The Upside

So I was reading about Iran today in the New York Times. Not a good place to live. And I was thinking about their president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Not a good guy. But I imagined him as a little boy, a little six or seven year old and the teacher asks all the kids to write down their names in Farsi cursive. And his name is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Not Ed Burns. Now right there is a reason to be pissed off. You've got to take your little pencil and try to write all those letters out and it goes on and on and by the time you're finished everyone else has already been to recess and back. No wonder he's an anti-Semitic scary person.
My friend and wonderful acupuncturist, Dr. Mao Shing-Ni told me that all of what I am going through is a good thing and I will come out the other end with new knowledge and a new vision of life. I said wouldn't the same thing have happened if I'd won the lottery and not have to go through this not so fun chemo business? And he said then I wouldn't have an inner journey. The most important kind. The lottery is just a material experience. He is so Chinese. And I am so Jewish. Inner-shminner. I have an inner journey everytime I do yoga. "Oy, how much longer do we have to hold this pose?" And..."Is downward facing dog a good look for me?" That's my inner journey. Dr. Mao is deep and Chinese and I am short and shallow.
Today I got my sorry ass out of bed and actually made it to the pool where I swim. It's an outdoor YMCA pool (yes Jews are allowed) and it's in a beautiful spot and I love it. I did a few crawl strokes and realized that the arm where I got my chemo drip was not working properly. It's hard to explain but it really hurt when it hit the water. And then there was my paralyzed thumb on the other hand so I had what at best could be described as a very spazy swim. But I did it. Forty laps. Very slowly. So that was good. My biggest problem still seems to be food. Just the thought of it makes me sick. But I have to keep my weight up so I am right now sipping on a Robecks juice which I know is not on the macrobiotic menu that I'm supposed to follow but it at least it has calories. I know to some of you gals out there the problem of not being able to eat sounds like not such a problem. But this is what I worry about...The thinner I get the more wrinkly my face will become. How sick is that? I have cancer and I'm worried about my fine lines. Oh, the vanity of us all.
I don't think I mentioned that I take four chemo pills a day. They look like little innocent things when you hold them in your hand but they turn into chemo poison in your body. I always stare at them before I take them and remember Jack Nicholson in Cuckoos Nest staring at the seditives they gave him that he would hide in his mouth and spit out furtively when the nasty nurse wasn't paying attention. But no one's trying to trick me. I don't think. So I take these pills and I do believe they make me feel yucky. I am not a pill person except for vitamins and I feel funny when I just take a tylenol so these little suckers, my poison cure, are certainly making me feel a little off center.
The upside of cancer is this...Hmmmm. I'll have to get back to you.