7 days

My reading material 

Chemotherapy moved from an abstraction toward a reality today - I can't honestly say to an actual reality because no one stuck me with a needle but my calendar got stuck with execution dates.

 

Margaret and I met with my onc (Greek for mass) ologist today. The big controversy up for panel discussion was whether or not to use Adriamycin, otherwise known as the red Devil, or the really wicked shit - and my all upcoming cocktail of drugs. Seems that the science is leaning towards a near future were Adriamycin will become an antique, to be stuck on a shelf, never used again. Like the leeches of yore. However, right now we can only exist in the present, and today's science still dictates that if you want to be, in the later, as in future, as in: the time that I want to be here with my kids - dictates that if you want to live you better use this red poison. So hopefully, nauseatingly, happily, and horrifyingly, I am going to be doing all three of the drugs and very soon.

 

Chemo #1: Thursday, October 24, 10:45 AM
tick tock tick tock tick tock

It's amazing the drugs I have to take to counter affect the side effects of the drugs I have to take, and some of the side effects of the drugs I have to take to counter the side effects of the drugs I have to take are worse than the side effects of the drugs I have to take in the first place. Do you know what I mean?

Here's a quick breakdown:

Super yucky chemo drugs = extreme nausea, extreme disgustingness, losing the sensation of the nerves that are dying in your fingertips, hands, toes, feet, and oh by the way if it starts creeping up your legs or arms let us know right away. Bald ugliness, and other things like this that are about as delightful as an olive loaf sandwich with Miracle Whip. Let's just say it would be the antithesis of the Elizabeth Street Café.

Margaret about to dive into her Bun

But hey, we have really great drugs to help with the side effects, here are the side effects of some of these really great drugs to help with the side effects: insomnia, feeling hysterically jittery like you'll never sleep again I can't have a single thought without freaking out, fatness, bloatedness, airheaded Ness, skin problems, infections, and possibly death if you get a cold or something. By the way I'm actually hiding in a cold dark garage right now to do this post, because my kids want me to go for a walk, someone is stopping by, and everyone around me keeps asking me questions, so I'm hiding in the twilightish garage underneath some boxes full of spiders. Okay back to me, another side effect drug is called Nulasta. This is a magical shot, that magically starts your white blood cells regrowing magically inside the marrow, inside your bones, 24 hours after you get chemo, which will have killed off all of your white blood cells. It's actually called a border colonizing drug. This is very cool. Problem is it has one small side effect: it causes excruciating pain. In one place. That place is, the inside of all of your bones. We'll see about that.

 

This new routine starts Thursday, October 24 and go on to occur once every three weeks, for six times. I have not done the math yet - I do not know when it stops. After this, I will have a third surgery, after that I will have radiation everyday for five or six or seven or 1 million weeks. Here are the answers to my questions: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

 

I'm hopeful

I'm scared

I'm sick in the head with nervousness

I'm counting

I'm waiting
I'm counting

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
—Naomi Shihab Nye

 

Burning the Old Year

Bur