Just The Facts, Ma'am.......

I haven't eaten since February. February! Oh sure, I've had a strawberry and a piece of apple and a tiny piece of cheese but that's not eating. And no, I'm not hungry because I ingest these cans of nutrition and they keep me from losing weight and they help me stand upright and take walks but this is getting to be very abnormal. They keep assuring me that when the tumor shrinks I'll be able to swallow and therefore have a piece of fish or something soft and yummy and maybe I'm torturing myself by watching cooking shows and seeing people like this very plump, happy, Southern woman named Paula Deen bake things like peanut butter cakes and eat them all up and just be so damn happy about the whole thing...Maybe I should watch the History Channel instead where people cross the Atlantic and starve their way to America. I don't know. Maybe I should just read anything beside The Joy of Cooking.

Today is chemo. I am still so sick from last weeks drip that I cannot imagine how I'm going to feel tomorrow but here I go. There is some good news to report...My blood work is very strong. My tumor, according to the work, has shrunk quite a bit. Couldn't tell by me but that's what Dr. Shaum said and I don't think she'd lie just to make me feel good. So that's the happy news. Oh happy happy joy joy. I am dancing across the room, doing my first dance to a joyous Spring.

Now here's a word whose meaning has become quite clear to me in recent days...Clumps...My hair is now falling out in...Clumps...I just have to run my fingers through it and small dyed blond birds nests appear. In fact I'm leaving it all in the yard in case a bird might be looking for some house building material. Maybe I should leave a sign...Like the signs that say FREE DIRT. How about a sign that says FREE HAIR. But then, of course, as I lie in bed I imagine that some birds have taken my hair and they come looking for more and fly into my room and start pecking at my bald head to see if there's just a tiny bit left for maybe a family room...Or a second bedroom...

I think I've watched just a few too many Hitchcock movies.

There is a bird on a tree right outside of my study. He has a very mean look on his face. Maybe he hates blonds. Maybe he wanted a brunette nest. Maybe I should take another pain pill.

I'm off to chemo. Does one's mind come out with their hair?

Stay tuned...............................

No I Am Not Dead

Okay, here's the thing...Until I become wireless I won't be able to blog as often as I'd like to and it has to do with my set up and my IV and blah blah blah but my wonderful fabulous son was here this past week and spent hours online ordering my laptop and figuring out what I needed, which isn't much, so hopefully by the end of next week I'll be able to sit in the living room or in a coffee shop with all those people who think they are writing a script that someone will actually buy (oh, I shouldn't be so cynical...Or should I?) but anyway I am pretty sure that wirelessness will allow me to write more often. There will always be a lag of two or three days when I do chemo but I only have four more to go, so they say, and then it will be three and so on..........

But anyway, I did not have chemo this week and I've had some good days and a couple bummer days but my hair is still on my head and I'm afraid to touch it thinking the whole thing might just come off in my hand but as of today it's still here. More chemo on Monday so we shall see what that brings beside the nausea which has been a little too intense and the fatigue. But I walk and I talk and I think and I read and I wait for the day when we finally have a candidate because I can't stand the suspense anymore and it's so cool that it's a Black man and a woman although I think these two are going to kill each other before it's all over and then we'll be back to White men again and we know where that gets us.....................And is it just me or does hearing the Pope speak in a large stadium with his very strong German accent make some of you want to keep a packed duffel bag by the door "just in case"?..............................

This is going to be short today but I wanted to make sure that I wrote down something that I have realized this week...Two very important reasons why I should continue living...

One...My Son...Enough said.

Two...When my son was here I sent him to get...

A HOT DOG!!

Cedric! I haven't been getting my vitamin drip because you can't mix vitamins with chemo so they tell me and I haven't seen Cedric in quite a while so I sent Will to get a dog and told him to say hi from me, thinking Cedric might not remember me because I am one of so many hot dog eaters and Cedric admirers but HE KNEW ME and said he was wondering about me and where I'd been and he asked for my e-mail and I was so flattered that I almost fainted, which I do these days anyway, but I realized that Cedric is my second most important reason to live.

What a world..............................

I'll Have A Chemopolitan...With A Twist

THIS SUCKS! Big time. For the last week I have been living in a wave of nausea that will not go away and before I even have time to recover from last Monday's chemo here comes Monday again tomorrow with another damn dose and last Friday I had to go in to get an anti-nausea drip for three hours that didn't really work for more than a moment and there were two bald women who were so sick of doing chemo that they were about to play hooky for a few months and go on some exotic trip around the world. They were not sure it was all worth it because in both cases the cancer had come back and they had to endure the whole thing all over again. And I'm sitting there thinking is it worth it at all just to get a few extra months (if that's you get) because during those months you just feel sick and you can't jump in the ocean so what is the point?

And I lay there on the couch and start freaking out about one of those memorials that I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE because these days I can feel people trying to peek into my window to see what kind of shape I'm in. "I hear she looks awful. She can't eat" "She looks like death." "How long does she have?" I know people who have died and they have had these memorials where people talk about you and some people who talk you may not even like and even though you're dead it is just so embarrassing.

And on top of everything the dishwasher broke and leaked all over the kitchen floor and that opened up my anger control switch about the man formerly known as my husband who lives in his nice clean bachelor apartment with a landlord who will take care of his damn dishwasher whenever it goes kerplooey and then I realized how much I want to move out of this house into one that is my very, very own painted in MY colors with only MY stuff in it and my son's stuff and...

By the way, my son was a Prince, as usual, at my last chemo. Sat there with me, held my hand, watched me vomit, stroked my hair, made me laugh and that is not easy.

There have been times when I was in the middle of throwing up that I just wanted to have a heart attack and fall on the bathroom floor and get this over with. Enough. Enough already. And then I'd brush my teeth and get back on the couch and pick up a book and I'd read something, like a great sentence, so I'd read on because I was pretty sure that I was going to find another great sentence if I kept on reading and I suppose that's a reason to carry on. But I miss my other self and what we used to do, like swim and eat turkey burgers and I know some
things will never be the same and that just completely bums me out. (Now that, by the way, was a lousy sentence. If I had read that after brushing my teeth I surely would have ended things right there and then.)

I think I'm very close to being divorced. I say "I think" because I have these papers on my desk that "I think" I'm supposed to sign or at least peruse (did I spell that correctly?) and they came the day I did my last chemo and you know what I'm realizing as I write this...That I CANNOT fall onto the bathroom floor until I get completely divorced. There we go. That is a much more important reason to hang in there...Way more important than reading a good sentence.

"I get the willies behind closed doors." Phooey on that. "Please, sign on the bottom line and your marriage will be dissolved." Yahoo. I can breath. I'm finally free.

You know, I feel better already. Ready for my chemo, Mr. DeMille.............................