weeks. Ironically I started chemo the week after the group ended. The women in my group who were doing chemo are very strong and they inspired me. They tricked me. They're better than me.

My new friend Leah from the support group helps me think about this stuff. 

15 sips.

She talked about the gap. The gap between authenticity and something else. I'm not sure what she meant by the something else, maybe the gap between reality and what other people think when you're going through the shit. I do notice a gap, but I am not the one that fosters it. I'll tell you anything, but if you don't ask you won't know. You and I are already so alone and so misunderstood - why foster any gap? He and she and you and ours and I will be dead soon and what do we want left? "She was polite" ? Fuck that. 

Here's one of my favorite poems, hopefully you already know this one by heart, if you don't you should:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
       love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-- Mary Oliver

20 sips.

The nadir is approaching. 

nadir[ ney-der, ney-deer ]

noun

1. the point on the celestial sphere directly beneath a given position or observer and diametrically opposite the zenith.

2. the point of a horoscope opposite the midheaven: the cusp of the fourth house.

3. the lowest point; point of greatest adversity or despair.

In chemo this means that 7 to 10 days after they poisoned me to death, my white blood cells and red blood cells inside the spongy marrow of my bones have completely croaked. The former football blokes of my immune system are laying about in their asylum whites, draped across a rocking chair very palely trying to get a small teaspoonful of oatmeal up to their pale and cracked lips. When they want to move, they shift their pale lashed blue European  eyes from one side of the room over to the window where they look out at the mountains. They can't do a thing. If you cough at them they will fall off of their chairs. They are ready to be taken and hurt and run over and drained. They await crushing.

If you do chemotherapy during this period, it will permanently damage your bone marrow and kill you later, kill you forever, kill you while it's killing you, and you'll be dead and you'll be killed. At any rate, I'm approaching a time where I am not supposed to be around very many people or germs or nadir devils. Inherently, I think this is total bullshit. I've always been an extremely strong person and I don't feel any less strong right now. But I suppose I shall wash my hands and not roll around at a preschool, or a fall fast, or a Halloween party, did anyone tell you that one of the problems with this is it's fucking boring as shit? No making out with strangers at a bar anymore. Today.

25 sips.

I made a station on Pandora - of kinda of old timey country rainy day high lonesome blue mountain music. I call it. Comforting beauty. Hem. The Weepies. Patty Griffin. The Wailing Jennies. Decembrists. Nickel Creek. Neko Case. Heard a snippet of something lovely yesterday but can't recall it now - that's bugging me. Will figure it out. 

From "Tourniquet" by Hem:

Brooklyn, I’m broken -- I’m breaking apart -- 
Greenpoint pins down my hand, Red Hook pierces my heart --
And my blood runs into the Gowanus Canal
Where it sinks to the bottom

And it hurts like hell. 

Tourns out tourniquet is a very popular name for a song.

Turns out turn-a-kit is a very popular name for a song.

Turns out tourniquet is a very popular name for a song.

From "Tourniquet" by Evanescence:

 I tried to kill my pain

But only brought more 

My god my tourniquet

Well those are a few examples of the word tourniquet being used as a song title.

Having my students do a research paper about how the Internet is affecting life. What a stupid topic, right? Of course it's affecting life. So they need to narrow it down to something very specific. I've been thinking about one thing specifically. I think that instant communication can create artificial intimacy. I shall now argue both sides:

I mean come on, you just met the guy and got his text message and now you're mad because he didn't text you back instantly after his meeting with his boss? When you were all feeling vulnerable and stuff cuz Ms. Muffintin blew you off at the lunch? It's not like you're married to him or he's your mom - why should he be tethered to his phone and jump to respond to you about a stupid question about how his fucking Thundercloud sub sandwich went? Was the mayo just so good and not the wrong kind this time oh goodie! You're getting all pissy because Mr. New is not responding to your text messages fast enough, but you don't even really know him. You're an idiot- a needy annoying cloying pushy pill. This whole "you text me, I text you" thing 24 hours a day is a completely artificial construct that exists only in our own minds. You don't actually HAVE a relationship with him. 

