Driving home
We talked of of boobs and partners and scarves and books and beer and radiation and Ambien and chemicals and the topic of surgery came up. Some are still awaiting surgery. I'm a veteran. I found myself wistful and nostalgic for the surgeries of months past. I missed them. You walk in, everyone's really kind, you feel fine, they have you laying in quiet comfortable white bed. They give you a special robe to wear, and make sure that you're comfortable. It's practically spalike up front. Instead of poisoning you, they give you these magical drugs that make you feel pretty good, and take away the pain. Now I'm not trying to romanticize surgery, which can be excruciatingly painful, awful, or even fatal, but at this remove, it seems like a quaint friendly cottage.
Some fragmented lyrics from an 80s song keep coming to me:
You better hope and pray
That things are okay
Back in your own world
Right now the orcs are boiling chemicals underground in the dungeon cavelike factory preparing themselves to bubble it up through a geyser and into a poisonous bag to be dripped into my veins in nine days. Or 10? My math department is shutting down. November 14 will be onslaught two.
What I'm trying to say is I think I'm ramping up for the dread section of this new cycle. My 21 day cycle of hell. In my first cycle I had 11 or so days of vile followed by so far one and a half days of mostly fair, and now I'm starting to get that pit in my stomach, that Sunday evening feeling about an algebra test Monday morning feeling, about chemo. What a damn waste of time all this thinking is.
At least this time I'll have my Vicki with me from California, and a few other good friends who say they want to come sit with me during drip. I wonder if it will be as celebratory and dorm-partyish as the last time? I doubt it. I'll be aware.
Two of the ladies at dinner tonight have had their chemotherapy halted in the middle of their regimen. Why? Because the Taxol drug that they're taking is so poisonous that it's giving them serious neuropathy in their hands and feet. It is weathering and wilting and rotting rotting and ruining and deadening the nerves in their bodies - wending itself down the thin pretty ever narrowing nerves to the ends of their extremities where the nerves are just too thin and they crumple up and blacken and die. Perhaps never to return. Yes that's my T drug.
Next.
They tell you the one of the side effects of chemical torture is that it can ruin the inside of your mouth. Apparently if there's any food or enzyme stuck in your mouth after you're done eating, it starts to eat off the skin on the inside of your mouth or something. I scoffed at that. Ha, I said. Well last night the very end of my tongue was extremely blisteringly painful. I tried the regular Bactine rinse, and the salt water and all that. It really hurt and it was starting to throb and it was bothering me like I couldn't really rest. So today I called my doctor and they called in a prescription for me of some fancy-schmancy mouth swish. I went to pick it up and it was a pretty 16 ounce bottle. Hefty. It cost $73. Apparently my insurance company is not delighted with this particular brand of medicine. I decided to go ahead and pay it, because I kinda have guilt about how good my insurance is, and how I get many many drugs that cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars, all the time, for five bucks. So I figured in my middle-classness I could surely fork out the real cost for one drug every now and then. So I did. The pharmacist wanted to go over it with me. He said it was very separatey and I needed to really really shake shake shake the bottle. It's a mix of lidocaine, Benadryl, an antifungal agent, some kind of antibiotic, and milk of magnesia. To me this sounds like the anti-antinausea drug. Anyway you're supposed to swish it in your mouth after every meal. I took one swish of it when I got home and it was so incredibly vile that I wanted to curl up behind the toilet. It made the entire inside of my mouth completely numb like cocaine. But it had none of the positive benefits. I don't know if I'll ever take another swish of that, so I may have just paid $73 for 1 teaspoon of toadstool juice.
I don't really like the whole war metaphor. I am not fighting a battle, I'm not a soldier, I am not a victim. I'm not even a survivor. I'm just a regular person living in a regular house with a regular family. Some of my cells are growing up too quickly, so what? I'm not fighting. I am calmly going about the business of helping my body reestablish homeostasis. It may take a few months. Right now I'm just trying to continue to metabolize the poison that is inside of my veins and my psyche and my stomach and my mystery novel and my spleen and my cereal and heart and my toothpaste and my bones and my teacup and my liver and my toast and my kidneys and my brain and my skinny jeans and my mouth. Keep on metabolizing, cells, please keep on metabolizing metabolizing metabolizing.
Listening to a lot of Neko Case. I love her dark blue strange lyrics. I love how she screams FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT HEAR THE WORDS! at the end of Maybe Sparrow. That's enough of a lyric for me. I feel like I'm wading around in those who cannot hear the words sometimes. Well a lot. I'm often disappointed in others' lack of empathy - not about me or just this, I'm talking about I've thought this for years decades - or just what I think of as a lack of awareness. The duh. And now this stupid mutation puts it in relief - I see those who cannot hear the words and wonder if they're deaf dumb or blind.
Maybe sparrow you should wait
The hawks alight till morning
You'll never pass beyond the gate
If you don't hear my warning
Notes are hung so effortless
With the rise and fall of sparrow's breast
It's a drowning dive and back to the chorus
La di da di da di da
La di da di da di da
Oh my sparrow it's too late
Your body limp beneath my feet
Your dusty eyes cold as clay
You didn't hear my warning
Maybe sparrow it's too late
Moonlight glanced off metal wings
In a thunderstorm above the clouds
The engine hums a sparrow's phrase
For those who cannot hear the words
For those who will not hear the words
For those who will not hear the words
Ciao from San Francisco. I like reading your description about chemo and the surgery. But I like more how you cope with this situtation. I think it is good to share your emotions and feelings with friends. By the way I also have a positive memory of the surgery and you know what? My room was just beside the Pope's ward. In the hospital where I was operated the Pope has a complete ward just for himself!!!
ReplyDeleteWow! How papal!
DeleteAmy, when my rabbi was going through his chemo, he said that after the first round he wished someone would knock him out and carry him in for treatments. That he just couldn't believe he was walking back in there by choice.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, he is fantastic now, no signs of relapse. And he can do things like taste and sleep and have hair.
Very glad to hear that you've connected with others who have shared the experience. Must feel liberating. Isn't it weird how we sometimes find ourselves members of clubs no one would ever want to join. ...