a tally and some likenings

Oh, before I forget to mention it . . . the score is:

Vomitless Chemo Days—76

Vomitful Chemo Days—1

I can’t remember if I’ve brought up the likening before but it bears repeating anyway . . . I liken the yarks of chemo days to the yarks of a massive hangover.  The poisoned blood, the caustic guts, the brimstone saliva, the thrice-sized head.

The similarities are bad enough, but it’s in the dissimilarities where the going gets especially yarksome. 

Alcoholic hangovers have remedies.  Aspirin.  Milk thistle.  Pedialite.  Dunkings in ice-water a la Fezzik to Inigo.  Sleep.  And, of course, my personal fav from the ol’ dipsomaniacal days . . . hair of the dog and try, try again.

Chemo hangovers, on the other hand, are unshakeable.  They settle-in and hog the couch for a week with their fungalacious feet on the coffee table and their sweating tumblers of moonshine on-the-scum-water-rocks staining the oak.

They are a week’s worth of crying babies beside you on the red-eye to your frumpy Aunt Belinda’s late-life nuptials.

They are a week’s worth of ramshackle rollercoaster rides and haggardly ring-toss barkers at the trash-heap-of-a-gypsy-carnival where the freak show cast doubles as greasy-corndog dippers.

They are a week's worth of Vonnegut being read aloud by Smeagol  over the constant simpering of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange strobing from the thousand screens of a Buffalo Wild Wings in Limbo staffed by the Lollipop Guild and under the new management of Charlie Sheen.

I could go on. And on.  For week or so, say.  But I won’t.

Oh, and the vomit?  The vomit of a drunken man comes like fresh water to the sea-foundered sailor.  The vomit of a chemo-ed man comes like the oasis mirage in the desert—the hope of relief that corrodes upon arrival.

FYI.  

Have nice days this post notwithstanding.