Waaaaiit a second there pardner! Don't you ever watch Nova or any of those astrophysicist shows? Don't you think? Or are you stuck in whatever thinking you developed by junior high? Are you informed? Are you ignoring science? Can you think objectively or are you some Luddite? God you're a frump! Have you read Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan or seen Neal DeGrasse Tyson or anything about the nature of reality, neuroscience, the universe, everything theory, or string theory? Don't you know that everything that we perceive is only a construct made up in our own brains, made of neural networks and synapses? In fact there is an actual, real, not fake, astrophysicist whose theory is that what we perceive as reality right now is only a future computer programming being sent back to us right now and we are just part of that program, like the matrix. Even if you hate that idea, modern science shows that any relationship we ever have with anybody only exists within our own minds. Our brains perceive. The perception occurs inside you you idiot. You like your friend Fred? Maybe it has nothing to do with Fred, but your reaction to what your perception of Fred is. You can long for Fred when he is far away - you can call him. We thought this was admirable in WWII but now all of a sudden it's "weird" to "love" someone who's "not right there?" How close minded! Or you can just think of Fred in your mind. That's where he is, to you, actually. So since it all exists in our own mind anyway, why can't you have an honest or "real" relationship with somebody who isn't there? Why can't a quadriplegic person have a full rich inner life and loving relationships with people around them? Why can't you have the same thing with somebody who lives 10,000 miles away? Or on a spaceship? Or does not exist? Why can't you conduct an entire relationship by text message or Facebook or email. Maybe you can?

These are some of my thoughts.

30 sips.

Eliza Gilkinson is on. Like her song Coast:

Think I'll go down to the Coast for awhile,

Find a little cabin by the Sea.

Think I need to be alone for awhile,

Find out what ever became of me.

Did you ever think that it would be like this?

Ah, the price you pay for lo-ove.

Now the price you pay for everything.

Think I'll go out for a little drive,

Maybe I'll take the long way home.

I'm probably more than just a little high,

But I need some time to be alone.

I'm gonna find out what it means to me 

Ah, to give it all up for love

To bet it all on what things seem to be.

----

16 oz

To sleep perchance to dream

'Twas not to be.

I'm an anomaly. I'm a phenomenon. I'm a military experiment. I had one gin and tonic, one lorazepam, one Zofran, and one Ambien. Some people would be knocked out by half of even one of these substances. (Wimps) Not me! I fitfully dozed for a few hours and then awoke riding in one of those log like ice race chute icy tube race things. A cold wet tube that was wrapped and made out of creepy sheets. Once again I thought the whole night had passed yet once again it was only midnight or so. Edgar Allan Poe hour. Without the Raven or anything interesting. Had to get up and change and rearrange my whole room and my whole self, and then go back to bed. Sort of. Please to have an ordinary day. Please do have an ordinary night. Please to have an ordinary lunch.

I went off to teach my class today. It was so lovely to be back on campus and see my students pulsing with lush glowing glaring cocky health and staring at me at me at me at me at me at me as if nothing was wrong with me. Nothing was wrong with me.

I feel so chemical. When tears roll down my face and hit my mouth they taste wrong. The air that comes into my mouth tastes stale, like the air from inside a balloon you blew up last week. When your breath wasn't so great.

What to eat? I don't know. I feel rather Asian that respect, perhaps a freshly steamed miso fish platter from Eddie V's? Preposterous.

Leila recommended I go see her most favorite most graceful most lovely and wondrous acupuncturist. Leila thinks this creature has such a loving touch and calm spirit that just being in the same room with her is healing. Leila wrote an email to this kind concept of a person who wrote back and suggested that because I am feeling so wastedly she would like for me to see her beloved teacher. This is too sweet for me to contemplate. I am going to see Dr. He on Friday and I'm counting the minutes. He specializes in chemotherapy side effects. I love him already, I can't even type this thinking of him, unknown as he is yet to me. www.drhe.net

I am tired of me. Let's hear some quotes from wiser people.

Pema Chodron:

"Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both."

"Wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together."

And from Rabindranath Tagore:

"You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long."

Everything is okay. I don't mean that I'm feeling okay. I mean literally, every, thing, is okay. Each thing just is in the world as it is, and we must accept it.

Picture my friend Nancy A sent me of a drawing Fiona did for her. She thinks that this picture maybe helped her sell her house because when the potential buyer saw it they realized that her house was for them. I'm not sure:

Annabelle and Dave on a beach in Mexico...aaahhh sounds so divine. Miss you so much. Counting the days to see you:

List of good things:

Diane sent me a beautiful gift today from Nordstrom. Doorbell rang, and I ran down to receive my favorite color package, a silver package from Nordstrom.

