Sashimi Yoshimi

Ok so my chemo treatments are 21 days apart. I've faithfully logged my days in a little pink journal given to me by Piper. Captain's Log: Stardate cycle day one of chemo: sucked. Day two: ugh. Day three: worse and more and more worser. Et fucking cetera. Time, temp, barometric pressure, supposed queerly unreal foods and degutante deluxe liquids in, gestalt of the unit, all noted and analyzed and calculated. X = wretched. Etc...day after eonic day. Edna St. Vincent Millay said it right when she penned "It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over." 

Then.

Today - day 12. I woke up and was not in a cabin under the ship in sweaty sty greenness. I felt only sorta six packy hungover. Rather palatable almost. I moved through the day, sort of starving and not hating every morsel. Out to lunch I ordered sashimi. And again. And again. Three servings of raw fish - super healthy right? Prob full of mercury and bacteria that'll kill my nadiristic state but I don't care. It was GOOD and that was good.

So if this is a pattern that means I'll have 12 out of every 21 days of misery, x 6 cycles = 72 days of pure unadulterated world class shit. And then maybe 9 days of being ok x 6 cycles = 54 days of mostly fair to partly cloudy? Percentage? Is that negative of me to contemplate? I like to plan and analyze. However right now I think I'll just be today.

I can't really help what is happening - not truly. I could cancel chemo or drop the scarlet snake drug and I may - but I think I really have to just go through this stinky jungle. I wouldn't say no to a cancer cure, not while I have these babies and life - so I can't not do this. So all that's left is my reaction to it. Which is all any of us has really anyway. You can't control SHIT and if you don't know that you soon will. We can only control our reaction to outside stimuli. 

I read Man's Search For Meaning years ago and would never presume to hint that I'd actually assimilated or approached one ounce of Victor Frankl's wisdom. As Ean said last night - she can only read a few sentences at a time because "it makes her think so much." Yes. It does. But I aspire to his wisdom. After losing his wife and family in a concentration camp he was left to starve and freeze and die to death. And he observed. And thought. And watched. And pondered. And contemplated. And noticed. And synthesized. And watched. And later wrote brilliance in the form of words like:

"Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation."

And:

"For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love."

1946.

Now I am not comparing my therapy of chemistry to his holocaust. That would be like comparing a paper cut to a guillotine that cuts you up 9 inches at a time from the toes up. And I find his words comforting and wise - for us all. So I shall TRY or at least aspire to try - to face the hours with a will to face the hours. 

And I love what Pema Chodron said about when we feel our most horridly decrepit and vile - that when you feel the most crushed and shitlike, you are actually the most connected to humanity - you are in the same suffering boat of many - and in this way you are fully there and connected. She's wisely wisdomic and mind blowing. Read this:

ttp://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/tonglen1.php

So you see - in my silly little short lived badtimeness I'm tinyishly trying to try to deal with this a little. 

Right now things seem pretty not too clunky. Watching the illiterate Tracy 30 Rock (we bought it years ago - one of the best TV bits ever ) with a gin and tonic. Not too shabby.

And a care calendar fairy named Amanda brought us a perfect dinner - thank you!