Four out of six

Boom! Done! Finished my fourth chemo today - two more to go. Annabelle was with me and that was comfort. She got to see the whole kit and kaboodle, meet my doctor Gorrebeeck who she keeps calling Dr. Gorbachev - so much now that I find myself stuttering when I'm talking to my doctor not saying the name right. But it's kind of funny. 

Annabelle was a doll today and she went and fetched tacos for me and one of my sweet nurses - from Taco Deli. I recommend their Carne Asada - all natural beef ribeye, grilled and served with avacado, onion, and a lime wedge. Annabelle and Laverne went all veggie to counteract Christmas overindulgence but I went all protein - knowing I'll be on the bird diet any second.

Right now I'm laying in bed with various girls, winding down down down...

Waiting for the inevitable death trap feeling but buoyed by the knowledge I've done this and can do it again. 

Learned a few new things today - chemo therapeutics do not smile kindly upon, among other things, the liver. The liver is a rather pasty and bad tasting organ that I don't recommend you eat from another species. Don't mess with it I say. However, regarding your own species, and in particular your own self, you rather do need your liver for living. Apparently it does things like filter out poisons, ha HA isn't that funny? And some other important things. It's got a delicate chemical balance of proteins and enzymes and other biological things that are over my head. 

However some of those things are read tarotically in little black printer symbols we call numbers by laboratory types and doctors as they sit in their pressed white coats with their names embroidered on the chest and they wear their little reading glasses and they look very scholarly and important.  This occurred today. It was reported to me that my ALT or ALZ or Jay-Z and Beyoncé or something liver blah blah numbers are pretty high. I don't remember or even know really what she was talking about but the numbers were pretty chart rocketingly high, like if it was supposed to be between 17 and 35 mine was 212, et cetera. Same sort of scene for number category two. She said, and Annabelle will be happy to repeat this since she accuses me of exaggerating all the time, "numbers like this bounce up and down all the time during chemo and it's pretty common." To which I reply: "How delightful that must be to report." 

I think I failed to mention that I did have some very nice Veuve Cliquot of the pink variety followed by some very nice Silverado wine followed by a few beers last night...but alcohol doesn't hurt your liver right? On Christmas?

Anyway, because of this, and because I still get tingling in the ends of my fingers and toes after more than a week after chemo, Dr. Gorrebeeck decided to reduce the amount of one of my drugs by 25% today. No not the red Devil, darn it. I still get to deal with the devilish side effects of that particular Kool-Aid. She cut my Taxotere to 75% of its original strength, because apparently the neuropathy that it causes can be permanent and can really affect your hands and fingers which I need for typing and picking my cuticles. Taxotere used to be given in the ICU and patients were kept in the hospital for seven days at a time. Nice. Two of my friends in my support group and had to quit chemo altogether because this type of poison was giving them hell in this fashion. So I'm doing pretty well in that regard I suppose.

Right now I'm feeling fully drugged up and kind of weird. 

Physical report: Feel edgy and on the edge of yuck. I see it coming down the turnpike but it's around a corner. Tired and cold mixed with hot spells. I'm wearing a bikini and a parka - alternating. Not really. 

Mental report: Feel kind of depressed and anxious but too tired to muster up a good angst so it manifests in cranktitude. All this is mixed with a melting center due to the kindness that is shown to me constantly by a galaxy of friends and family and strangers - all of them strangle and kind and galactic. Thank you.

Here is Annabelle reading in the chemo room. She made lots of friends and learned a few things - apparently molasses is an old cure for nausea so I may be getting it on my food soon. She's a good caretaker. The best. Right now she's roasting a chicken and making sweet potatoes. And bossing Fifi around. I love having her here.

A few quotes:

"For there is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather; 

To cheer one on the tedious way, 

To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down, 

To strengthen whilst one stands"

Christina Rossetti

"You can kid the world, but not your sister."

Charlotte Gray

And one Annabelle might sometimes say about me, or Violet about Fiona, or any little sister about her older sister:

"Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life."

Charles M. Schulz