Dena is bringing me lunch tomorrow, I'm sure it will be yummy.

I ate a homemade chicken pot pie last night and lived through it. It was even good. Very.

Friends and family have been very helpful with the children. Thank you Brooke, Adriana, Jennifer, Ean, and everyone else. The kids are bouncy, annoying, loud, grungy, bad, excellent, beautiful, freaky, hilarious, obnoxious, pushy, irreverent, rude, selfish, dirty, late, messy, silly, silly, silly, silly, happy. In other words: perfect.

People are cool

Like my friend Sharon who has a cousin who is undergoing chemotherapy right now and is about to lose her hair. Sharon and I were talking about this, and I said hey you could donate your hair if you wanted to. So she did. When I told her I thought that was really cool she said it was no big deal, it's not like I'm getting chemo or anything, and hey sometimes all you have to do is ask. 

Here she is before she cut her hair. Now keep in mind Sharon has wild and crazy hair, and she is a lawyer, and a rower, and has had a wild and crazy hair identity for many many many years.

Now here she is after:

I don't make this stuff up. I just report it.

Hair I am from earlier today at the hospital where I was getting some fluids and some major druuuuuuuugggggzzzz

Thank you

To Leila for making me an acupuncture appointment with some special person named Dr. He who is an expert practitioner in the area of chemotherapy

To Rebecca for knitting me the most beautiful cloudfuzzypink hat that I will be wearing soon

To Mona for taking care of me this weekend, and to Kris for taking care of me this weekend, and to Mike for taking care of me 24 hours a day

To you

Another cool person is a nurse practitioner I had today named Vicky. She kind of saved my life today. I feel much better now. I'm going to go rest. Thank you to everybody for being so sweet to me.

Can you feel my heart beating

I have a naturally low pulse, that usually hovers around 52, or maybe 60 if I'm moving around a little bit. Sometimes it even sticks at around 48. This is rather funny if you know me, because I'm not athletic. Last night it got up into the 90s. This is a sign to myself that I do not feel good. 

I'm doing an experiment now regarding food. I think I told some of you this, but I've learned something from the far corners of the earth that I did not know before: oh how lucky lucky lucky lucky you are, those of you, those of us, who eat too much and we're kind of fat and we lick our lips and gobble down way too much delicious fattening greasy salty sweet crunchy gooey melty delicious food. Never again will I complain about being not the size I want to be. When I get my appetite back I shall revel in it. Nature wants us to eat and to become large. I want that.

Foods I can tolerate possibly if it happens to be 4:15 p.m. and the sun is shining:

Cinnamon toast

Beer - dark

Popcorn

Popsicle

Scrambled egg

Vinegar

Chicken soup maybe

Sliced banana

Disgusting foods that I despise and have turned into congealed ox blood brain gelatin guttersnipe drippings:

Pizza

Red sauce

Ginger ale 

Candy

Salad dressing

I fear to try any others 

My friends tell me it's okay to kvetch, but I'm holding back a torrent of it. It may never stop if I start.

All night long I dreamed that I was in France, and I was trying to find a comfortable bed to sleep in in a weird hostel somewhere. At one point the bed was on top of a skyscraper. I was sleeping with my sister, the mattresses were soggy and damp with sweat. I felt that if I leaned too far to one side I would fall off the top of the skyscraper and die. After hours and hours of this horrible dream I woke up only to find that it was 11 PM. I went back to sleep and dreamt that my sister and I then went to a different kind of hotel where we found a different kind of bed, but somehow the bed was connected to my teeth in my bones and it was electrocuting them with excruciating pain in my teeth and my bones were hurting so much that I was vibrating with fire. After hours and hours of this dream in pain I woke up and it was midnight. Then I dreamt that I was in France visiting Blake, and we had the occasion to go to a very fancy restaurant. I put on a dress, the left arm stretched out for 100 feet. I crumpled it up. This is ridiculous I thought to myself, I must get this night over with it's taking too long. Must be time to wake up. I woke up and it was 2 AM. I was shaking, perhaps with starvation, or perhaps with excruciating pain, or perhaps with excruciating sickness. I couldn't tell the difference, so I forced myself to go downstairs and eat many crackers with peanut butter and a very disgusting bottle of ginger ale that made me feel like I was going to die. Days later it was 5 AM and I could get up.

