Archive for November, 2006
Thursday, November 30th, 2006
Memory is a slippery thing.
Not only is it subject to the twists and turns of time, when we think we remember something one way and it turns out to be something else entirely (like thinking the movie “Ghost Story” was brilliant until I saw it again twenty years later), but also to interpretation.
Lately, I’ve been slipping into a nostalgia of last December, when all this started. All I can think about is how incredible the month was, how deeply fabulous, because the only responsibility I had was sleeping. Yeah, I had to get to the hospital, had to get the daily chemo, but really all I had to do was sleep.
God, for those days again.
I’m so tired right now that all I want to do is sleep. I want to crawl back to last December and sleep now as I did then.
Except that’s not quite how the month went.
From The Cancer Chronicles, December 5, 2005
…the shakes are getting worse, but I have no muscle pain. I’m pretty sure that’ll happen but maybe not until I’m driving down the highway at 80 or 90. hehehehe…okay, not particularly funny. For those of who you thought cancer would make me funnier, sorry….
…a bit of a thud across the top of my back, my thighs, and my calves a little….
From The Cancer Chronicles, December 19, 2005
…everything, except milk and orange sherbet, tastes like shit….
…Friday, Saturday, and a few minutes on Sunday saw me at the edge of passing out at odd, random moments. I get overheated very easily and then woozy and dizzy….
…the muddy brained? There seems to be nothing in particular that sets that off, it’s just a general state right now. Sucks, though, because I can’t remember anything and sometimes have a hard time putting together a sentence….
From The Cancer Chronicles, December 21, 2005
…most food tastes awful but even if it tasted good, I’ve got no apetite. And I’m sleeping the better part of 15 to 18 hours a day. When I’m awake, I’m weak, hardly able to walk up the stairs and even drag my ass to the bathroom to spit out a mouthful of white nastiness that, I suppose, is the Interferon….
…I’m having a hard time walking home from the hospital….
…I’ve had a fever most of the week. Standing in 17 degree weather wanting to do nothing so much as strip to the skin….
…the anger. I find I’m pissed all the time. Not like early on, when I joked about being mad at the whole concept of cancer. Now I’m furious. I don’t want to deal with this bullshit….
So it wasn’t just sleeping, it wasn’t what I think I remember. It was harsh and ugly and tough. Why do I remember it differently? Because right now I’m exhuasted and all I want to do is sleep. Some of that exhuastion is from the Interferon, some is from being so close to the end that I get frustrated and agitated.
But some of it is from work. In some sort of pathetic attempt to prove to everyone at work how tough I am, I took almost no vacation or sick time this entire year.
So that was a good plan, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah, I’m tough, I’m an Ironman…now can I have some time off?
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Saturday, November 25th, 2006
So, I just spent something like an hour writing a new entry about the nostalgia of memory and how all I remember of last December — the worst month — was the brilliance of sleeping all the time; that I remember it fondly because I’m so tired now and have been for so long.
It was an incredible post, full of thoughtful words and images, of brilliant insight about the nature of memory and what not.
Then I screwed it. I’m two hours into a treatment and I’m as stupid as they come. I pushed some wrong button or whatever and poof!, the post disappeared.
And I’m too chemo stupid to rewrite it, at least right now. Maybe I’ll try again later.
But the overriding thought is this: seven days from being finished. Only three more treatments.
Man, the computer screen is floating back and forth, reminds me of nothing so much as the Monkees movie. Head? Was that the title?
Whatever.
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Thursday, November 16th, 2006
So there’s this old man, call him 157 years old. With perfectly coiffed Baptist/Televangelist/Texas Republican hair. It’s all white and it never moved. He wore a blue track suit and I couldn’t decide if he was a drug dealer or Pimp Daddy Old. Nice suit, though.
I was at the Princeton High School outdoor track, having decided to do my run outside rather than on a treadmill. Just something a little different, no big thing.
Yeah, piss on that. A huge different thing.
It sucked like a Hoover!
