The Half Way Point
Tomorrow is chemo #6. Bob would like to celebrate, but I'm not really much of a party girl after chemo. But it is a milestone of some sort, right? Sunday is my birthday. I'm 46. The chemo cycle guarantees that while I won't feel bad, I won't have an appetite and I'll be easily fatigued. So we'll put off the celebration for a week or something. I am a fiend for birthday cake and ice cream. It is one of my favorite foods in the entire world. So I am feeling the deprivation keenly.
I had a couple of things planned for January and Feburary that Hodgkins managed to derail, but mostly I've been able to cope by just juggling. But Bob has suggested a couple of guidelines that seem to really work. His sharpest observation was that I'm really only good for one thing a day. So the days of scheduling a dentist appointment in the morning, work all afternoon, go out to dinner with friends in the evening, are suspended until summer. What this means in practice are that Sunday both of my writer's groups are meeting and I may end up attending neither.
I haven't been posting as much lately. Chemo has finally caught up with me and I'm listless and drained. Chemo brain, I think. And the novelty of the situation is gone. It has helped to go through this thinking, that will be good for the blog. It has given me the eye of an observer. I read a memoir by a Pulitzer winning photographer (whose name I have long forgotten) about when he was in Vietnam. He was with a patrol and they were being fired on, and while they were running across a clearing, one of the soldiers near him was shot. As the kid fell, the photographer thought about how awful it was that the kid was out there without protection. As if the Nikon camera around the photographer's neck was some sort of bulletproof shield. This blog is my Nikon, my bulletproof shield.
Hopefully, by the time the truth of the situation hits me, I'll have a clean PET Scan or something and I can look back and think, boy, was I deluded. Lucky it all worked out.
Today is a day to get a bunch of freelance work done before better living through chemistry tomorrow.
I had a couple of things planned for January and Feburary that Hodgkins managed to derail, but mostly I've been able to cope by just juggling. But Bob has suggested a couple of guidelines that seem to really work. His sharpest observation was that I'm really only good for one thing a day. So the days of scheduling a dentist appointment in the morning, work all afternoon, go out to dinner with friends in the evening, are suspended until summer. What this means in practice are that Sunday both of my writer's groups are meeting and I may end up attending neither.
I haven't been posting as much lately. Chemo has finally caught up with me and I'm listless and drained. Chemo brain, I think. And the novelty of the situation is gone. It has helped to go through this thinking, that will be good for the blog. It has given me the eye of an observer. I read a memoir by a Pulitzer winning photographer (whose name I have long forgotten) about when he was in Vietnam. He was with a patrol and they were being fired on, and while they were running across a clearing, one of the soldiers near him was shot. As the kid fell, the photographer thought about how awful it was that the kid was out there without protection. As if the Nikon camera around the photographer's neck was some sort of bulletproof shield. This blog is my Nikon, my bulletproof shield.
Hopefully, by the time the truth of the situation hits me, I'll have a clean PET Scan or something and I can look back and think, boy, was I deluded. Lucky it all worked out.
Today is a day to get a bunch of freelance work done before better living through chemistry tomorrow.
posted by Maureen McHugh at 8:59 AM
5 Comments:
I like your comment about how this blog is an act whose superstitious nature you are quite aware of. It hints at the complexities and cross-currents of self-knowledge (such as it is).
So it's late Thursday; I'm hoping the Chemo went well and you're not too exhausted.
This one hit me harder. I feel unsteady and mildly ill. I slept for an hour or so and then had some soup and that helped some.
Real post tomorrow.
I'm with you, sister, on this one hitting harder. I'm only 3 in now, but each has been tougher. Great post though.
I too will be posting a "real" entry tomorrow.
I seem to have appeared as Anonymous, which I do not quite get. I'm sorry you're feeling crappy. I suppose the cumulative effect of chemo must be pretty toxic. Sleep and soup and cossetting, that's the ticket.
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