Things are a tiny bit better now. Soon I'm going to be connected to a machine that will deliver gallons of water into my veins, life-giving ocean water, hopefully to bring me back to life. I cannot wait for the pierce.

Dudes

Dudes that was rough I ain't gonna lie - last 24 hours were dready 

Friends thank you 

Now I know

Yup the poison is worse than the mutation

Perhaps I'm coming back to life now, partially due to some finely shredded carrots and couscous soup prepared by Chef Kris

Notes from last night:

Surgery site numb and vibrating

Fish filet tastes like ear wax

Coke like distilled water from 1972

Green Popsicle like snot

Lips are numb 

Head hurt

Twitch

I'm poisoned 

Find an old house in Hyde Park. Go in, you'll have to wrench the door. No one has lived there for decades. Wave the dust away as you cough and push your way through the crowded hallway. Find a pale greenish white shuttered door, push it in. It's the laundry room. On a faded pink shelf is an old iron with the blue knit fat cord hanging down like a rat tail. Tip it over and pour out the old water that's been there since 1977. That's what I'm drinking.

I don't want to be a complainer McComplainingberryfarms poop head so I'm going to sign off soon. One by one my molecules are getting a tiny bit better. I think.

Saturday one as a chemical test tube

I

We ordered my favorite Friday night dinner last night, Conan's deep dish sausage pizza, and their wonderful salad with blue cheese dressing. The lettuce was nice and crunchy, the shredded fresh mozzarella cheese tasted like a pillow. The white creamy blue cheese dressing tasted like motor oil so I put a bunch of salt on it that it was sort of a slippery salty milk of magnesia slightly ranch type motor dressing. The crust of the pizza was fairly palatable. The red sauce on the pizza tasted like congealed lukewarm blood, kind of like the blood on the inside of a heart that you see it one of those Asian markets and you wonder who would eat it. The sausage tasted like rehydrated dog food. This is more depressing to me than anything that is happened so far.

I snagged a jolly ranchers watermelon candy while I was at the doctor yesterday getting my Neulasta shot. That was delicious.

This morning I woke up feeling kind of like I had a hangover. Or something. Now I'm trying some frosted mini wheats and they're not half bad. Yay-ish.

I just generally feel depressed and blah and disgusting and grotesque. But don't worry I still have a good attitude about the over arching arc of this motherfucking cancer bullshit. And its adjuvant chemotherapy fucking bullshit.

I'm still me, which is just what I meant yesterday when I said I wasn't a cancer patient. I do not identify with cancer or chemotherapy. I'm still Amy, I'm still a Rocky Mountain Boulder girl who loves to drink gin and tonics and goof around and be inane and observant and droll and argumentative and loud and absurdly silly with my friends. This won't get me down in the long run but I will reserve my right to hate it right now.

There are perks, and many are pretty freaking awesome, here are some of them:

Teeny tiny little knit hearts made by hand from a wonderful person named Rebecca

Hand delivered smoothies, food, chocolate, and love from many many many friends.

Amazing notes and beautiful cards and heartbreaking texts and loving phone calls and surprise gifts.

Incredible offers to pick up my kids and drive them all over kingdom come at horribly inconvenient times from people I never would have thought of. Amazing amazing amazing.

Old friends coming out of the woodwork. And the clarity to see who really isn't a friend

Sweet girls - Fifi crawled into bed with me in the middle of the night and put her little arms around me and that was the best. Violet asks me how I am and sweetens me.

Adorable husband who has been so kind.

The needle has landed

Needles have ejaculated into me. I'm ok.

Getting comfort from some singers I love: 

Neko Case says in "The Needle Has Landed"

Here I am in traffic's slow flow

Where the needle touched down

Carbon planes draw a cage round the air force base

Where the needle touched down

My foot on the brake it's ok to fly low

Over poor Spanaway

An eagle swooped down from a semi-trailer

Took the name of your town from a sharp-toothed freighter

The needle's the same that recorded and played

When you left me at the greyhound the year I moved away

And if I knew then what's so obvious now

You'd still be here baby

My baby, baby

So that's why I never come back here

That's why they spit out my name

Your ex's have clawed up the bible

Trying to keep me away

With the sledge of tectonic fever

The needle has landed again

Let it play

And the needle touched down

The needle is landing

And the needle touched down

The needle is landing

An eagle swooped down from a semi-trailer

Took the name of your town

From a sharp-toothed freighter

And if I knew then what's so obvious now

You'd still be here

And my old fave Mr. Young says in an excerpt from "The Needle and the Damage Done"

I've seen the needle

and the damage done

A little part of it in everyone

But every junkie's

like a settin' sun.

