in which i title my days

May 3, 2012

I have some news and some other news.  The some news is . . . I had that “next” seizure that I practically hexed myself into in my last post.  The some other news is . . . my MRI on Monday indicated a small reduction in the size of my tumor.  We’re talking a millimeter or two here—not drastic but significant.  Significant if for no other reason but as testimony to the chemo’s positive effect.  Unless you’re the tumor.  Then, I suppose, the effect would be negative.  Poor thing.

May 9, 2012

Blink, blink, blink.  Even this rainy day is bright out from under my rock.  The week in my rear-view reached a new level of discomfort.  They say this is to be expected as the treatment wears on.  The body recovers less in the three weeks allotted to its convalescence between its one week of ambush and decimation.

Back in the glory days of March, you’ll recall my reckoning that the severest effects of the chemo lasted for a week.  You may recall the conversation I had with a stuffed dog with respect to this matter.  At the time, I stated that it was nice (if such a word can find purchase at all in the dark days . . . hmmm . . . the dark days . . . I like it, it’s got a Stephen King feel to it, as does my week of poisonous torment . . . yes, The Dark Days it is, a nice ring to it. . . there’s “nice” again, said twice now  it is settled, nice does not apply), barring nice, at least a small consolation to know how long I could expect to feel yarky.   A full week.

This month, the consolation turned to nightmare.  The converse became the truth.  The Piercing Truth of the Dark Days.  Which is?

Well, you know how it is when you have a “24 bug”?  You’re wracked in body and ruined in spirit and all the world seems a Death Star Trash Compactor (“What an incredible smell you've discovered!”)?  But, for all of its crushing inhumanity, the 24 hour bug lasts, as you well know, 24 hours.  Now ask yourself, is this an invigorating knowledge or a damning knowledge?  In March, I’d have said invigorating—at least in terms of hope. 

But this is May.  And in May, allow me to suggest the knowledge is a suffocation by certitude.  Certitude of what?  Well, sure, your bug will have run its course by tomorrow and you’ll be back up and at ‘em by the day after at the latest; but what is the converse of that surety?  You will not be up and at ‘em by this afternoon.  Cancel your dinner plans, stay in your pajamas, and curl-up (double-over as the case will be) with a book from which you don’t mind missing entire chapters due to your woeful distraction.

[Jonathan fetches a calculator.  Musical interlude.  Wagner, perhaps.  An Oompa Loompa lamentation, perhaps.]

[ . . . doompity-doo, have I got another bummer for you . . .what do you get when your chemo’s a beast . . . ]

I’m back.  My bugs are of the 168 hour variety.

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A bit of positivity to end this post, because that’s how I do.  I made an expensive discovery this past week.  Maybe you will find it useful come your next bug.  It is impossible, impossible, I say, to feel sick when you’re sucking-down a delicious, cold concoction from Tropical Smoothie or when spooning-up a sloppy Banana Split from Bruster’s.  A thirty minute reprieve.  Open up and sigh ahhhhhhhh . . .