First of all, the track is much spongier than I’d realized so I felt like I was running in molasses. Had to work much harder to get any distance. Secondly, I had a headwind half the time, blowing cold-ass air into my face so I couldn’t hardly breathe.
And, oh yeah, I had a chest cold! Hacking and wheezing and coughing up stuff that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. (I know, I know, don’t run when you hurt, but I hadn’t realized, until I started running, how severe the cold was).
So I’m running, managing to jog about half a lap, then walk half, then jog, etc. Quarter mile around the track so I’m not doing great. I’m not dead, but I’m not Carl Lewis, either.
Then this guy comes out of his house across the street, does a warm up or two, and starts jogging.
Son of a bitch never stopped! He was like a machine! Lap after lap after lap. Now, he wasn’t jogging fast, but he wouldn’t stop! Going slower than me but not having to walk half a lap.
Made me crazy. I just wanted this old dude to go home, stop making me look bad.
A lap or two around, he passed me, clapped his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Hang in there.”
I could have killed him. It’s one thing to watch him stomp me into the ground, another thing all together to get his pity while he does it.
What I’m going to do, see, is sneak into his house and muss up his perfect head’o'hair. Hah, that’ll learn his ass!
* * *
This cold has left me in a strange position. I’m 16 days away from being finished with chemo (eight treatments, not that I’m counting) and I feel like I did back in January. I’m tired and weak, not hungry at all, cranky as hell, unmotivated to do anything. All the same things I had back in Jan when I started the home chemo project.
Or, The Home Chemo Project. Maybe I could sell that as some kind of reality show, make a few bucks on those of us throwing up and losing hair and all the other joys of chemo. Extreme Home Makeover…Extreme Home Chemo.
Anyway, I find myself a little depressed by the current state. Yeah, yeah, I realize it’s just a chest cold and it’ll probably be gone in a few days, but I am what I am, I guess.
No great realization here or anything, just interesting that at the end, I am nearly as much of a mental wreck as I was at the beginning. The depression, minor though it is, feels exactly the same, like putting on a not-so favorite pair of ratty underwear because that’s all there is left.
It’s no problem, though. At least, not much of a problem. The depression is less than minor and in a few more days, a few more shots, all this mother-sucking, bullshitty crap will be over.
Booyah!
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Thursday, November 2nd, 2006
A few years ago, I was at a convention with Michael Arnzen. He’s a hilarious poet and a damned scary writer. (Not that he personally is scary, though that’s sometimes true, or that his writing is so bad it’s scary, but that his books will scare you, I promise). He also is about the same age as I me and we have quite a few of the same reference points in terms of movies and TV and music.
We’re at this convention — Kansas City, I think it was — and the entire weekend, one of us sang “The Final Countdown” to the other. The song, if you remember, is Europe’s only hit single and is one of those songs that once it gets into your head, it ain’t going nowhere.
I hate that song.
But I like my own countdown.
Four weeks from today. Thirty-one days.
Fucking finally.
It’s been tough, these last few weeks. The closer I get to being done, the harder it is to take the shot. I’ll take them, in fact I might interrupt this writing session to go take one, it’s getting to be about that time, and I’ll take them to the bitter end, I’m just tired of them is all.
I realized a few days ago that things have changed. Where it was for so long lots of bad days with a few good moments buried beneath, then it was about 50/50 good days and bad, now it’s much closer to a decent number of good days with a few bad moments buried beneath.
The hours after a shot are tough right now, I don’t know why. But if I can get some sleep two or three hours after shooting up, I’m usually good to go the next day. I wonder, since the dosage is the same as it’s been for weeks now, if that isn’t at least partially psychological.
Seeing the end, can I take the process more easily? Could be.
Other than that, there is nothing going on. Counts are good, eating is good, weight is lite but good, exercise is good. Just waiting out the last few weeks. Nothing else new or different to write about.
Actually, it’s as boring as when I went to the doctor last week. Everything was so stable he was bored with me. I guess I’m starting to get bored with my treatment. Not annoyed like I have been, not angry or depressed, just bored.
That’s okay, though, it’s almost done.
Thirty one days. Thirty one days. Come on, baby, thirty one days.
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