BACK TO ME

Well I'm not a junkie but I kinda feel like one. 

Yesterday's load:

7 doses or so of steroids

1 24 hour Allegra

1 bag of Taxotere

1 bag of Cytoxan

1 dragon sized Adriamycin syringe 

Emend

Aloxi or some name I got wrong - it's IV type Zofran

Some other thing

And une autre

2 unmentionable digestive pills

1 Paxil

1 lorazepam - WOO THAT STUFF ZONKS

2 Advil 

1 oz gin

Other stuff 

I felt okay-ish-dot-com last night when I went to bed - kind of in the wrong gravity. Who am I? Kinda thing.

When I slothed up at 4 am I almost wiped out - I felt like I was on Neptune, very heavy and leaden, feeling rather in "the Hour of Lead" as Emily Dickinson said. 

Mona brought me a smoothie from Juiceland - very healthy. The Originator:

Fresh Apple juice

Banana

Cherry

Peanut butter

Rice protein

Spirulina

Flax oil

I'm full. In several ways.

Leila dropped off wild flowers! Sweet!

They smell so good! Green! 

Today I feel mostly ok - sort of left of center, rumbly, sloshy (trying to drink a lake of unappealing water), floaty. No true sickness so far - probably due to roids. I have the anti nausea drugs at hand. At the ready! I feel more dreamy than anything

People ask about steroids and I say:

There are two factions of thought on the steroid tsunami post poison drip concept. Side one says that you feel so incredibly shitty from chemo that having two or three days where you feel kind of euphoric and uppity-do-dah from steroids is well worth the loss of sleep. The other faction says don't take steroids because they keep you awake when you need sleep, sleep heals, so just manage the side effects of the chemo with antinausea drugs and stuff and skip the steroids. I've met some chemo-ing ladies who opt out and I've met some people in my support group who do that cause they don't like missing sleep. I'm just going to follow the doctor's protocol this weekend and see what I think. I'm watching and thinking and learning.

That lorazepam thing I took last night knocked the shit out of me so I slept pretty damn well. I like that.  Right now I'm drinking ginger tea and eating healthy things and I feel pretty darn okay. I'm about to get ferried off to the doctor to get my Nulasta shot which is supposed to cause pain inside your bones, we'll see how that goes. But so far okay today. Thank you to everyone for all of your well wishes.

I am not a cancer patient.

I really love my doctor, and my nurse Sabrina. Here's a message that Blake emailed me last night from France about the picture she saw on my Sabrina with me:

"I love your nurse!  You can feel her good energy straight from the photo and over the net into my living room via my iphone and my little nearly blind eyes. Do you have her each time as 'your' nurse or do you even know?"

Yes I'm lucky to have her.

And you.

Musings from the lab

We started out bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning. Taught half a class, bid adieu to my students after giving them a gnarly in-class task to keep their brain cells tied up, and then over the hills we go to CHEMO! 

Now.

Here I am comfily ensconced in my ecru lounge chair, with Cytoxan and Taxotere dripping in to my veins. I've been blasted with a constellation of steroids - anybody wanna hang out tonight at 2 am for a fight or card game? I hear I may sleep in a few days when I crash off the steroids - the only problem is that when that occurs you tend to feel like a limp liverwurst sandwich with a side of worm basil pasta. That may happen around Saturday. Or something.

My day so far:

They installed my huber needle in to my port. Oh my god the needle was curved like a harpoon, thick, and two hundred inches long. Sharp at the end like a Moby Dick catcher. My cute nurse Sabrina sprayed me with a chilling thing over my bump and I felt a puncture like rubber but it didn't hurt. Sort of. Then they put me on steroids and anti nausea drip stuff for a while. Easy peasy.

My nurse is snarky - I like that.

Now I'm on drug two of three. Had Taxotere - felt nothing. Now Cytoxan, and I feel weirdly tired and a teeny bit spacey - but could be due to laying around like a slug for 3 hours.

The dreaded Adriamycin sits.

Red.

In a cow sized syringe.

Coming soon.

Last drug of the day.

I accidentally read a damn other blog last night about this red hellion and how if it gets on the skin it blisters and burns and won't stop - it can burn for days, weeks, and months - through the skin, muscle, and bone! Causes amputation or death. Eh what!!!! So I asked Dr. G how in the world of spandex (a Violet phrase) can you inject this dreadful caustic poison inside my body yet it will kill somebody if it gets on the outside of their body, I mean are my veins made literally out of rubber or what? Teflon? She said yes it is amazing and does scar the veins a bit but it's mostly ok. So I guess I'm mostly okay with it too. Here goes.

Now.

It's going in. Feels a bit weird. Don't love it but I'm ok.

Ha ha this is a funny picture but really I feel pretty fine. Mike is watching Jimmy Fallon and Mona brought me a Daily Greens drink so it's all good. 

Friends in the woodwork came out.

Neighbors are friends.

Old friends never went away.

I'm infused with a steady avalanche of loving friends and a super sweet husband and I'm building a shrine to you all. Thank you.

Here's a poem.

	Khalil GibranBiography

Friendship IXX

And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship." Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace. When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay." And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught. And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?  Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness. And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Khalil Gibran

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Yoshimi is landing in a few hours

What a day

Ate fried chicken
Cut my hair
Received an infusion of Yoshimi robot things - not sure if the robots are evil or if they have defected over to helping Yoshimi battle inside me, but they sure are cute.

Plus a bunch of rolled up cute little posters of positive power, all via Nancy S, my Michigan kindred spirit. I send you sparkling vibes of friendship and love Nancy. And to all of you - I have many cards and gifts - thank you.

The robots have arrived on my doorstep.

Are the robots trying to eat me? They sure are cute. Eat me! Or, I think you are really my friends - so go infiltrate me and find the bad stuff and eat it.

Reinforcements come in from Julia P! Make new friends but keep the old, some are gold and some are from FIRST GRADE! I LOVE THIS! THANK YOU!
















Emily Post has gotten kind of fat and lazy and dead and she is stuffed into her coffin and trying to roll over, but she might not be able to. Anyway she wanted me to let you know that Amy's Famous Thank You Note Service may be a bit sluggish. We shall see.

I am feeling pretty ok about starting chemo in a matter of hours. Could be the steroids I am on! Next time you see a blog from me part of the volume of my blood will be filled with vesicants, May flowers, Periwinkle juice, opiates, and soil fungus anti (against) biotics (life) - that's odd isn't it?

The final countdown

Chemo in 21 hours. I'm getting ready.

I'm on the juice. I have to take steroids twice a day, today, tomorrow, and the day after. To keep me from keeling. The rumor is that these hormonal freak pills can make you feel completely speedy druggy high up and euphoric, plus piggy, or murderous or insomniac-ish, or something else. Occasional psychopathy.  Since I have to take them 2X a day and I kind of do really love my sleep, I set my alarm and got up at 5 AM to take the first one, and just took the second one now eight hours later. I feel pretty good, and yes it does make me hungry: I just snarfed down a huge bucket of fried chicken at Lucy's Fried Chicken - with Brooke - then I ate her skin. You know what I mean.

Fun things from the last 24 hours:

Trying on scarves

Balancing medication (on my nose)

Setting up a cute little basket full of pills and directions next to my bed, which will be my new nest/office for the next two months

Having a little dinner party and saying goodbye to my breast cancer support group last night, these guys have been really helpful. Thank you Veda, Leah, Diane, Sandy, Donni and Estella. I hear we plan to continue on meeting at Opal Divine's. Sadly nobody else in the group seems to like to drink beer or gin at a pub and do trivia but I will charge ahead alone in that regard. Somebody's got to do live research on the effects of alcohol and chemo, why not me?

What should I have for dinner tonight, the last dinner of my entire life before I enter into the new land called People Who Have Ever Taken Poisonous Cemotherapy into Their Veins? Maybe we can just abbreviate it like this, before chemotherapy: BC. After chemotherapy: AC. And, I think I've heard these abbreviations before… before Christotherapy and after Christotherapy? Is Jesus Christ a poisonous drip? Or maybe a healing potion that flows into the veins of humanity to bring health and wellness?